Reformists always face an uphill battle with those entrenched in the status quo

Chinese history is not short of famous reformers who failed, the most prominent being the Song dynasty's Wang Anshi, who wanted to strengthen governance and finances through major tax, land and market reforms, but failed when he lost political support. Qing dynasty reformer Kang Youwei was also not successful because he was too loyal to the dynastic system and did not have sufficient experience in the bureaucracy to push through necessary change.

The problem was well articulated by the Italian Renaissance political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli, who considered that nothing was 'more difficult to handle, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than to put oneself at the head of introducing new orders'. The reformer will make enemies of those who benefit from the old order, yet can count on only the lukewarm defence of those who might benefit from the change, because men 'do not truly believe in new things unless they come to have a firm experience of them'.

This problem is particularly urgent in today's context, where the exponential risks of such global issues as rapidly changing population, climate change, unemployment, water and energy constraints, terrorism and corruption outstrip the pace of change in mindsets and institutional effectiveness.

Reforming systems is very tough: witness how efforts to regulate the financial sector were met with dogged resistance and lobbying by those institutions.

Writing about the US fiscal crisis, Financial Times columnist Clive Crook drew on an analysis by psychology professor Jonathan Haidt of the different psychological make-up of liberals and conservatives.

Haidt's main research interest is on the moral foundations of politics. He defines moral systems as 'interlocking sets of values, practices, institutions and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible'. Of course, no one admits that they are selfish, but the whole foundation of unfettered capitalism is individual greed adding up to public good. We now know that, in reality, it doesn't always add up.

Haidt says liberals argue for change because they tend to be concerned with fairness and reciprocity, and questions of harm and care. Conservatives have these concerns as well, but they are also driven by intuitions about loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity.