The politics of social development in Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic: Social agents, the state and the international political economy

Theories of social change share the goal of advancing development, and commonly emphasize the economic conditions for development motivated by an assumed positive relationship between economic growth and social development. These theories differentially prioritize internal and external obstacles to growth, but the problem of social development is usually framed as one of removing the barriers to growth. Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic challenge these explanations of development. Both countries had comparable levels of development before 1940, and similar aggregate economic growth rates and levels of structural dependence after 1945. Today, Costa Rica's high level of social development contrasts sharply with the low level in the Dominican Republic. A comparative-historical analysis reveals that these divergent outcomes pivoted on specific processes of class formation and of class struggle, shaped by international geopolitical conditions, commodity flows and ideological factors.;In Costa Rica, during the 1930-1948 period radical labor leaders organized independent class institutions that translated political action into class power and successfully forced the divided agro-export elites to acquiesce on the social question. Through collective action, the Costa Rican labor movement challenged the political center and caused a realignment in class interests that culminated in the post-1950 social democratic path.;The Dominican case demonstrates the implications for social development of ideology and the class origins of labor leaders. Like their Costa Rican counterparts, Dominican labor leaders had successfully organized several organizations by the 1920s, but the predominantly elite led movement, focusing on party politics and lobbying against the U.S. occupation, ignored the meta-regional and sectoral interests of the working class. The failure to organize around class issues aggravated intra-labor fissures, produced little social progress and minimized the popular challenge to Rafael Trujillo's usurpation of power. Once in power, Trujillo repressed the radical labor elements and coopted the conservative ones, deepening the ideological and partisan fissures that characterize the movement today. This research shows that raising the level of social welfare, while neither inevitable nor impossible, can be understood only as part of broader global social and historical processes.