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

Abstract 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.