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The Institutional Foundations of Democratic Cooperation in Costa Rica*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Fabrice Edouard Lehoucq
Fabrice Edouard Lehoucq
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Government and Public Affairs, Christopher Newport University, Newport News, Virginia
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Abstract

Costa Rica's long-term standing as one of the few countries in Latin America with a stable democracy has prompted many to view its polity as an inevitable outcome of a racially homogeneous and relatively egalitarian society. Without ignoring the importance of sociological factors, this article contends that institutional arrangements played an equally important – if not more central – role in the development of a stable democratic regime in this country. The structure of Costa Rican presidentialism encouraged incumbents to maintain control of the state while it, as a consequence, incited the opposition to rebel against central state authorities. Political competition became more peaceful as parties that failed to hold or to capture the presidency were nevertheless compensated by being allowed to occupy legislative seats.

Type
Central America: New Assessments
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , May 1996 , pp. 329 - 355
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 Busey, James L., ‘The Presidents of Costa Rica’, The Americas, vol. 18, no. 1 (1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 I am echoing the claims made by Arturo Valenzuela and John Peeler that the choices made by politicians shaped the democratic trajectories of countries like Chile and Costa Rica. I build upon this observation by showing how the behaviour of politicians was decisively influenced by the incentives generated by prevailing institutional arrangements. See Peeler, John A., Latin American Democracies: Colombia, Costa Rica and Venezuela (Chapel Hill, 1984)Google Scholar and especially Valenzuela, Arturo and Valenzuela, J. Samuel, ‘Los orígenes de la democracia: reflexiones teóricas sobre el caso de Chile’, Estudios Públicos (Santiago de Chile), No. 13 (spring 1983)Google Scholar. Works within the genre of the new institutionalisim include: Bates, Robert H., Beyond the Miracle of the Market: The Political Economy of Agrarian Development in Kenya (Cambridge, 1989)Google Scholar; Cox, Gary W., The Efficient Secret: The Cabinet and the Development of Political Parties in Victorian England (Cambridge, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Stewart, Charles III, Budget Reform Politics: The Design of the Appropriations Process in the House of Representatives (Cambridge, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The most recent theoretical discussions of the new institutionalism are Knight, Jack, Institutions and Social Conflict (Cambridge, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Tsebelis, George, Nested Games: Rational Choice in Comparative Politics (Berkeley, 1990)Google Scholar.

3 Though, I must add, I do not examine how electoral laws and party systems generate dividied governments. Here, I focus upon the consequences of an omnipotent presidency on democratic stability. The most thorough discussion of the prior set of issues are: Jones, Mark P., Electoral Laws and the Survival of Presidential Democracies (Notre Dame, 1995)Google Scholar; Linz, Juan and Valenzuela, Arturo (eds.), The Failure of Presidential Democracy (Baltimore, 1994)Google Scholar and Shugart, Matthew Soberg and Carey, John M., Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics (Cambridge, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Perhaps the most influential version of this thesis remains that of Alfaro, Carlos Monge, Historia de Costa Rica (San José, 1966)Google Scholar. Other notable examples include: Oscar Aguilar Bulgarelli, Ensayos de la historia patria (San José, 1984)Google Scholar; Avendaño, José Albertazzi, ‘Unos apuntes simples sobre la democracia costarricense’, Don José Albertazzi y la democracia costarricense (San José, 1987 [originally published in 1940])Google Scholar; Vega, Eugenio Rodríguez, Apuntes para una sociología costarricense (San José, 1979 [originally published in 1953])Google Scholar; Trejos, José Francisco, Origen y desarrollo de la democracia en Costa Rica (San José, 1939)Google Scholar. Useful surveys include Zelaya, Chester J., ‘Democracia con justicia social y libertad’, in Zelaya, Chester J. (ed.), ¿Democracia en Costa Rica? cinco opiniones polémicas (San José, 1983)Google Scholar as well asEdelman, Marc and Kenen, Joanne, ‘La culture politique du Costa Rica’, Les Temps Modernes, No. 517–518 (08/09 1989)Google Scholar. The principal English-language proponents of this explanation are Busey, James L., Notes on Costa Rican Democracy (Boulder, 1962)Google Scholar; Ameringer, Charles D., Democracy in Costa Rica (New York, 1982)Google Scholar; Booth, John A., ‘Costa Rica: The Roots of Democratic Stability’, in Diamond, Larry, Linz, Juan J. and Lipset, Seymour Martin (eds.), Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America (Boulder, 1989)Google Scholar; Stone, Samuel Z., The Heritage of the Conquistadors (Lincoln, 1991)Google Scholar.

