In my view the game is usually about watching consciousness and militancy tick up, pass reform to neutralize both, repeat. Good, good.
But, is there any reward for refusing to budge to popular demand?
If you are just blindly passing reforms and not carefully considering whether to pass them or not, you are not maximizing your ability to win the game. A Bismarkian approach to social and political reform is the best way to play, not blindly giving away reforms every time it is possible or stonewalling them continuously.
First of all, if you do not start with a Free Press, and you like generating war goals during peace, the last political reform you should pass is any reform that improves press rights. Aside from the CON impact, the ability to generate CBs faster is a godsend to anyone who is racing the conquest-infamy clock.
Furthermore, you can actually screw yourself in terms of further social reform by giving the vote to the poor too early. There are
a lot of conservative farmers out there. If you enfranchise them too early, congratulations! You have ensured that passing other reforms you actually might want is going to be harder. Sure, you as the player may want better healthcare so you can breed even more soldiers to conquer the world, but your conservative farmers and soldiers are going to block it in the Upper House if they have the chance.
Then there's the Work Hours problem. Sure, I love healthcare as much as the next guy, but I'll be damned if I put work hour limits in place until the very end of the game. The economic hit is not worth it. Furthermore, I want POPs high demand for goods AND lots of throughput in factories. Work hours hurts both.
Aside from that, the bureaucrat cost to several reforms makes them worthless early in the game. Who needs safety regulations
when you don't even have enough crats to keep your army going at a reasonable price. In this case, the wages of conservationism is the ability to afford an army.
Another problem is that posed by pensions and unemployment subsidies. The good news with those reforms is that POPs are less likely to either emigrate or immigrate when you have them. That's great for trying to keep people from leaving the country to go to America. It's also terrible for encouraging POPs to migrate in search of work. You want POPs to move to the colonies? They are not as likely to do so if they are comfortable where they are.
Public school reform is often a net loss to any player who knows how to play the clergy-education game really well. Once you have the right techs and clergy in place, even Russia and Austria don't need public school to get literacy up. But your idiot POPs will demand schools anyway, so you are faced with enacting a stupid reform or pissing them off.
Then there's the colony-conservative gambit. If you have 50 million farmers in your colonies, because you conquered 25% of China, then you find that running a conservative party in the lower house is a great way to keep the conquered people happy. You might still pass reforms (which colonies like), but having that conservative party in power is great to shave militancy off the indigenous people.
