(CNN) Now that his brother Fidel is no longer looking over his shoulder, will Cuban President Raul Castro take the chance to move their country in a new direction?

If he wants to steer a new course, there's still time. The younger Castro brother, who's been running the island nation for a decade, has more than a year until he's set to step down.

But so far during his presidency, major shifts for Cuba haven't been in the offing.

"The thing about Raul is he's still very much tied to the past," says William Rowlandson, a senior lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of Kent. "Under his leadership, there have been reforms and progress made on all sorts of fronts, but it's a hesitant game. No massive, great changes have been made."

We don't yet know the answer to a key question: Did Raul Castro inch reforms forward out of respect for his brother, or was the slow pace of change a result of his own beliefs and leadership philosophy?

There are many factors that could impact Raul Castro's rule before the 85-year-old president steps down in 2018. Here are some key areas to watch:

Economic reforms

The shadow of Fidel Castro, who died Friday at age 90 , still looms large over Cuba. But his death may make it easier for free-market reforms to take hold in the communist state, Cuban experts told CNN.

That's because Raul Castro knows that history will judge him and the next generation of Cuban leaders on economic opportunity, said Tomas Bilbao, a policy adviser to Engage Cuba, a coalition of businesses and nonprofit organizations that seek closer relations between the US and the Caribbean island nation.

Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Fidel Castro exhales cigar smoke during a March 1985 interview at his presidential palace in Havana, Cuba. Castro died at age 90 on November 25, 2016, Cuban state media reported. Click through to see more photos from the life of the controversial Cuban leader who ruled for nearly half a century: Hide Caption 1 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies A portrait of Castro in New York in 1955. He was in exile after being released as part of a general amnesty for political prisoners in Cuba. Two years earlier, he and about 150 others staged an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the regime of Fulgencio Batista. Hide Caption 2 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro with Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara during the early days of their guerrilla campaign in Cuba's Sierra Maestra mountains. Guevara, Castro and Castro's brother Raul organized a group of Cuban exiles that returned to Cuba in December 1956 and waged a guerrilla war against government troops. Hide Caption 3 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro and his revolutionaries hold up their rifles in January 1959 after overthrowing Batista. Hide Caption 4 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Crowds cheer Castro on his victorious march into Havana in 1959. Hide Caption 5 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Surrounded by rebels who came with him from the mountains, Castro gives an all-night speech. Hide Caption 6 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro, left, became Cuba's prime minister in February 1959. His brother Raul, right, was commander in chief of the armed forces. Hide Caption 7 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies During a visit to New York in 1959, Fidel Castro spends time with a group of children. Hide Caption 8 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies American talk-show host Ed Sullivan interviews Castro on a taped segment in 1959. Hide Caption 9 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro shakes hands with US Vice President Richard Nixon during a reception in Washington in 1959. Hide Caption 10 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro addresses the UN General Assembly in September 1960. Hide Caption 11 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro jumps from a tank in April 1961 as he arrives at Giron, Cuba, near the Bay of Pigs. That month, a group of about 1,300 Cuban exiles, armed with US weapons, made an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Castro. Hide Caption 12 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro announces general mobilization after the announcement of the Cuban blockade by President John F Kennedy in October 1962. Hide Caption 13 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro raises arms with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev during a four-week visit to Moscow in May 1963. Hide Caption 14 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro in July 1964. Hide Caption 15 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro plays baseball in 1964. Hide Caption 16 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro addresses thousands of Cubans in Havana in 1968. Hide Caption 17 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies In 1977, Castro uses a map as he describes the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion to ABC correspondent Barbara Walters. Hide Caption 18 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Iraq's Saddam Hussein, center, with the Castro brothers during a visit to Cuba in January 1979. Hide Caption 19 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro greets Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Havana in April 1989. Hide Caption 20 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro visits Paris in March 1995. Hide Caption 21 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro meets with Pope John Paul II on an airport tarmac in Havana in January 1998. It was the first papal visit to Cuba. Hide Caption 22 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro puts his arm around South African President Nelson Mandela in May 1998 with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, left, and Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. They were in Geneva, Switzerland, for a conference of the World Trade Organization. Hide Caption 23 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro welcomes Russian President Vladimir Putin to Cuba in December 2000. Putin was the first Russian President to visit Cuba since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Hide Caption 24 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro is helped by aides after he appeared to faint while giving a speech in Cotorro, Cuba, in June 2001. He returned to the podium less than 10 minutes later to assure the audience he was fine and that he just needed to get some sleep. Hide Caption 25 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies In July 2001, Castro talks with Elian Gonzalez, the young boy who was the focus of a bitter international custody dispute a couple of years earlier. Hide Caption 26 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro and former US President Jimmy Carter listen to the US national anthem after Carter arrived in Havana for a visit in May 2002. Hide Caption 27 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro at the May Day commemoration of Revolution Square in Havana in 2004. He held tightly to his belief in a socialist economic model and one-party Communist rule, even after the Soviet Union's end and most of the rest of the world concluded state socialism was an idea whose time had passed. Hide Caption 28 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro, left, and his brother Raul attend a session of the Cuban parliament in July 2004. Hide Caption 29 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro speaks in Havana in February 2006. Hide Caption 30 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro in Havana in September 2002. Several surgeries forced him to relinquish his duties temporarily to younger brother Raul in July 2006. Hide Caption 31 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies In footage from state-owned Cuban television, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez visits an ailing Castro in September 2006. That July, it was announced that Castro was undergoing intestinal surgery. Castro resigned as President in February 2008, and his brother Raul took over permanently. Hide Caption 32 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro smiles before delivering a speech in Havana in September 2010. He had remained mostly out of sight after falling ill in 2006 but returned to the public light that year. Hide Caption 33 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Pope Benedict XVI meets with Castro in Havana in March 2012. Hide Caption 34 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies In this picture provided by CubaDebate, Castro talks to Randy Perdomo, president of Cuba's University Students Federation, during a February meeting in Havana. Hide Caption 35 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro visits with 19 cheese masters on Friday, July 3, 2015, in a rare trip outside his Havana home. Hide Caption 36 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, left, visits with Fidel Castro during a meeting at Castro's home on February 14, 2016. Hide Caption 37 of 37