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10 See Bourgois, Philippe I., Ethnicity at Work: Divided Labor on a Central American Banana Plantation (Baltimore, 1989)Google Scholar; Aviva Chomsky, ‘A Perfect Slavery:’ West Indian Workers and the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica, 1870–1950 (Baton Rouge, forthcoming) and Purcell, Trevor, Banana Fallout: Class, Color, and Culture among the West Indians in Costa Rica (Berkeley, 1993)Google Scholar. On the relation betweem ethnicity and political instability, see: Horowitz, Donald L., Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley, 1985)Google Scholar.

11 Gardner, John W., ‘The Costa Rican Junta of 1948–49’, unpubl. Ph.D. diss., St John's University, 1971, pp. 54–5Google Scholar. Data on presidential succession during this period are from Lehoucq, Fabrice Edouard, ‘The Origins of Democracy in Costa Rica in Comparative Perspective’, unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1992, pp. 63–70Google Scholar. Data on the period prior to 1882 are from Busey, ‘The Presidents of Costa Rica’.

12 Arturo Valenzuela and J. Samuel Valenzuela, ‘Los orígenes de la democracia’.

13 Waisman, Carlos H., Reversal of Development in Argentina: Postwar Counterrevolutionary Policies and their Structural Consequences (Princeton, 1987), pp. 94–126Google Scholar.

14 See Hechter, Michael, Principles of Group Solidarity (Berkeley, 1987), esp. pp. 3–6Google Scholar and Przeworski, Adam, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 19–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Muller, Edward N. and Seligson, Mitchell A., ‘Civic Culture and Democracy: The Question of Causal Relationships’, American Political Science Review, vol. 88, no. 3 (09 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 See especially Tsebelis, Nested Games and Geddes, Barbara, ‘Uses and Limitations of Rational Choice’, in Smith, Peter H. (ed.), Latin America in Comparative Perspective: New Approaches to Methods and Analysis (Boulder, 1995)Google Scholar. Two other analysts, whose work has influenced my own, use a similar set of assumptions to answer somewhat different questions. They are Ames, Barry, Political Survival: Politicians and Public Policy in Latin America (Berkeley, 1987)Google Scholar and Geddes, Barbara, Politician's Dilemma: Building State Capacity in Latin America (Berkeley, 1994)Google Scholar.

17 I refer to the unreformed version of the 1871 constitution unless I state otherwise. I rely upon the version of the 1871 constitution contained in Zeledón, Marco Tulio, Digesto constitucional de Costa Rica (San José, 1946), pp. 207–24Google Scholar. It also is reprinted in Peralta, Hernán G., Las constituciones de Costa Rica (Madrid, 1962)Google Scholar. The 1949 constitution is discussed below.

18 In lieu of popularly elected vice-presidents, legislative deputies selected three presidential designates during the first session of the new Congress. An amendment to the constitution in 1926 established double-ballot elections for the presidency: should no candidate receive an absolute majority of the popular vote, the old Congress on 1 March was to have convened a run-off election among the two candidates who attracted the most votes. In 1936, another constitutional reform decreed that a candidate needed to attract the largest plurality and only 40 per cent of the popular vote to have been declared president. In the event that no candidate should satisfy these requirements, a run-off election, announced by the old Congress on 1 March, would have been held among the two leading candidates during the first Sunday of the following April.

