Conservative elites may champion reforms deliberately to forestall revolution.

Evidence

In the years which followed he came, paradoxically, to argue precisely in favour of such “passive revolutions”, in that his main thesis was the need to put through reforms in order to prevent revolution on the French model. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1879

Categorization

• XREF: Recalls the preventive-reform dynamic invoked in readings on how colonial/state powers co-opt demands to preempt radical change. — connects to: Land reform was a manufactured legitimacy gambit by an embattled elite. — Tavengwa Gwekwerere, Davie E. Mutasa, and Kudakwashe Chitofiri, Settlers, Rhodesians, and Supremacists:…, 29