In the same period, the reformism of the sixties became, in some quarters, a stern, absolutist enterprise.

NEWYORKER: The English Wars

Not only is policymaking absent and reformism on the defensive but the global slump is hitting Japanese industry particularly hard, and foreign workers foremost.

ECONOMIST: Japanese immigration

Thein Sein, the former general who donned civvies to become president, met her in August, and persuaded her of the sincerity of his reformism.

ECONOMIST: Banyan

His ideas, notably for tackling Sunni angst over the erosion of traditional religious authority and his attempt to counter millennial strands of Islamism with a conservative reformism, may have lost a resounding voice if he is now kept off IslamOnline.

ECONOMIST: Islam on the web