Quality of elections in Mexico and Costa Rica

The main objective of this research was to evaluate the quality of four elections, two Mexican - those held on 2 July 2006 in the Mexican Republic and on 12 March of the same year in the State of Mexico - and two Costa Rican - the national elections held on 7 February 2010 and the cantonal elections held on 5 December of the same year in the Province of San José - in order to determine which were more democratic. The choice of these countries was based on two reasons: on the one hand, both are democratic -a recent quality in Mexico and a long-standing one in Costa Rica- an essential element, as will be seen later, for carrying out a study on the quality of elections; on the other hand, both are Latin American countries and as a student of Latin American Studies it was of interest to me to study two countries with such characteristics. The selection of the State of Mexico in the Republic of Mexico and the Province of San José in Costa Rica was due to the fact that attempting the study in larger areas would have hindered the depth of the analysis.