Development Planning in Costa Rica: Lessons from Experience.

Abstract

An exhaustive comparison between the amazing trends of development planning back in the early sixties in both the developed and developing world, and the unstable path such an activity has undergone in Costa Rica in spite of the visionary and thorough Planning law of 1974, No. 5525, which envisioned and incorporated all main strengths which were reportedly helping industrial nations to become successful and welfare societies whereas at the same time took notice of failures in developing
countries and turned them into strengths, conceptually and normatively speaking. but the article claims and demonstrates how and why, the country has not made a good use of such law, facing today trends and behaviours of all its main political and professional operators which block away the potential effect or effectiveness of such planning system and machinery, thought of to set the nation in motion towards a scenario of a First World society. The article also provides a positive strategy of how
to turn past failures into future successes by the mere attitude of recognizing and exercising the concepts and tools that the law of Planning keeps providing for an effective effort of development planning in Costa Rica. The author has been associated in a protagonistic way as an operator and researcher of this phenomenon, since 1974.