It is change from within, fixing a flawed system rather than tearing it down. Reform is the patient, unglamorous work of making institutions better, and most American progress has come through it.
Reform is the improvement of a system, institution, or practice by correcting its faults, as opposed to revolution, which seeks to overthrow and replace it entirely. The word comes from the Latin reformare, to form again, to reshape into a better form.
It works within the existing order. A reformer accepts the basic framework, a constitution, a government, an institution, but fights to fix what is broken inside it: to expand the vote, end an abuse, clean up corruption, widen a right.
America has long been a country of reform movements. The Progressive Era reformed politics and business; abolition and civil rights reformed the nation's treatment of its people; the labor, temperance, and suffrage movements all sought change through reform of laws and institutions.
It is often slower and less dramatic than revolution, and sometimes criticized for it. But reform has a powerful advantage: by working through legitimate channels, lasting reforms can endure, written into law and accepted as the new normal, rather than swept away in the next upheaval.
