In the 1948 election, Calderon ran for president and lost. He declared fraud and got the Congress to annul the election. At the same time, the army raided the home of an opposition judge, killing him, and just missed catching Figueres Ferrer. He decided he had to act, and the 44 day revolution commenced, resulting in over two thousand deaths. His revolution succeeded because of the help of the United States State Department.
Ambassador James, the U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica at the time, reported that 70% of Costa Rica's military and police forces were communist and that a communist take-over was likely. The United States put the armed forces in Panama on high alert to invade if necessary, blocked all external aid reaching the Costa Rica government, and supplied money and arms to Ferrer's militia.
With the successful end of the revolution, the diverse groups split apart and Jose Figueres Ferrer was able to form a social-democrat junta to run the country. They held democratic elections that formed an assembly to write a new constitution and run the country until new elections could be held. The junta was dissolved in 1949. Elections for president were held in 1953 with Jose Figueres Ferrer the first president. Between 1953 and 2013 there have been fourteen free, democratic elections. A strong, good leader built a lasting republic out of despotism.
During the time that I lived in Illinois and worked as an educator, I personally loathed the first Mayor Daley of Chicago. He was ruthless and dictatorial. However, in retrospect, over many subsequent decades and despite his excesses during the Democratic Convention in 1968, I have come to admire him. He was an example of Machiavelli's strong leader at a time that Chicago needed a strong leader. Chicago still had the mobs left over from prohibition -- the days of Al Capone and the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Chicago was rapidly losing its position as the transportation hub for the nation as the interstate highway system and air travel developed. The stock yards moved west and steel overseas.
Mayor Daley built a political "machine" that kept Chicago fiscally strong and made Chicago a more attractive city. His machine was strong enough to weather a weak mayor and pass the city on to his son, another strong leader. Since then, corruption has set in and Chicago has had weak, corrupt public officials, an out-of-control police force, and a collapsing public education system. A large metropolitan political entity needs strong and an as-honest-as-possible leadership, even if this makes us very angry.
The increasing corruption in the United States makes it hard to recognize and reward defenders of democratic principles. Whistle-blowers who try to stop some aspect of governmental or corporate corruption are silenced or imprisoned. The media supports entrenched power by under reporting political and corporate crime, these crimes are seldom prosecuted.
Similarly, the major media venues seldom acknowledge and rewards people for their good works, for example, former President Jimmy Carter for the work he has been doing with the Habitat for Humanity.
One of a great many examples where former service to the state has influenced judgment about later crimes is that of General Petraeus. His leaking top secret documents to his mistress and biographer was largely excused because of his exemplary war record.
Excusing crimes (or denying that they are crimes) has a long history, but recently the serious corruption in the auto industry, Wall Street banking practices, and secret prisons have failed to produce any indictments. Failure to bring leaders to judgment makes corruption inevitable.
Machiavelli's best known work, The Prince, was written after the Republic of Florence had been taken over by the Medici. He had lost his post with the republic, was imprisoned and tortured, and was under house arrest Scholars think he wrote The Prince in order to survive and to regain and to regain favor with the Medici.
I cannot conclusively ascertain Machiavelli's thoughts or the intentions thereof; I think scholars have missed the point of the most famous of his books and somewhat ignored the importance of the other, The Discourses.
The Prince is an analysis of leadership in a state run by a despot. It describes a definitive set of actions and techniques used by despots to maintain control of a subjugated nation. In our 20th and 21st Century postindustrial world cultures, it is no longer necessary to take over a country by military conquest.
The United States has become thoroughly accomplished at changing elected South American republics into U.S.-controlled despotic nations. Economic conquest and the resulting despotism had become an adjunct to the United States' foreign policy with the help of the CIA. The National Security Agency's documents about the United State's support of Pinochet's Chile provide details of the the State Department' policy of economic conquest.
John Perkins book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, gives a brilliant first-hand account of the techniques used in economic conquest across the world.
All societies are a mixture of bottom-up and top-down structures in both governance and economics. Since what is "good" or "bad" is a matter of a point of view based on some system of values, the well-being of the population needs to be the principle guiding value in a republic. This is the basic criteria for all societal systems -- economic and political.
The underlying strength of any society is its workforce. This is a bottom-up force that remains passive until some significant problem affects it. When aroused, a strong leader can unite it to make significant changes in political structures that then affect the economics.
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