Search

The article explores the socio-economic conditions of indigenous peoples (IPs) in Costa Rica as of January 2014. Topics include the government's efforts to promote a model of Integral Development Associations, consolidation of indigenous youth movements, and IP's development plan. Also discussed are the conflicts over use of indigenous forests and omission and inaction as a state policy.

Judicial autonomy from societal actors is argued herein to be a critical aspect of the rule of law and to have been overlooked by the dominance within comparative judicial politics of the role of interbranch judicial independence. These distinct concepts are parsed and then interrelated to form a typology of four “judicial regime types”: liberal regimes, partisan control regimes, clandestine control regimes, and government control regimes. These regime types are then traced in five Central American countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The process of ratifying CAFTA in Costa Rica required traversing a contentious political landscape involving intense legislative battles, massive public demonstrations, and finally a national referendum in October 2007. By employing the mechanism of direct democracy to ratify a free trade agreement, Costa Rica made history. But how did this experiment with direct participation affect Costa Rica's democracy? This article evaluates what the referendum achieved in terms of promoting citizen engagement, equipping voters to make informed choices, resolving the CAFTA conflict in a way viewed as legitimate, and shaping citizens' relationships to representative institutions. While the referendum had positive effects, it had several negative consequences for representative democracy, which raises questions about the limits of democratic control over economic policy in the era of globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outcome of the electoral process of 2010 confirms a trend of domination of political and economic sectors have been promoting the neoclassical reform in the country. Factors relevant to these results are: a. The good economic situation that could have the Arias government; b. The network of clientelist relationships between public officials and politicians; c. The inability of opposition parties to unite to support a proposal; d. Disparity in economic resources available to political parties; e. Poor leadership base of opposition parties; f. Attrition factors PAC by TLC; g. The role of the media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of the monitoring the political conjuncture that led to the election of the first woman president of the Costa Rican republic. Starting from an analytical recuperation of the main events that establish the total set of the 2010 electoral process, the aim is to integrally order an interactive sequence of actors and phenomenon that would allow understanding from a sociopolitical perspective of lattice, scenarios, the actors and librettos that in the political electoral drama we recently experienced, and nowadays live in its consequences the restricted Costa Rican democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses key aspects of the debate on political parties and power networks, focusing empirically analyze the presence of such actors within political parties Liberación Nacional y Partido Unidad Social Cristiana and their presence on the formation of cabinets in the Costa Rican government. Highlights CINDE alliance partners, CEFSA and the Central American Academy, who control the state institutions linked to the export sector from 1986 to 2010. It discusses the limits of procedural democracy to allow such corporate trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Costa Rican electoral contest of 2010 does not alter political party system in a radical way. Instead, two main features still characterize the current post-bipartisan era. First, the plural composition of the Congress and local governments as a result of the high fragmentation that prevails in the party system. Second, in spite of the fact that electoral preferences' (volatility) decreased slightly in 2010, inter-election voting swings remain high. Finally, sixty years after the country adopted universal suffrage a woman selected president. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I analyze the connections that occurred between the electoral offer of candidate Laura Chinchilla and the new demographic, social and sexual realities of Costa Rica, which help to understand why mainly women and older people voted for her. In addition, I explain the new challenges the Costa Rican society faces in terms of a necessary new social and sexual contract, and the prospect of its approach, or not, by the Government of the first woman President. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the first turns experienced by the electoral campaign 2009-2010 is the politicized of the issue of insecurity, a provision not seen before in the political culture in Costa Rica. The Libertarian Movement (ML) carried the baton of populist-punitive discourse in terms of (in)security. This resource, insecurity, used by the ML, became the subject into the main theme of the political campaign. Therefore, the main focus of this article is to analyze the relationship between the use of the "hard-hand" discourse, as a political resource to obtain votes in counties that have very high rates of crime, and the reducing of voter apathy in those areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the implementation of the gender quota system in Costa Rica as an affirmative action mechanism for women. It also analyses the evolution of the quota legislation in the country, which culminated with the passing of a new Electoral Code that established gender parity. The article also discusses the effectiveness of each type of legislation to increase the descriptive representation of women, as well as the impact of the quota system on the advancement of a feminist agenda of gender equality and justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the year 2000, one part of the environmental movement of Costa Rica joined forces with labor unions, community groups and other social sectors in a national struggle against el Combo, a proposal of reform affecting the public electric sector. The environmentalist's contribution to this movement can be understood as double critique of the