The Final Frontiers of Healthcare Universalisation in Costa Rica and Panama

This article explains how Costa Rica and Panama, two Central American countries with nearly universal public healthcare programmes, have come to enjoy such broad coverage. It then describes the distinct paths each is taking towards reaching the populations still left out of healthcare coverage. Costa Rica is seeking to bring all residents under the umbrella of its ILO‐style social security plan. Panama is targeting the rural poor with a package of defined interventions aimed at maternal and child mortality. The article frames these cases within the literature on the varieties of universalism.     

Information and Values in Popular Protests: Costa Rica in 2000

The mass demonstrations in Costa Rica in 2000 opposing a government initiative to deregulate the electricity and telecommunications markets point to the importance of the paths of communication between the people and government leaders to understand mass political mobilisation. This article explains the surprising reaction of the Costa Rican public by focusing on the unwillingness or inability of the policy-makers to articulate their position in a way acceptable to the citizenry, leaving public space under the dominant influence of social organisations that opposed the initiative.     

The CAFTA Conflict and Costa Rica's Democracy: Assessing the 2007 Referendum

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.     

Filling In the Missing Link Between Universalism and Democracy: The Case of Costa Rica

This article explores a missing link in the recent literature on the formation of social policies: that between democracy and universalism, one desirable yet elusive feature of these policies. We base our argument on a case study of Costa Rica, the most successful case of universalism in Latin America. We proceed by first depicting Costa Rica's peculiar policy architecture, based on the incremental expansion of benefits funded on payroll taxes. Then we reconstruct the policy process to stress the key role played by technopoliticians in a democratic context. Backed by political leadership and equipped with international ideas, technopoliticians drove social policy design from agenda setting to adoption and implementation. Third, we argue that key aspects of the policy architecture established in the early 1940s were fundamental building blocks for a distinctive and seldom explored road to universalism. We conclude considering contemporary implications.     

Contested Discourses on National Identity: Representing Nicaraguan Immigration to Costa Rica

This article explores the ways in which the immigration of Nicaraguans to Costa Rica is represented by Costa Rican institutions and individuals through public discourses and everyday life. Three discourses are considered. First, intellectual claims that immigration poses a threat to Costa Rican national identity, whereby intellectuals portray 'Costa Rica in crisis' due to immigration. Second, fictional works seek to represent issues regarding the Nicaraguan community in innovative ways, being open‐ended and including diverse voices. Third, stories written by Nicaraguan children are discussed in view of exploring how hostility towards immigration interpellates them, who face the challenge of negotiating their identities with their peers in everyday life. The article ends by asking for a politics able to defend public institutions and public investment, able to forge networks of solidarity with immigrant communities.     

The ‘Feminisation of Poverty’ in Costa Rica: To What Extent a Conundrum?

Quantitative data from Costa Rica suggest that poverty is 'feminising', especially in respect of female-headed households, who, since the early 1990s, have constituted a progressively greater share of the population classified as poor. This presents something of a conundrum given significant attempts on the part of the state to promote gender equality and to direct public expenditure to low-income women. Some light on this apparent paradox is shed by qualitative fieldwork undertaken in Guanacaste province where female headship seems to have become a more viable, and sometimes, preferred, option among women on account of its role in enhancing well-being. This is largely on account of social and legal changes that have contributed to making women less inclined to tolerate gender inequalities at the domestic level. The findings underline the importance of embracing gendered subjectivities in analyses of the 'feminisation of poverty' and invite caution about the latter being a unilaterally negative phenomenon.     

Pampered Sons, (Wo)manly Men,or Do‐nothing Machos? Costa Rican Men Coming of Age under Neoliberalism

This article explores how young men in Costa Rica negotiate ideas of manhood under neoliberalism. We draw on interview data involving 23 men, ages 15–35, residing in one Costa Rican city. Comparing men across three different class locations, we find diverse "markers of manhood." Our data suggest an emerging globally dominant masculine ideal among an elite class of men, a declining locally dominant masculine ideal among working-class men, and a cynical, possibly counter-cultural masculine ideal among poor men. We conclude that masculinities are not only fluid, but tied to changing economic circumstances and class structures.     

Welfare Regimes in Latin America: Capturing Constellations of Markets,Families, and Policies

This article presents both a theoretical framework and a methodology that attempt to capture the complex interactions among labor markets, families, and public policy that currently constitute Latin American welfare regimes. Drawing on cluster analysis based on available data for 18 countries, the study identifies three welfare regimes. Two are state welfare regimes: protectionist (e.g. Costa Rica) and productivist (e.g. Chile); one is nonstate familiarist (e.g. Ecuador and Nicaragua). In a region where people's well‐being is deeply embedded in family relationships, closer scholarly attention to how social structures interact with public policy bears not only academic interest but also policy implications, particularly for adapting particular welfare regimes to the local welfare mix.     

