3 The democratic construction of social welfare-related values in Costa Rica

Box 8.3 The democratic construction of social welfare-related values in Costa Rica

In 1940, Rafael Calderón won the presidential elections. In 1941, he introduced a social security scheme, which incorporated social insurance and social welfare programmes for the poorest. He also introduced other social guarantees, such as an eight-hour working day, a minimum wage, protection against arbitrary dismissal, and the right for workers to organize themselves. In 1942, the Constitution was amended in order to incorporate a new social security law and a Labour Code.

In 1949, another President, José Figueres, instituted universal suffrage for both men and women, and introduced compulsory secondary education, making both primary and secondary education free and state-financed. Food and clothing was state-provided to poor students and adult education programmes were organized for those left out by the educational system. He also introduced a law that allocated each year 6 per cent of GDP to public expenditures in education. He nationalized the banking system, abolished the army and imposed a wealth tax. These measures allowed the state to plan economic development, and they also led to a political weakening of the coffee elite, which had hitherto dominated the ownership of financial capital. By weakening the power of the coffee elite, and building the ‘state entrepreneur’, Figueres determined the subsequent conditions for the economic and social development of the country. His party, the Partido

de Liberación Nacional, became the majority party that Costa Ricans voted for during the entire post-war period until the mid-1980s. Among the policies implemented were education policies, which further improved child and adult education and increased rural educational coverage, and an expansion of the health system. In 1960, the social security system covered 15 per cent of the total population. A constitutional amendment in 1961 gave the government 10 years to provide full coverage to all the population. The percentage of the general population covered by health insurance increased from 15 to 78 per cent between 1960 and 1980.

A special health programme, involving a network of health centres and mobile clinics, was established for those living in rural areas. This strong emphasis on primary healthcare (vaccination, hygiene and nutrition education, sanitation, nutrition programmes, child and maternal care and family planning, etc.) led to a strong improvement in health outcomes (infant mortality rates decreased by more than a third during the 1970s).

By the beginning of the 1980s, Costa Rica had become an exemplary social democracy with levels of human well-being rivalling those of industrial countries, despite much more modest economic resources. Life expectancy had increased by nearly 30 years in half a century. Between 1940 and 1990, the proportion of illiterate people had been reduced from 27 to 7 per cent. Infant mortality rates had decreased from 137 to 15 per thousand. Health insurance coverage had expanded from zero to 84 per cent in 1990, and

TOPICS

the coverage of basic services, such as water and sanitation facilities, was almost complete in both rural and urban areas.

In sum, the value that these social policies contained – solidarity – and the consensus that the state was the best keeper of this value – not private initiative – was constructed through democratic processes. The success of the social policies in responding to people’s claims (e.g. for better health and education) led Costa Ricans to further endorse the value of state-provided solidarity by continually electing the same political party, until the debt crisis of the 1980s introduced a new set of values, which questioned the democratic consensus centred around the value of state-provided solidarity, and favoured the value of freedom seen as non-state interference.

Adapted from Séverine Deneulin (2005) ‘Development as freedom and the Costa Rican human development story’, Oxford Development Studies, vol 33, no 3/4, pp493–510.

As a concluding note on the value of democracy, one has to bear in mind that, by recognizing the intrinsic, instrumental and constructive values of democracy, the human development and capability approach does not advocate whether a democracy should endorse either liberalism or socialism. It precludes any ideological presupposition regarding the appropriate function of democracy, whether to safeguard capitalism or signal its demise. Democracy does not serve any other purpose than being a mechanism enabling people to express their ability to be agents in their own lives. Whether the outcome of that process leads to a social democratic government which interferes in markets and generates generous welfare institutions or to a neoliberal govern- ment which lets markets function, it is ultimately a matter of the demands of all people being fairly represented through democratic institutions.