But then, second, there are the changes of a systemic nature – reform of healthcare, welfare, privatisation of a major state utility, for example – and these changes involve painstaking analysis of the system, the precise changes you want to make and their relationship to the system as it currently operates; they involve managing a range of different interests, all of which will fight the change or find ways to diminish or neuter it.

A change in the form of government, why should that make a difference in the way he lived?

The key lesson about all structural political change is this: disruption works. Without disruption there is no economic cost, and without economic cost the guys running this world really don't care.

Towards the preservation of your government, and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited, remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes, upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion, exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember, especially, that for the efficient management of your common interests, in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable.

When do we begin to understand that we need a fundamental change in our political structure?

Any planned social change will have to consider a multitude of factors characteristic for the particular case. The change may require a more or less unique combination of educational and organizational measures; it may depend upon quite different treatments or Ideology, expectation and organization. Still, certain general formal principles always have to be considered.

In some cases the changes may represent just one part of a general improvement program. Such steps as the following, for example, will generally affect the organization structure:

What’s really important is to have systemic changes. By that I mean, for example, putting into law that people have a right to access official information. Once freedom of information becomes part of the bureaucracy, the bureaucrats who are freedom of information officials have a vested interest in making sure that that law is there and that it actually works, because it kind of justifies their existence. One thing is to institutionalize rights to know.

We are living amidst conditions which are new and strange to us. Your prosperity demands changes in the old system, so that, in these new conditions, that old system may adequately serve you. The right time to bring about these changes has come. Further progress without them is improbable. To understand what changes and corrections should be made, you must first understand the facts of the present situation. To do that, you should have clearly in mind what has taken place in the past five years; the ways in which we have made progress, the ways in which we have not. To do that, to decide wisely, you must be in a position to judge those acts of government which have palliated your hardships, which have preserved intact our industrial and financial structure, and which have prepared the way for the reforms which must now take place.

For a change of structures without change of hearts will lead to new forms of oppression; while a change of hearts without change of structures will leave the present crushing form or oppression intact. Attitudinal and structural change are both necessary, because ultimately attitudes and structures are dialectically related.

To reduce opportunities for corruption, you do things like structural changes in the economy.

In the long run, the most important changes required to make globalization work are reforms to reduce the democratic deficit.

This is not a mere change of guards, I think this is a fundamental change in the politics of our government.

If a government is to do great new things, it will need more support. If a government is to change the world, it will need mass support. This is one of the discoveries of modern government.