The politics of Costa Rica take place in a framework of a presidential, representative democratic republic, with a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the president and his cabinet, and the President of Costa Rica is both the head of state and head of government. Legislative power is vested in the Legislative Assembly. The president and 57 Legislative Assembly deputies are elected for four-year terms. The judiciary operates independent of the executive and the legislature but remains involved in the political process. Costa Rica is a republic with a strong system of constitutional checks and balances. Voting is compulsory in Costa Rica but it is not enforced.
Óscar Arias Sánchez was President of Costa Rica from 1986 to 1990 and from 2006 to 2010. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his efforts to end the Central American crisis.
The Citizens' Action Party is a center-left political party in Costa Rica.
The Legislative Assembly is the unicameral legislative branch of the government of Costa Rica. The national congress building is located in the city capital, San José, specifically in El Carmen District in San José Canton.
Democratic Force nicknamed “El Naranjazo” was a political party in Costa Rica.
General elections were held in Costa Rica on 7 December 1913, the first direct elections since 1844. They were also the first elections to have universal male suffrage, after economic and educational requirements were eliminated. Máximo Fernández Alvarado of the Republican Party won the presidential election, but both he and runner-up Carlos Durán Cartín later resigned and Alfredo González Flores was appointed president by Congress on 8 May 1914. The Republican Party also won the parliamentary election. Voter turnout was 78.0% in the presidential election and 78.6% in the parliamentary election.
General elections were held in Costa Rica on 9 February 1936. León Cortés Castro of the Independent National Republican Party won the presidential election, whilst the party also won the parliamentary election, in which they received 59.4% of the vote. Voter turnout was 68.8% in the presidential election and 68.9% in the parliamentary election.
General elections were held in Costa Rica on 2 February 1986. Óscar Arias of the National Liberation Party won the presidential election, whilst his party also won the parliamentary election. Voter turnout was 81.8%.
General elections were held in Costa Rica on 4 February 1990. Rafael Ángel Calderón Fournier of the Social Christian Unity Party won the presidential election, whilst his party also won the parliamentary election. Voter turnout was 81.8%.
Costa Rica held parliamentary and presidential elections on Sunday, 2 February 2014 to elect a new president, two vice presidents, and 57 Legislative Assembly lawmakers. Voting is compulsory in Costa Rica, nevertheless abstentionism was 35 percent in 2006 and 32 percent in 2010. In accordance with Article 132 of the Constitution, the incumbent President, Laura Chinchilla Miranda, was ineligible to run for a second consecutive term.
Luis Guillermo Solís Rivera is a Costa Rican educator and politician who was the President of Costa Rica from 2014 to 2018. He is a member of the center-left Citizens' Action Party (PAC). Solís led the field in the 2014 presidential election, and won the presidency in a landslide election, earning more votes than any presidential candidate in the history of the nation. Solís has a long academic and political career, culminating in his election as the first President of Costa Rica to be a member of the PAC.
Elizabeth Bernardita Fonseca Corrales was a deputy in the Costa Rican Legislative Assembly from 2006 to 2010, representing San José. Fonseca holds a doctorate in History and American Society from the University of Paris. She was president of the Citizens' Action Party in 2010.
Municipal elections were held in Costa Rica on 7 February 2016, in order to elect the mayors of the 81 cantons of the country plus a proportional number of aldermen (regidores) in each of the canton’s municipal councils, a syndic for every district and members of the District Councils and a total of 8 Intendants for districts and islands located too far away from the administrative center.
General elections were held in Costa Rica in 2018 to elect both the President and Legislative Assembly. The first round of the presidential election was held on February 4, 2018, with the two highest-ranked candidates being Christian singer and Congressman Fabricio Alvarado Muñoz from the conservative National Restoration Party and writer and former Minister Carlos Alvarado Quesada from the progressive Citizens’ Action Party, gaining 24% and 21% of the votes respectively. As no candidate received more than 40% of the first round vote, a second round run-off election was held on April 1, 2018 and was won by Carlos Alvarado Quesada, with a landslide victory of 60.6% of the vote.
The 1889 Costa Rican general election was held between 7 October 1889 and 1 December 1889. It was particularly notorious for been the first time in Costa Rica's history that political parties took part in an election. The date of November 7 is still commemorated in Costa Rica as "Democracy's Day" due to the outcome of the liberal government accepting the results of the conservative opposition, as to that point, authoritarian governments were the norm.
The 1894 Costa Rican general election was held between 4 and 6 of February and 1 April of that year. The election was quite controversial due to the questionable practices from the government of José Joaquín Rodríguez Zeledón who supported his son-in-law Rafael Yglesias using all sorts of measures to assure his victory, going as far as to even arrest his main rival.
The 1901–1902 Costa Rican general election occurred under growing political tensions. The authoritarian government of Rafael Yglesias was in direct confrontation with the opposition and had re-elected himself as single-candidate in the previous election by a questionable constitutional reform. The liberal Republican Party represented the most staunch opposition and the country was on the edge of civil war. However, Yglesias managed to negotiate with the moderate branch of the Republicans for a peaceful power exchange.
The 1906 Costa Rican general election was held during the presidency of Ascensión Esquivel Ibarra. Ibarra openly supported candidate Cleto González Víquez. Other candidates were former president Bernardo Soto Alfaro, former State and Police Secretary Tobías Zúñiga Castro, the also former State Secretary Máximo Fernández Alvarado and former justice and Foreign Secretary Ezequiel Gutiérrez Iglesias. Difference were more personal than ideological as all candidates except Gutiérrez were liberals, and the election had a strong "anti-cletista" component. This "anti-cletismo" was what united the opposition and talks about a common joint front occurred but it was not applied. Gutiérrez was candidate of the conservative "Democratic Union", the party that emerged from the now outlawed Catholic Union.
The 1910 Costa Rican general election was held during the presidency of Cleto González Víquez. This was the last time that indirect elections were held in Costa Rica as for the next one in 1913 the direct vote was implemented. Liberal lawyer Ricardo Jiménez Oreamuno was elected for the first time. Jiménez was very popular in part because of his struggles against the United Fruit Company's abusive operations in the country. Jiménez was proclaimed candidate in the Teatro Variedades during the first Republican National Convention, Costa Rica's first primary election. Jiménez won easily over the other candidate, former president Rafael Yglesias who ruled an authoritarian, though short-lived, regime.
The Reform State or Reformist State is a period in Costa Rican history characterized by the change in political and economic paradigm switching from the uncontrolled capitalism and laissez faire of the Liberal State into a more economically progressive Welfare State. The period ranges from approximately 1940 starting with the presidency of social reformer Rafael Angel Calderón Guardia and ends around the 1980s with the first neoliberal and Washington Consensus reforms that begun after the government of Luis Alberto Monge.
