This paper contributes to literature on the process of reform in Latin America. We study
political economy aspects and the policy making process of reforms in what we identify as the
five critical steps through the ‚life cycle? of a policy reform: the Planning, Dialogue, Adoption,
Implementation, and Sustainability stages. This paper illustrates that the most important actors
involved and the major bottlenecks vary at different stages of the reform process. Explanations
for successful or failed reform experiments must therefore adequately account for this temporal
dimension of reforms. Similarly, policy makers may increase the chances of success of their
reform platforms by paying due attention to this stylised pattern of actors and bottlenecks. We
also consider in some detail the actors who interact during the reform cycle, and review their
changing strength and capacity in recent decades in Latin America.