intended reform: an ecological critique and a distributive critique. The struggle against el Combo also illustrates the scope and limits of such socialenvironmental alliances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following a worrying period of decreasing citizen participation in politics, social instability, and an unpopular government, Costa Rican democracy has recovered its vitality. The catalyst for this transformation has been the debate around CAFTA. Both sides have shown a willingness to respect democratic rules and institutions, as policymaking has ceased to be the purview of political elites and political leaders have had to contend with a broad network of citizen activists demanding transparency and accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses how La Nación and Diario Extra characterized political actors who participated in collective actions against and in favor of Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). The article shows how in the moment in which the NO movement had an important growth, when the Tribunal Supremo de Elecciones (TSE) officially announced the referendum, Diario Extra and La Nación published few collective actions related to CAFTA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Comités Patrióticos emerged in the context of the historic referendum on the Free Trade agreement with the United States. This paper offers an analysis of this movement based on a year of ethnographic research. I focus on questions of spatiotemporality and political scale, in order to illuminate how this movement has attempted, during and after the referendum, to articulate a new political structure capable of acting at once on local and national scales in order to challenge the neoliberal project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the evolution of public opinion, during the Referendum campaign over CAFTA. The data is based on telephone national surveys and includes the level of information, possible effects on the person interviewed, on the country, on its welfare State and on poor and vulnerable groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the referendum on the free Trade Agreement with the United States, Central America and the Dominican Republic (CAFTA), which took place in Costa Rica during 2007. The premise of the author is that, due to its great political significance and its socio-political complexity, the referendum must be analyzed from various approaches, including political communication. From that perspective, the author points out several elements: first, the media structures in which the communication campaigns, in favor and against, were developed. This includes television, radio, newspapers and Internet. Second, the referendum's rules of the game, including the issues of funding, the media agenda setting, the role of the executive and, finally, the strategy and content of the campaigns developed by the groups in favor (yes) and against (No) CAFTA. Internet deserves special mention as a new arena of contention communications in Costa Rica. Throughout the article, the author showed evidence of the inequality in the rules of the game, economic resources and media agendas, including the use of fear as political resource, which clearly favored groups that supported CAFTA, but that substantially limited the democratic content of the referendum. The article concludes pointing out lessons and aspects that should be modified in order to democratize referendum in Costa Rica. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I explore the democratic potential of direct democracy, on the basis of a case study of the referendum on CAFTA that took place in Costa Rica on October 7, 2007. Theoretically, I aspire to show how developments in the field of participatory democracy can enrich the analysis of democratic regimes. Empirically, I describe the institutional design and political practices in this first experience. I conclude that the referendum entailed reversals in terms of electoral fairness and legitimacy, as well as progress in the construction of citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated by two scandals of corruption (CCSS-Fischel and ICE-Alcatel), this article studies some theoretical approaches that may contribute to our understanding of corruption in the contracts between the State and private sector. First, some conceptual precisions are made. then, socioinstitutional conditions that facilitates corruption are analyzed. Finally, there are some reflections about the political implications of corruption, and some suggestions of measures in order to reduce our social vulnerability to this phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the legislative participation in the construction of intellectual property rights, specifically those referring to the property of improved plant varieties, which are a requisite for the Central America Free trade Agreement (CAFTA). Research findings show that social differentiation is expressed as inequity in the search of spaces for legislative discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explains the context and the particularities of the closing of Costa Rica's railway system. In fact, it came to an end during José María Figueres' government in 1995. In addition to this, it analyzes why closing it down represented a political and a labor union defeat of the Popular Movement, especially for organized railway workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the first half of Costa Rica President Oscar Arias Sánchez's term of office. Multiple initiatives for regional peace; Willingness to implement real austerity and export-oriented economic policies in line with the doctrine of the administration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan; Arias' positioning of himself as a major force in any regional agreement throughout the Iran-contra affair; Re-emergence of rightist pressure.

The article discusses a study by Venture Capital Markets Association co-founder Tony Simon which addresses junior resource firms with negative working capital (zombie companies), and it mentions the problems that are associated with the Infinito Gold Ltd. Canadian mining firm's operations in Costa Rica. It states that Infinito Gold Ltd., which is included in Simon's list of zombie companies, has no functioning mines from which to draw capital due to Costa Rica's eco-friendly policies.