2 Collier and Collier (1991), in their massive comparative study, have argued that Chile dealt with the problem of incorporating labor into the political system by depoliticization and control of the labor movement, while in Uruguay that movement was mobilized by one of the traditional ruling parties, the Colorados.
3 See United States Senate (1975)
4 The literature on Chilean politics of the late 1960s and early 1970s is voluminous. In particular, see Valenzuela (1978) and Oppenheim (1993).
5 Principal sources on Uruguayan political history and political economy include Weinstein (1988, 1995); Gillespie (1991); Gillespie and González (1989); González (1991); Kaufman (1979); Vanger (1980); Finch (1981); Rottenberg, ed. (1993); Panizza (1990)
6 Vanger (1980) provides the most detailed narrative of the Batlle era.
7 The Uruguayan electoral system is often cited as unique; it has been little noted that Honduras adopted essentially the same system for the 1986 elections, with similar results: the President elected had not received the most votes, but he was the leading candidate of the leading party. See Rosenberg (1989).
8 See Guillén (1973); Porzecanski (1973).
9 In contrast, Allende's thirty-six percent in 1970 was within the normal range for the Chilean Left.
10 Principal sources on Costa Rican political history and political economy include Stone (1975); Cerdas Cruz (1985); Vega Carballo (1982); Muñoz Guillén (1990);Rovira Mas (1988); Oconotrillo (1982); Gudmundson and Lindo-Fuentes (1995); Ameringer (1982).
11 A diocese was not even created until 1850, and Church-State relations thereafter were consistently difficult, culminating in the expulsion of both Bishop Bernardo Thiel and the Jesuit order in 1884. See Backer (1975).
12 Stone(1975, pp 215-221) shows that the literacy rate in Costa Rica in the 1860s was about 10 percent, whereas by the 1960s it approached 90 percent.
13 See Oconitrillo (1982), pp. 11-18.
14 Although González Flores was the first president in the era of direct popular elections, he in fact lacked a popular base because he was placed in office by Congress in a political deal after none of the candidates on the ballot achieved a majority of the popular vote, and no compromise among them was possible in Congress. See Oconitrillo (1982), pp. 59-65.
15 The population of Costa Rica in 1925 was 458.5 thousand. Thus, approximately fifteen percent of the population voted in 1923. Ameringer (1982) p. 7.
16 Jiménez, 1924-1928; González Víquez, 1928-1932; Jiménez, 1932-38.
17 This and succeeding paragraphs are adapted from Peeler (1992), pp. 92-94, 98-101.
18 In the context of World War II, it was common for Latin American governments to be allied with Communist parties, which was accepted by the United States because the Soviet Union was an ally after 1941. The Center-Left coalitions in Chile in the 1940s encountered similar international circumstances. With the end of the war (and the advent of the Cold War) these ties increasingly caused friction with the United States. For a careful study of U.S. policy toward Costa Rica during the period 1940-48, see Schifter (1986).
19 See Aguilar Bulgarelli (1980); Oconotrillo (1982); Rovira Mas (1988).
20 Note that Costa Rica never endured a leftist insurgency. The proscription of the Left was a result of the passions and interests of the victors in 1948-49, reinforced over the years by an international environment of Cold War that made it risky for any Costa Rican government to end the proscription. Note that unlike Calderón, the Left received no policy satisfaction: all they got was the privilege of participating.
21 As I have argued elsewhere (Peeler [1985], Ch. 3) a strong presidency tends to promote centrist, bipolar party systems, while marginalizing parties of the Left. At the same time, proportional representation assures leftist elites an institutional base and a platform for disseminating their views. Thus centrist elites can permit legalization of the Left in the assurance that the risk of their winning a presidential election is minimal. Leftist elites can accept the liberal democratic constitutional order in the confidence that they will not be excluded from public forums. SA Jiménez Castro (1977).
22 Unlike Chile and Uruguay, Costa Rica is situated in a region where the United States has traditionally pursued an active, often interventionist foreign policy. Policy toward the United States thus has far greater relative importance to Costa Rican governments, than to those of Chile or Uruguay.
23 This and the following paragraph are adapted from Peeler (1995), Conclusion.
24 Caused fundamentally by the sudden rise in world petroleum prices in the late 1970s, covered by extensive Third World borrowing from commercial banks. See Stallings and Kaufman (1989). Costa Rica's situation was exacerbated by the unusual incompetence of the Carazo government (1978-82).
25 However, it must be remembered that Chile was well short of universal suffrage until 1970, while Costa Rica proscribed the Left until the same year. While illiterates were enfranchised in Uruguay in 1918, this did not happen in Chile until 1970.
26 Colombian parties underwent a similar evolution, about twenty years later. And there is good evidence that Calderón Guardia, father of the Costa Rican welfare state, regarded it as a means of building a political clientele among the working class. See Peeler (1985), Ch. 2.
27 I have made much the same argument about Colombia and Venezuela. See Peeler (1985), Ch. 3.
28 Argentina poses an interesting contrast in this respect. The relatively stable elitist republic of the early twentieth century was unable to survive the expansion of male suffrage in 1912, and modest democratizing efforts of Yrigoyen after his election in 1916. The constitutional regime was overthrown by the Army in 1930. Perón's attempt to mobilize and incorporate the working class was resisted by military coups in 1955, 1966, and 1976. Only with the restoration of democracy in 1983 is it possible to say that the democratization of the electorate has definitively taken place. And that alone, of course, does not guarantee the consolidation of democracy. Consult Rock (1987); Wynia (1986, 1995).
29 The major exception to this generalization was the enfranchisement of illiterates in Chile in 1970, which, when coupled with the political effects of agrarian reform in the countryside in the late 1960s, was seen by many on the Right as a mortal threat to its political viability. Thus the crisis of 1970-1973 in Chile was due in no small part to the failure to bring off this final expansion of the suffrage without threatening the vital interests of a major sector.
30 Venezuela and Colombia underwent similar crises at about the same time as Costa Rica, but failed to consolidate liberal democracy. They each endured another authoritarian "learning experience" before elite settlements established such regimes in the late 1950s. See Peeler (1985), Ch. 2.