The adoption of care policies in Costa Rica: A multiple streams approach

Abstract

AbstractThis study explains the adoption of the National Childcare and Development Network in Costa Rica using John Kingdon's multiple streams approach. Traditionally, the literature on social policies argues that in the presence of socioeconomic transformations and pressures from women's movements and from left or center‐left governments, the adoption of care policies is more likely to happen. Yet, Costa Rica adopted its care policy during a fiscal crisis, with a lack of demands for care policies from the women's movement, and with a right‐wing party in government. Drawing data from documents and semistructured interviews, this article demonstrates the applicability of the multiple streams approach to understand care policy‐making processes in developing countries. The study finds that the multiple streams approach effectively explains the adoption of the policy as the product of top‐down decisions from the national women's agency that constructs the problem, a close‐knit policy design led by technocrats and bureaucrats, and the politicization of care policies to gain electoral support.