Critical Citizens: social mobilizations against "Combo ICE" in Costa Rica

This essay deals with the case study of the successful popular mobilizations against several legal bills known as "Combo ICE" in Costa Rica in the year 2000. The ICE is the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad, a State-run body that controls everything related to the generation and distribution of electricity as well as telecommunications. The "Combo ICE" were several legal bills that planned to liberalize in part electrical generation and telecommunications in the aforementioned country. The "Combo ICE" case allows us to consider the role of citizens as actors with an active control over politicians when they were making unpopular decisions. Democratic citizens are increasingly behaving as critical citizens, defending democracy as the best possible political regime, but holding very critical attitudes towards political parties, other institutions and the way in which politics is done.