Demanding Democracy: Reform and Reaction in Costa Rica and Guatemala, 1870s–1950s

Deborah Yashar’s comparative-historical account of the transition and consolidation of regimes in Costa Rica and Guatemala is a well-written book that tracks the similar political trajectories of two Central American countries and offers answers as to why democracy was consolidated in Costa Rica while in Guatemala the democratic spring collapsed into authoritarianism. Yashar employs a “most-similar-design” strategy to generate causal inference. Using historical research and comparative descriptions, punctuated with illuminating interview quotations, Yashar suggests that up to the middle of the twentieth century, these two countries shared many important characteristics and “similar periods of political change and development” (pp. 5–6).

Given these similarities and the comparable trajectories of regimes in both countries, why, then, do these cases diverge so drastically after midcentury? While Yashar posits that both resource distribution and civil society are factors that affect the consolidation of democracy, the book’s theoretical foundation rests primarily upon an elegant 2x2 matrix (p. 17), with publicly expressed elite political divisions on one axis and organized popular demands for democracy on the other. When both conditions obtain, a critical juncture exists that may result in democracy (p. 230). Yet democracy endures only when the countryside is successfully incorporated. Yashar seeks to explain why these prodemocratic conditions existed in Costa Rica after 1948 but were lacking in Guatemala after 1954.

Although Yashar offers valuable arguments, scholars of Central America may object that she overstates the similarities between the two countries while understating the importance of international factors. Many potentially important differences between Costa Rica and Guatemala are either ignored or minimized: literacy levels, histories of civilian rule and repression, forced labor, landholding patterns, ethnic factors, and military strength, among others. In addition, Yashar tends to overdraw some of the parallels between political movements in each country. The sections on Guatemala richly describe its political development. No one would dispute Yashar’s convincing portrayal of the Arévalo and Arbenz years (1945–54) as reformist and democratizing, nor her characterization of the Castillo invasion as counterreformist. There remains, however, considerable debate within contemporary historiography over the motivations of actors and the characterizations of social movements during the Calderón and Picado years in Costa Rica (1940–48); similar discussions exist in regard to the nature of Figuerismo (1948–49, 1953–58). Yashar interprets the Costa Rican case as closely paralleling that of Guatemala, a perspective that oversimplifies very complex developments and leads to some dubious assertions. For example, some might challenge her claim that the Figueres-led civil war in Costa Rica (1948) and the Castillo-led overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala (1954) are “analytically equivalent” counterreform movements (p. 24). To support her view and demonstrate the antireform nature of the Costa Rican opposition, Yashar uses the example of the 1947 Sit-Down Strike (pp. 174–79). Yet many interpret this action as mainly political, a position supported by the entirely political nature of the concessions the government made to end the strike.

Yashar also asserts that United States actions in Guatemala were insignificant, given that strong opposition to Arbenz already existed. This position, however, underplays the extent to which the United States provided critical support to anti-Arbenz actors, just as the United States also extended pivotal support to Figueres. Indeed, a strong domestic opposition to Figueres also existed in 1954 and he may not have survived the 1955 counterrevolution had anti-Figueres officials within the United States government succeeded in tipping support to the opposition.

Yashar’s theoretical account is based on the view that Costa Rican democracy was consolidated soon after the 1948 Civil War. Yet in fact democracy was not accepted as the only game in town until the 1958 elections, at the earliest. Yashar’s Costa Rican case would be stronger had she paid greater attention to the tumultuous period from 1953 to 1958 and to the impact of the abolition of the military on the tactics and options of political actors. While she correctly points out that the absence of an autonomous military tied the hands of the opposition in 1948 and 1949 (p. 189), this absence was actually a more important factor in 1954 and 1955. If the analysis of Costa Rica is extended to 1955, then an alternative interpretation that focuses on the availability of an autonomous military as a tool of the opposition and on the role of the United States would challenge Yashar's basic conclusions about the causes of the divergent paths of democracy in Costa Rica and Guatemala.

While I disagree with some of the characterizations and conclusions of Demanding Democracy, nevertheless Yashar's innovative and provocative theory deserves a wide reading. I strongly recommend this book for those interested in democratization or Central American political development. Upper-division undergraduates as well as graduate students would learn a great deal about both the history of these two countries and about comparative research design from this accessible and important work.