Roberto Cruz Romero

This reflection piece seeks to tackle this blurriness and advance the concept’s analytical precision by presenting and discussing transparency’s main dimensions, as well as its framing within the scholarly body of good governance, democracy, and development. To do so, the reflection paper presents a novel approach; to define transparency in the form of a function (which places transparency in relation to, and as a function) of its two constituting dimensions: a) information (timely and qualitative), and b) accountability mechanisms (namely, a free media environment and legitimate accountability channels).

This review of the transparency literature has shown the evolution of the field through the prism of bibliographic and methodological data. In doing so, we have shed light into underlying disparities that go in line with arguments of structural problems and historical relations in socio-political contexts. We have highlighted the irony of the field in researching a topic that, due to determinants beyond the control of scholars (though OA policies may slowly generate a structural change), is in itself little transparent. The blurriness of the state of research in transparency and accountability helps us to address the overall debate of academic production in a critical manner, engaging with issues such as publishing and funding.

This article aims to provide a comprehensive look at recent proposals of digital governance in Costa Rica, from its institutional design, specifically regarding the ruling entity of the sector. This will be achieved through a documentary review, as well as following a process-tracing method. Then, the article will focus on presenting the national experience with respect of that of the international benchmarks on the subject. Conclusively, it will provide a series of recommendations from the best practices observed in successful institutions in the field of digital Government, applicable to the Costa Rican case given its low success level regarding the country’s institutionalization of a Digital Government.

By weighing data extracted during the 2016 municipal election in Costa Rica from local-level political parties' Facebook pages the research elaborates an analysis based on the mobilization - normalization theses. From that perspective, the paper identifies the traits that characterize each party's communicational emphasis, specifically on whether such sites promote or limit deliberative behaviors amongst each page's subscriber/follower. This content taxonomy displays the kind of traits each content type signifies in terms of political (and digital) engagement. This typology presents three major categories: Informative parties, Self-promotional parties and Interactive-driven parties.

This study focuses on the contraposition of the mobilizing and normalizing theses, in its aim to demonstrate that social networks are a valid source for electoral political processes analysis. Therefore, the research focuses on the dynamics generated by the major presidential candidates in Costa Rica, during the 2013-2014 electoral campaign, in its official Facebook profiles, by assessing each candidate's communication, interaction and, finally, mobilization capabilities as from these virtual spaces. Such data are complemented and contrasted with national opinion polls results, as well as the final election results.