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Hospital, Costa Rica
El artículo analiza el discurso de política exterior de Costa Rica en el Debate General de la Asamblea General de Naciones Unidas (AGONU). Para ello se recurre a una propuesta teórica basada en el comportamiento de los pequeños estados, el manejo y desarrollo del poder blando, así como el discurso como instrumento de ese tipo de poder. Metodológicamente, se emplea un método de análisis de contenido mixto, donde el componente cuantitativo se desarrolla a partir del software científico “Wordsmith 6.0”, cuyos resultados numéricos se estudian a partir del análisis cualitativo de conceptos. A partir de ambas propuestas se establece la existencia de cuatro categorías fundamentales del discurso costarricense en ese foro: “derechos humanos”, “derecho internacional”, “desarme”, así como “protección del medio ambiente y desarrollo.” A partir de la determinación de estas se analizan los cambios y continuidades a lo largo de más de una década, lo que permite determinar que existe constancia en las categorías, pero fluctuaciones en la intensidad de su uso y en el contenido. La fluctuación, por consiguiente, es paradójicamente una constante en discurso costarricense, por lo que incluso iniciativas multilaterales vinculadas a las categorías descritas como el Consenso de Costa Rica (desarme-desarrollo) y Paz con la Naturaleza (ambiente) fueron desplazadas, pese a que su contenido continuó de alguna forma en el discurso, lo que muestra una de las debilidades del discurso de política exterior costarricense: su falta de constancia para construir entramados conceptuales más sólidos. Por otra parte, la intensidad con que se usa cada una de estas categorías se encuentra claramente vinculado con los intereses propios que tenga cada gobierno, sin que importe mucho el partido político a que este pertenezca. Se concluye, por ende, que la falta de constancia relativa en el contenido de las categorías tiende a debilitar el poder blando costarricense en tales espacios.
The article analyzes the Costa Rica foreign policy discourse in the speeches issued in the General Debate of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). In order to complete this objective, this text is based on a theoretical proposal compounded by the behavior of small states, the management and development of soft power, as well as the ‘speech’ as an instrument of how that type of power is used. From this perspective, “small states” have different strategies to achieve their objectives in the international system. One of them is to increase its “soft power”, but to achieve some success in this goal depends on the ability of the “small state” to maximize its presence in interna-tional society, for which they must establish a certain degree of influence in various international forums and clearly define its foreign policy objectives to consolidate its “soft power”.One of the most important tools to increase “soft power” capacities is the use of “discourse”. In this sense, “dis-course” is not only an expression of values and prejudices, but also one of the methods to create them. For this reason, to study the different levels of political discourse has been a very important approach for studies in con-temporary international relations. Also, discourses in general, and foreign policy discourse in particular, change throughout time, and these changes can be linked with research on foreign policy change and continuity, exposing internal and external factors as transformational causes in foreign policy. In the Latin American case, recent litera-ture has indicated that the main changes are caused by “presidential preferences” more than any other factors.This general approach is the main reason for the methodological approach chosen to do this research. It is based on a mixed content analysis method, where the quantitative component is developed from the scientific software “Wordsmith 6.0”, whose numerical results are studied from the qualitative analysis of concepts. The documental corpus for this research is composed of the speeches given by Costa Rican representatives to the General Debate of the United Nations General Assembly (most of the time President of the Republic or Ministers of Foreign Affairs, in a few cases vice-presidents or vice-ministers of Foreign Relations have been selected). Thus, the corpus is made up of speeches issued from 2002 to 2015, these correspond to the administrations of Abel Pacheco de la Espriella (2002-06) of the Social Christian Unity Party (PUSC) (four texts), Oscar Arias Sanchez (2006-10) and Laura Chin-chilla Miranda (2010-14), both from the National Liberation Party (PLN) (eight texts), and the first two years of the administration Luis Guillermo Solís Rivera (2014-18) of the Citizen Action Party (PAC) (two texts).Based on the collected evidence, it is possible to establish four fundamental categories of Costa Rican discourse in UNGA: “human rights protection”, “international law”, “disarmament”, as well as “protection of the environment and development.” The effects of the development of a national identity that is established in foreign relations could be an interesting link to explain the appearance of these categories and their preservation. This component can be fundamental to understand to what degree Costa Rican positions are strengthened and legitimized in the interna-tional sphere as a small state, as well as the good credentials that it has regularly had on issues generally accepted by most of the international community.Moreover, following to this exposition, it has been possible to establish the changes and continuities in the content and intensity of these concepts in over more than a decade of speeches. According to this analysis it is possible to argue that in spite of the constancy in the categories, there are also strong fluctuations in the intensity of their use and in the content that Costa Rican authorities have included within then.Along these lines, human rights were widely used during the first four years of the period covered by this research (Pacheco Administration, 2002-2005), but its presence is clearly reduced during the rest of the time. Disarmament was the fundamental category for the next four years (Arias administration, 2006-2009), but it is less important during the rest of the period. Meanwhile, “international law” follows a constant line, even though a lower frequency of use is evident compared to other categories. Finally, “protection of the environment and development” has ups and downs throughout the corpus, but it tends to increase in those years with large international conferences or meetings on this matter.The change of administrations seems to be a central element to explain these changes. Thus, for example, the Pacheco Administration (2002-2006) focused on human rights (from a conservative approach), the Arias Admin-istration (2006-2010) on disarmament, the Chinchilla Administration (2010-2014) on international law (this is clear linked with the border and political conflict with Nicaraguan Government, this incident was presented by Costa Rica in UNGA, OAS and the International Court of Justice) along with the environment and development; while the Solís Administration (2014-2018) returned to human rights along with the environment and development. Moreover, par-ty identity does not ensure the continuity of the content and intensity of the categories. The only time in which there was a consecutive repetition of a political party in the Executive during the period under study (2006-2010 and 2010-2014), the Chinchilla Administration gave less importance to disarmament than the Arias administration, also internal party conflicts and separations of important personalities can provoke ruptures in the discourse content.Fluctuation, therefore, is paradoxically a constant in Costa Rican discourse. Even multilateral initiatives linked to the categories described as the Costa Rica Consensus (“Consenso de Costa Rica”) (development) and Peace with Na-ture (“Paz con la Naturaleza”) (environment) were displaced, even though their content continued in some way through the discourse, which shows one of the weaknesses of the Costa Rican foreign policy discourse: its lack of constancy. This could come from changes in the leadership of Costa Rican diplomacy, ideological variants when there is a change in the political party in power, or characteristics of the leadership of President of the Republic or in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The international agenda also constitutes a determining factor for the content of the discourse. In the Costa Rican case, as a small country, such a situation is more evident given that the large international events, especially those aimed at addressing issues that reinforce the categories of discourse, would be essential to understand the fluctuations of discourse.