"They have to deliver," said Bilbao, now a business consultant and former executive director of the Cuba Study Group, a Washington-based organization that promotes human rights and market reforms. "While Fidel Castro's legitimacy rested on the fact that he was the head of the revolution, Raul Castro realizes he must deliver on economic reforms."

Among the notable changes under Raul Castro's rule: a rise in private enterprise due to government policies allowing people to get permission to set up their own businesses, according to Rowlandson.

"That's made a significant impact," Rowlandson said.

But Joel Ross, a Latin America analyst at the risk management firm Verisk Maplecroft, based in the United Kingdom, told CNN it is important to remember Raul Castro has only loosened Cuba's economic model "slightly" so far during his presidency.

His brother's death may encourage him to nudge open the door of reform a bit more than he would have felt comfortable while his brother was alive, Ross said. But how much still remained an unknown, according to Ross.

"It is important to recognize the changes that have been brought about since Raul came to power," Ross said Saturday. "He has allowed some reforms to be enacted that Fidel would never have been OK with.

"Now that Fidel is gone, there may be a boldening, a quickening of the economic reforms ...There may be a louder voice within the Politburo, the group that rules Cuba ... from the side of the reformers, the modernizers to allow more economic progress."

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Grooming a Castro successor

Economic reforms aren't the only thing on Raul Castro's plate. He's also nearing the end of his presidency and paving the way for his successor.

In 2013, he announced that his second five-year term would be his last. That same day, lawmakers elevated Miguel Diaz-Canel to the position of first vice president , putting him in line to succeed Castro.

It was an eye-catching pick: Diaz-Canel, 52 at the time, stood in contrast to many of the octogenarian military officials who held top positions in the government.

And he was born after the Cuban Revolution.

"That makes him very different," Rowlandson said. "It means that the changing leadership is actually a generational change rather than just a change of figure."

He's known for his loyalty to Raul Castro, Rowlandson said, and they've worked together closely in recent years.

