Cuba has moved from a lengthy first stage (1990–2008), in which reforms were considered a necessary but reversible evil, to another in which reforms are seen as necessary and desirable. However, the lack of a comprehensive and timely approach to those processes has severely hampered the outcomes of reforms already underway. The purpose of preserving political control and the inherited institutional framework explains, in turn, why authorities have tried to maintain a logic of rationed economic reforms at the cost of harming their effectiveness.