The 1949 Constitution abolished the system of congressionally elected presidential designates and created the office of the vice-presidency. Since 1953, two vice-presidents have been elected along with the president at four-year intervals. In 1969, legislators enacted a constitutional amendment prohibiting an individual from ever being president for more than one four-year term. The only individuals exempted from this ban on re-election were those who had exercised the powers of the presidency before the 1949 constitution was amended to this effect.

19 Legislative deputies have been elected from one of seven districts whose boundaries correspond to those of Costa Rica's seven provinces. Between 1882 and 1893, individuals who attracted the largest pluralities of votes in each district became Congressmen. Provinces that sent two or fewer representatives to Congress required candidates to gain absolute majorities between 1893 and 1913. Districts that elected three or more Congressmen allocated seats through proportional representation during this period. Between 1913 and 1946, provinces that sent two or fewer representatives to Congress required candidates to attract relative majorities of the vote. In those that sent three or more deputies to the legislature, a system of proportional representation was employed to distribute congressional seats. Since 1946, all deputies have been elected through the least remainders version of proportional representation in seven provincial electoral districts.

Until 1948, congressional elections were held every two years for half of its members, each of whom served a four-year term in office. A constitutional prohibition against re-election for legislators only came into effect with the promulgation of the 1949 constitution. Since 1949, all members of the newly named Legislative Assembly have been elected to four-year-terms that they serve co-terminously with that of the president. Legislative deputies may run for re-election, but are constitutionally required to wait for a period of four years before running for office.

Electoral laws and their reforms were initially printed in the daily government newspaper, La Gaceta: Diario Oficial, and subsequently published in La Colección de Leyes y Decretos (San José, 1882-). Versions of electoral laws were also published as booklets; they will be cited below. For a juridical analysis of the current law, see Valle, Rubén Hernández, Derecho electoral costarricense (San José, 1989)Google Scholar.

20 Mora, Orlando Salazar, Elapogeo de la república liberal en Costa Rica (1870–1914) (San José, 1990), pp. 211–22Google Scholar.

21 Quesada, Octavio, Sumaria por sedición: noviembre, diciembre de 1906 (San José, 1906)Google Scholar.

22 Lehoucq, ‘The Origins of Democracy in Costa Rica in Comparative Perspective’, pp. 88–92. Unless otherwise stated, data on the partisan affiliation of deputies are from Table 1.

23 Mora, Orlando Salazar, ‘La Comisión Permanente y la suspensión del orden constitucional’, Revista de Ciencias jurídicas (San José, Costa Rica), No. 44 (05–08 1981), pp. 45–7Google Scholar.

24 A constitutional reform in 1913 eliminated indirect elections for all public officials. The 1949 National Constituent Assembly made the franchise universal to include all male and female Costa Ricans above the age of twenty. A constitutional amendment in 1971 lowered the voting age to eighteen.

25 The electoral law then in effect was enacted in the early 1890s. See: ‘Ley de elecciones (11 Nov. 1893)’, Decretos relativos a elecciones: instrucciones para practicar las de segundo grado, conforms al sistema de voto proporcional numérico y división territorial electoral (San José, 1893). Discussions of its legal provisions include: Pacheco, Nelson Chacón, Reseña de nuestras leyes electorates (San José, 1975)Google Scholar and Mora, Orlando Salazar, ‘El sistemas electoral costarricense: un análisis del período 1889–1919’, Avances de Investigación, No. 20, Centro de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad de Costa Rica (San José, 1986)Google Scholar.

26 They were ‘Ley No. 28 (1 Dec. 1908)’, ‘Ley No. 30 (22 May 1909)’, ‘Ley No. 73 (26 June 1909)’. All reforms of the 1893 Law of Elections in effect for the 1910 general elections are included in Compilación sobre Leyes de Elecciones (June 1909) (San José, 1909).