Diaz-Canel's profile, while still much lower than the Castros,' got a boost from his appointment. He subsequently led delegations to visit Cuban allies North Korea and Venezuela, and he's met with US visitors to Cuba like President Barack Obama and Sen. Nancy Pelosi.

Even though Diaz-Canel has become a more visible presence at official functions, details about the direction he could take the country remain unknown.

Trained as an electrical engineer, he has a reputation among many Cubans as a plainspoken problem solver.

His unflashy style apparently served him well. Other high-ranking officials from Diaz-Canel's generation who were seen as overly ambitious lost their positions in government purges.

There's another thing that's notably different about Diaz-Canel, a former minister of higher education: He's not a member of the military.

"That means that he might seek to find a softer approach to some of the more militarized aspects of the political system," Rowlandson said.

One big question is how Diaz-Canel will respond to forces of change bubbling up in Cuba, such as the influence of technology on communication.

"Will he ride that change or will he resist it?" Rowlandson said. "What will be the aspects that he will be keen to develop, and what will be the aspects he will be keen to resist?"

As Diaz-Canel waits in the wings, Bilbao says it's likely Castro will consolidate the power of his supporters in the government to ensure a smooth transition to his successor and cement any reforms made before 2018.

It is unclear how many of Castro's titles Diaz-Canel would inherit. In addition to being President, Castro is head of the military and the Communist Party chief, roles that some Cuba watchers say is where the real power lies on the island.

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Relations with the United States

When it comes to Cuba's future, the next American president may play as much of a role as Raul Castro or any reformers on the island.

While President Obama has made steps toward normalizing diplomatic relations with Cuba and reopened the US embassy in Havana, President-elect Donald Trump has sent mixed signals about how he will approach the Castro regime.

Our flag flies over our Embassy in Havana once again. More Americans are traveling to Cuba than at any time in the last 50 years. — President Obama (@POTUS) February 18, 2016

"Probably the most significant development related to US-Cuban relations is the election of Donald Trump as the next president," Eric L. Olson, associate director of the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC., wrote in a recent CNN opinion article.

"Trump will need to decide whether he continues down the path of greater engagement that has already begun to change Cuba, or seeks a radical reversal of course to re-establish a policy that had failed for more than 50 years to bring an end to the Castro regime," according to Olson.

In an October interview with a local CBS station in Miami, Trump blasted the Obama administration's effort to normalize relations with Cuba as a "very weak agreement," though Trump noted some sort of deal is "fine."

Trump also told CBS4 interviewer Jim DeFede that he would do "whatever you have to do to get a strong agreement," even if it resulted in breaking off recently-resumed diplomatic relations.

In September 2015, Trump said he supported President Obama's decision to diplomatically re-engage with Cuba after more than 50 years of Cold War tensions.

"50 years is enough," Trump said in an interview with the Daily Caller.

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Human rights

Now that Fidel Castro has died, will the Cuban government soften its stance on dissent?

Political oppression under Fidel Castro's rule undermined his achievements, such as improved access to health and education, according to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch , which issued two reports following Castro's death on human rights in Cuba.

Activists often faced harassment and arrest for speaking out against the Castro government, the groups said.

And so far, human rights groups say, many of the same policies have remained in place with Raul Castro in power.

The Cuban government has continued to carry out several practices that emerged under Fidel Castro's rule, including surveillance, public repudiation, beatings and arbitrary detention, according to Human Rights Watch. That approach created a "pervasive climate of fear."

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When Obama announced plans to normalize diplomatic relations with Cuba in 2014, Raul Castro's government granted conditional release to the 53 political prisoners that it had been holding for between two months and two years, Human Rights Watch said

"Nevertheless, the Orwellian laws that allowed their imprisonment -- and the imprisonment of thousands before them -- remain on the books, and the Cuban government continues to repress individuals and groups who criticize the government or call for basic human rights," the group said.

"Arbitrary arrests and short-term detention routinely prevent human rights defenders, independent journalists, and others from gathering or moving freely. Detention is often used pre-emptively to prevent people from participating in peaceful marches or political meetings."