Neoliberalism, Development, and the Costa Rican State

Abstract

Costa Rica has been celebrated for its relatively high levels of economic development in a region marked by extreme poverty and income inequality. Recent scholarship has examined the competing and complementary interests of private capital and public institutions in pursuing an aggressive neoliberal growth strategy while preserving social programs created during the developmental period of the 1950s through the late 1970s. This article extends the inquiry by considering the position of the Costa Rican state in social and economic policy making and management. It considers Costa Rica from the perspective of developmental state theory, the construction of an “intermediary state” characterized by significant elements of autonomy but without the capacity to alter independently economic or social structures. The 2008–2011 recession, public indebtedness, and related demands of capital and labor have overwhelmed Costa Rican intermediate‐state capacity and undermined Costa Rica's covenant between economic growth and social protections.