Home-grown strategies for greater agency: reassessing the outcome of civil society strengthening in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan

This paper seeks to reassess the outcome of mainstream civil society promotion policies in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. While it agrees with critics that the distorting effects of funding relations have meant that the promised ‘grassroots citizen empowerment’ has not been achieved directly through NGOs, it does not agree that NGOs are therefore merely vehicles of the Western ideological agenda and international aid to the Kyrgyzstani population. It argues that the facilitation of international actors has opened up opportunities for individual NGO activists to pursue their own social and political development agendas. In recent years, some activists have begun to use these opportunities to develop strategies through which grassroots interests are represented to decision-makers, and citizens' abilities to represent their own interests are enhanced. The strategies adopted differ from the mainstream civil society model and have allowed some NGOs to function in a manner more relevant to the specific Kyrgyzstani context. This suggests that local Kyrgyzstani NGOs and activists should not all be written off as ‘artificial’ civil society, irrelevant to the dynamics of state–society relations.     

Extract from statement by the Central Committee of the PCP (pro Chinese) Oct. 15, 1974

Globalisation in recent years has come to play an increasing significance in analyses concerning the state and political economy. However, many debates have revolved around a theme whereby increasing globalisation inevitably leads to decreases in the role of the nationstate. This article examines two countries' experiences of globalisation and the attempts by state leaderships to produce globally integrated sectors. The article identifies the historical contexts to changes within the capitalist world economy of the Cold War and the patterns of development associated with such processes in Costa Rica and Thailand. By locating the analysis within a comparative perspective the article comments on the role of authoritarianism as a factor in the implementation of neo-liberal agendas.     

Overcoming Segmentation in Social Policy? Comparing New Early Education and Childcare Efforts in Costa Rica and Uruguay

During the late 2000s, Early Child Education and Care (ECEC) became a policy priority for several Latin American countries. Coherent with international ideas yet against the legacy of deep‐seated segmentation, the new programs embraced universalist aims. Are countries able to achieve universalism? Why are some countries advancing more than others? This article addresses this question, exploring changes in the policy architectures and policy processes behind ECEC in Costa Rica and Uruguay—two regional leaders in these efforts. Based on document analysis and interviews with policymakers, we show that Uruguay advanced more decisively towards unification and explore why.     

Political Competition,Constitutional Arrangements,and the Quality of Public Policies in Costa Rica

This article explains why Costa Rica, by the mid‐twentieth century, began to depart from the all‐too‐common mixture of political instability and economic stagnation characteristic of much of the developing world. The article argues that this country has benefited from better‐than‐average public policies, a conclusion based on a major comparative ranking of state policies. It further argues that interminable political stalemates gradually democratized the struggle for power and laid the groundwork for an innovative constitutional framework, one that allocates the technical functions of government to a set of autonomous institutions. A central implication of this argument is that institutional design is the backdrop for development‐enhancing public policies.     

Rules of Procedure as a Cause of Legislative Paralysis: The Case of Costa Rica, 2002–2012

Research on executive‐legislative relations in Latin America has focused on the impact of minority presidents and multiparty legislatures on legislative productivity. But an additional deadlock scenario, the blocking of a majority president by a minority through filibustering, has been understudied. This article analyzes filibustering in Costa Rica and explains the legislative paralysis in the wake of the nation's transition to a multiparty system in 2002. Legislative paralysis is seen as a product of the interaction between increased legislative fragmentation and polarization and the legislature's preexisting rules of procedure, which enable legislators easily to block bills they oppose, even when those bills are supported by supermajorities. This argument is tested through a comparison of major economic reforms in the 2000s to the reforms tackled in the 1990s. The role of filibustering, well acknowledged in U.S. politics, should also be studied in comparative politics.     

