Costa Rica Leads Way For Boring But Fair, Clean Elections

Central America might be small—its seven countries have a combined population of just over 50 million, on par with that of Colombia or Spain—but the region tends to make the news often and for all the wrong reasons: spiraling criminal violence, international corruption scandals, and democratic backsliding, to name just a few,

Photo Insert: Costa Rica's Legislative Assembly

Lucas Perelló, a visiting professor of international studies at Marymount Manhattan College, and Will Freeman, a doctoral candidate in politics at Princeton University, wrote for Foreign Policy.

But one Central American nation flies below the radar: Costa Rica. On Feb. 6, the country will choose a new president and renew its 57-seat unicameral legislature, the Legislative Assembly.

And so far, the race has been refreshingly boring. While leading candidates differ on policy, the country’s democratic institutions work remarkably well. No one is calling for a radical overhaul of the political system. Most importantly, the election itself promises to be free, fair, and uncontested.

Costa Rica’s undramatic elections make it an outlier in the Western Hemisphere. In contrast to recent elections in Honduras and El Salvador, Costa Rica’s election won’t pit struggling opposition parties against autocratic incumbents.

No candidate will be banned from running last minute, as in Guatemala’s 2019 elections. Nor will there be scenes of exiled opposition leaders condemning a dictatorship at home, as in Nicaragua’s sham election last year.

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