Democratic Development in Costa Rica

摘要

This article considers structural, process, and cultural theories of democratization to explore how Costa Rica's transition to and survival as a democracy might be deviant. A review of Costa Rican political-economic history from colonization in the early 16th to the mid-20th century describes the development of the post-independence oligarchy of the coffee-grower elite, emerging challenges from new middle and working class forces from 1889 to 1948, and the 1948 civil war and birth of the contemporary liberal democratic regime. Evidence indicates Costa Rican democratization conformed to structural theories based on economic development and widening distribution of power resources and thus was not deviant in that regard. Scant evidence prevents the effective evaluation of political cultural explanations for Costa Rican democratization. The article argues Costa Rican democracy may be most convincingly classified as deviant in two ways: (1) it emerged early for Latin America, a region of predominantly authoritarian regimes; (2) it survived the 1950s and 1960s when US anticommunist containment efforts undermined other regional democracies.