27 ‘Proyecto (June 1910)’, La Gaceta, No. 137 (8 July 1910), p. 28.

28 Mora, Orlando Salazar, Máximo Fernández (San José, 1975)Google Scholar. Unless otherwise stated, data on the partisan affiliation of deputies are from Table 1.

29 Constitutional Congress, Ordinary Session No. 22 (4 June 1912), article 5, La Gaceta, No. 131 (13 06 1912), p. 713Google Scholar.

30 Constitutional Congress, Ordinary Sessions No. 11 (15 May 1913), article 6, La Gaceta, No. 114 (21 May 1913), p. 605. These reforms were published as ‘Decreto no. 7 (17 May 1913)’, La Gaceta, No. 128 (7 June 1913), pp. 673–4.

31 ‘Dictamen de la Comisión de Legíslación (20 June 1913)’, La Gaceta, No. 146 (28 June 9I3). pp 773–4.

32 ‘Ley de elecciones (7 August 1913)’, Colección de Leyes y Decretos (San José, 1913).

33 Victoria, Ramírez A., Jorge Volio y la revolución viviente (San José, 1989), pp. 112–46Google Scholar; Marina, Volio K., Jorge Volio y el Partido Reformista (San José, 1973), pp. 174–230Google Scholar. The latter is a daughter of the late Jorge Volio Jiménez, who was the leader of the Reformist Party.

34 ‘Proyecto (16 June 1924)’, La Gaceta, No. 142 (29 June 1924).

35 ‘Importante carta del Presidente de la República acerca de la reforma de la Ley Electoral’, Diario de Costa Rica, No. 1592 (29 Oct. 1924), p. 1.

36 ‘El partido agrícola se abstiene de ocuparse en las próximas elecciones de diputados’, La Tribuna (3 Feb. 1925), p. 1.

37 ‘Se aprobó el dictamen sobre les objeciones del Ejecutivo a la Ley Electoral’, Diario de Costa Rica, No. 1804 (16 July 1925), p. 6. Ley de Elecciones (16 July 1925) (San José,1926). This version contains all subsequent reforms made of the 1925 law. For a description of this law, see Mora, Orlando Salazar, ‘La Ley electoral de 1925’, Avances de Investigación, No. 21, Centro de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad de Costa Rica (San José, 1986)Google Scholar. An analysis of one of its key provisions is Antillón, Rafael Villegas, ‘El Registro Civil y el proceso electoral en Costa Rica’, Estudios CIAP A (San José, Costa Rica), No. 2–3 (1980)Google Scholar. For the 1927 law, see:Beeche, Héctor (ed.), Ley de elecciones (26 09 1927), (San José, 1931)Google Scholar.

38 Lehoucq, ‘The Origins of Democracy in Costa Rica in Comparative Perspective’, pp. 181, 318–19.

39 Ibid. pp. 187–94.

40 A debate exists regarding the origins of the 1948 civil war. Bolaños, Manuel Rojas, Lucha social y guerra civil en Costa Rica, 1940–1948 (San José, 1979)Google Scholar and Schifter, Jacobo, La fase oculta de la guerra civil (San José, 1979)Google Scholar argue that it was the product of class conflict and economic crises. Lehoucq suggests that the 1948 civil war was the outcome of a series of disputes between parties vying for control of the state (see his ‘Class Conflict, Political Crisis and the Breakdown of Democratic Practices in Costa Rica: Reassessing the Origins of the 1948 Civil War’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 23, no. 1 [Feb. 1991]). Whether the polarisation preceding the civil war was economic or political in inspiration does not matter for the discussion presented here. That it occurred and revolved around electoral guarantees for the opposition, however, is relevant.

