Comprehensive Decentralization for Costa Rica's Development: A Necessary Model-Based Diagnosis

Abstract

Costa Rica is the most centralised country in Latin America. Other countries with a long tradition of centralism, have attempted serious and deep changes regarding the structures of political power and administrative decision, even though very little has changed in terms of their integral development. The article shows how to decentralise even under Costa Rica’s current juridical superior framework, and even more how to attain a major decentralised political and institutional system without incurring the many weaknesses shown by the rest of Latin American nations. It also shows how to understand and tackle our political culture of colonial origin which still permeates governmental and administrative processes and practices in the country. It does propose how to become a developed nation not only by decentralising within the current normative framework as a transitional process but how to design and implement a new model where decentralisation and quasi-parlamentarism may prevail towards a higher and stable governability of the country.