Perversity, Futility and Jeopardy – the watchwords of delay.

• According to the perversity thesis, any purposive action to improve some feature of the political, social, or economic order only serves to exacerbate the condition one wishes to remedy (compare: Unintended consequences).
• The futility thesis holds that attempts at social transformation will be unavailing, that they will simply fail to “make a dent.”
• Finally, the jeopardy thesis argues that the cost of the proposed change or reform is too high as it endangers some previous, precious accomplishment.

From the wikipedia page for “The rhetoric of reaction”, a book by Albert O. Hirschman.