Abstract
Costa Rica has won praise for its democratic traditions and social stability. Social scientists have attributed this to many factors: the country's benign colonial past, its small and relatively homogeneous population, the existence of a land owning peasantry, and the development, beginning in the 1930s, of a social welfare state. As it did elsewhere, the Great Depression marked a crossroads in Costa Rica's development. In response to the collapse of its international markets and the ensuing labour unrest, the state jettisoned its economic liberalism, and assumed an interventionist role in the management of the economy and labour–capital relations. This fundamentally reformist role developed through the 1930s and culminated in 1943 with the passage of a package of Christian-based social reforms including a comprehensive labour code under the administration of Rafael Calderón Guardia (1940–4).

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