印尼华人融入当地主流社会的现状、挑战和发展趋势

印尼华人已逐步融入当地主流社会,主要表现在政治上认同印尼为自己的祖国,经济上成为当地民族经济的重要组成部分,社会文化上虽保持华族文化传统习俗但已逐步当地化.尽管如此,华族仍然面临诸多挑战,只有印尼政府执行正确的民族政策,当地社会改变对华人的偏见,华人更积极主动地融入主流社会,中国政府严格区分印尼华人与华侨,这样才能促进印尼华人更快融入当地主流社会.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:
Berrios, Ruben. Contracting for Development: The Role of For-Profit Contractors in US. Foreign Development Assistance.
Brysk, Alison. From Tribal Village to Global village: Indian Rights and International Relations in Latin America.
Peceny, Mark. Democracy at the Point of Bayonets.
Tulchin, Joseph S., and Allison M. Garland, eds. Social Development in Latin America: The Politics of Reform.
Tulchin, Joseph S., and Ralph H. Espach, eds. Combating Corruption in Latin America.
Kingstone, Peter R., and Timothy J. Power, eds. Democratic Brazil: Actors, Institutions, and Processes.
Edelman, Marc. Peasants Against Globalization: Rural Social Movements in Costa Rica.
Weintraub, Sidney. Financial Decision Making in Mexico: To Bet a Nation.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Louise Fawcett and Mónica Serrano, eds., Regionalism and Governance in the Americas: Continental Drift. Jon C. Pevehouse, Democracy from Above: Regional Organizations and Democratization. Paul W. Drake and Eric Hershberg, eds., State and Society in Conflict: Comparative Perspectives on Andean Crises. Scott Mainwaring, Ana María Bejarano, and Eduardo Pizarro Leongómez, eds., The Crisis of Democratic Representation in the Andes. Edward Epstein and David Pion-Berlin, eds., Broken Promises? The Argentine Crisis and Argentine Democracy. Gretchen Helmke, Courts Under Constraints: Judges, Generals and Presidents in Argentina. Eva Paus, Foreign Investment, Development, and Globalization: Can Costa Rica Become Ireland?     

The discipline of international relations: still an American social science?

This article reviews the state of the discipline of international relations. It starts from statements made by the editors in their editorial published in the first issue of this journal. The editors noted that there seemed to have been less adherence to positivism in international relations than in other areas of political science and that there was both more opposition to positivism and more methodological and epistemological openness in international relations than in political science generally. The article outlines the current state of the field, focusing on the rationalist mainstream and then on the reflectivist alternatives, before looking at social constructivism, seeing it as the likely acceptable alternative to rationalism in the mainstream literature of the next decade. It then turns to examine whether international relations is still an American social science, before looking at the situation in the United Kingdom. It concludes that the editors' comments were indeed accurate, but that the fact that there is both more opposition to positivism in international relations and more openness in the UK academic community does not mean that the mainstream US literature is anything like as open or pluralist. The UK community is indeed more able to develop theory relevant to the globalised world at the new millennium, but the US academic community still dominates the discipline.     

Selling Sustainable Development and Shortchanging Social Ecology in Costa Rican Forest Policy

Costa Ricans have worked hard to weave the norms and principles of sustainable development into their nation's environmental policies, especially with respect to natural renewable resources, such as the forest. As a result, the nation is known as a leader in innovative environmental initiatives. But sustainable development is a complex, evolving concept. This paper analyzes how the emphasis on biodiversity conservation during the 1990s and early 2000s has, rhetoric notwithstanding, neglected the social equality, or livelihood, component of sustainable development. This trend stands in sharp contrast to earlier periods, when decisionmakers crafted policies and institutions that supported social ecology. The article concludes with a few observations on building political will to revive the grassroots development component of sustainable development.     

Introduction: market adaptations,interventions and daily experience

This special issue illuminates diverse realities of post-Soviet development in Central Asia through a multidisciplinary prism. The contributing articles are grounded in a range of social science disciplines including architecture, anthropology and geography, as well as drawing from mainstream social sciences. The analyses demonstrate how a synthesis of specialist knowledge from area studies and individual disciplinary methodologies can provide well-grounded critical positions on development.     

Reviews

Books reviewed:
Hassig Time, History and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico
Baskes Indians, Merchants, and Markets: A Reinterpretation of the Repartimiento and Spanish-Indian Economic Relations in Colonial Oaxaca, 1750–1821
Caldeira City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo
Caulfield In Defense of Honor: Sexual Morality, Modernity, and Nation in Early-Twentieth-Century Brazil
Earle Rumours of Wars: Civil Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Latin America
Clarke Class, Ethnicity, and Community in Southern Mexico: Oaxaca's Peasantries
Jones and Munck, (eds) Cultural Politics in Latin America
CEDLA FRONTERAS: Towards A Borderless Latin America
Tulchin and Garland Social Development in Latin America. The Politics of Reform
Paley Marketing Democracy: Power and Social Movements in Post-Dictatorship Chile
Crabtree and Whitehead (eds) Towards Democratic Viability: The Bolivian Experience
Bailey and Godson (eds) Organized Crime and Democratic Governability: Mexico and the U.S.–Mexican Borderlands
Adams Dollar Diplomacy: United States Economic Assistance to Latin America
Smith (ed.) Democracy and International Relations: Critical Theories/Problematic Practices
Angell, Lowden Thorpe Decentralizing Development: The Political Economy of Institutional Change in Colombia and Chile
Itzigsohn Developing Poverty: The State, Labor Market Deregulation, and the Informal Economy in Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic
Nencel Ethnography and Prostitution in Peru
Potter Deeper than Debt: Economic globalisation and the poor