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Governments gain legitimacy not only through political institutions, but also from
adhering to the national core narrative of identity. Historic institutionalism and studies of path
dependency argue that, during certain “critical junctures” in a country’s history, this core
narrative can be reshaped to serve the purposes of those wishing to retain power. A critical
juncture is:
a destabilizing event that sends a polity from path A onto path B and that also forecloses the
future availability of policy options associated with either its former path A or alternative paths
C,D, and E. The shift to path B is not the random start of a process of blind or automatic
perpetuation of practice often associated with a path-dependent view of institutions; it is a
moment of state relegitimation. The discontinuity itself must be incorporated into the core
narrative of national identity – either as a heroic moment or a shared national trauma – and
institutions and ideology must then be reoriented to equate the state’s new defense of limits on the
policy agenda with the defense of the nation writ large (Golob 2003, p. 367, see also Thelen
1999).
The new core narrative is solidified and maintained by different mechanisms of
reproduction, enacted through institutions and education. Policy frontiers are policy legacies
constructed and perpetuated institutionally “via the permanent housing of exiled options inside
bureaucracies that not only are insulated from outside constituencies but also are imbued with
ideologies that venerate the role of the agency in defending the policy frontier against other
agencies, as well as against future chief executives seeking to change course” (Golob 2003, p.
366, see also Smith 2001).
Figueres and the rest of the framers of the Costa Rican Second Republic were keenly
aware of the importance of ideological support from the public for the future of their political
program. The post-civil war political transition was designed to symbolize both a new beginning
and a return to the “roots” of the nation. It was essential that the values underlying the new
political arrangement be understood as maintaining the core values of the Costa Rican people:
peace, hard work, humility, the importance of education, and so on. Thus, for example, on
December 1
st
1949, a formal ceremony took place in which the keys of the military barracks
Convention