The wave of structural reforms in Latin America and elsewhere has stimulated the development of a wide body of theoretical literature on the political economy of reform, i.e., the study of the political constraints that condition the timing, speed and sequencing of reforms. This paper tests some of the hypotheses associated with these theoretical models, using a set of structural reform indicators for approximately twenty Latin American countries for the period 1985-1995. Although there is strong support for some hypotheses, recent reforms in Latin America cannot be adequately explained without either better theories or better data.