41 This is the core conclusion of Lehoucq, , ‘Institutional Change and Political Conflict: Evaluating Alternative Explanations of Electoral Reform in Costa Rica’, Electoral Studies, vol. 14, no. 1 (03 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. With Iván Molina Jiménez, I am currently writing a manuscript, thanks to the generous support of the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities, tentatively entitled, Fraud, Electoral Reform and Democracy. Costa Rica in Comparative Perspective, which will explore in much more detail the issues analysed in this section.

42 See Bulgarelli, Oscar Aguilar, La constitución de 1949: antecedentes y proyecciones (San José, 1973)Google Scholar; Jiménez, Mario Alberto, Historia constitucional de Costa Rica (San José, 1979), pp. 154–69Google Scholar. A discussion of each of the assembly debates is: Póveda, Rubén Hernández, Desde la barra: como se discutióo y emitió la Constitución Politico de 1949 (San José, 1991 [originally published in 1953])Google Scholar. Hernández Póveda covered Assembly sessions as a reporter for the evening newspaper, La prensa libre.

43 Gardner, ‘The Costa Rican Junta of 1948–9’, pp. 168–210.

44 See Castro, Wilburg Jiménez, Génesis del gobierno de Costa Rica, 1821–1981, vol. 1 (San José, 1986)Google Scholar; de Murillo, Rose Marie Karpinski et al. , Reflexiones sobre el Poder Legislativo costarricense (San José, 1989)Google Scholar; Quesada, Hugo Alfonso Muñoz, La Asamblea Legislativa en Costa Rica (San José, 1977)Google Scholar and Rojas, Magda Inés, El Poder Ejecutivo en Costa Rica (San José, 1980)Google Scholar.

45 This pivotal institution has remained little studied. Existing essays are: Murillo, Mauro, ‘El Tribunal Supremo de Elecciones’, in Gutiérrez, Carlos José (ed.), Derecho constitucional costarricense (San José, 1983)Google Scholar and Antillón, Rafael Villegas, ‘El Tribunal Supremo de Elecciones y el Registro Civil de Costa Rica’, Cuadernos de CAPEL, No. 18 (San José, 1987)Google Scholar.

46 Fine studies of these problems are Loveman, Brian, The Constitution of Tyranny: Regimes of Exception in Spanish America (Pittsburgh, 1994)Google Scholar and Valadés, Diego, La dictadura constitucional en América Latina (México, D.F., 1974)Google Scholar.

47 Potter, Ann Louise, ‘The Failure of Democracy in Argentina, 1916–1930: An Institutional Perspective’, journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 13, no. 1 (1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Botana, Natalio R., El orden conservador: la político argentina entre 1880–1916 (Buenos Aires, 1979)Google Scholar. Also, see Molinelli, N. Guillermo, Presidentes y congresos en Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1991)Google Scholar.

48 González, Julio Heise, El período parlamentario, 1861–1925: democracia y gobierno representativo en el período parlamentario (Santiago, 1982)Google Scholar and Valenzuela, J. Samuel, Democratización via reforma: la expansión del sufragio en Chile (Buenos Aires, 1985)Google Scholar.

49 Franco, Rolando, Democracia ‘a la uruguaya’: análisis electoral, 1925–1985 (Montevideo, 1984)Google Scholar; Espiell, Héctor Gros, La Corte Electoral del Uruguay (San José, 1990)Google Scholar; Taylor, Philip, Government and Politics of Uruguay (New Orleans, 1960)Google Scholar.

50 An analysis of the impact of these cleavages on Chilean politics is Scully, Timothy R., Rethinking the Center: Party Politics in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Chile (Stanford, 1992)Google Scholar. An analysis of Chilean presidentialism is Arturo Valenzuela, ‘Political Parties and the Failure of Presidentialism in Chile: A Proposal for a Parliamentary Form of Government’, in Juan J. Linz and Arturo Valenzuela (eds.), The Failure of Presidential Democracy.

51 The most prominent sociological study is: Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy. Also, see Collier, Ruth Berins and Collier, David, Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement and Regime Dynamics in Latin America (Princeton, 1991)Google Scholar.