In the summer of 2009, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Costa Rica began monitoring compliance with its direct orders in amparo and habeas corpus cases. The court announced the early results from its analysis at a well-attended March 2010 press conference. The president of the court promised to continue monitoring and publicizing the results for the foreseeable future. We use a unique data set on compliance derived from this monitoring system to evaluate theoretical claims about the relationship between the transparency of judicial orders and compliance. We observe that vague orders, and orders issued without definite time frames for compliance, were associated with delayed implementation. We also find that orders issued after the press conference were implemented roughly two months earlier than orders issued just prior to the press conference. A core element of the rule of law is that courts should be capable of remedying violations of legal obligations (Raz 1997, 218). To do so, relevant parties must comply with direct judicial orders. Judges themselves value compliance (e.g., Huneeus 2010; Widner 2001) in part because compliance is a key component of judicial power (Cameron 2002). Important factors that promote powerful courts rest largely beyond judicial control. Most obviously, judges are unlikely to have an immediate and strong influence on the degree to which political power is fragmented (Chávez, Ferejohn, and Weingast 2011; Ríos-Figueroa 2007) or on the drafting of formal rules that insulate themselves from external pressure (Pozas-Loyo and Ríos-Figueroa 2010). But some factors may be subject to judicial influence. Compliance, and judicial power more generally, depends on public support, which in turn is related to the transparency of the conflicts courts resolve because without at least the possibility of informing people about noncompliance, public support does not matter (Vanberg 2005; Yadav and Mukherjee 2014); and transparency is something that judges can influence. In June 2009, we began a discussion with the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Costa Rica (colloquially, the "Sala Cuarta" or "Sala IV") concerning potential experimental research designs aimed at understanding better their compliance process. Instead of conducting experimental research, however, the Sala IV built its own system for monitoring compliance with all direct orders to public officials in its amparo and habeas corpus jurisdictions. In October, it began to quietly track reactions to its orders. Six months later, the Sala IV held a press conference to announce its preliminary results, which called into question the compliance record of major arms of the Costa Rican state. The press conference, advertised one week in advance, was well-attended and received careful coverage in the media. 1

this paper succintly describes how a network of researchers associated to the costa rican Programa Estado de la Nación developed new data sources and crafted direct measures of stateness for the central america countries. Our theoretical framework relied on mann's concept of state infrastructural power. as a result, a wealth of information is now available to scholars studying stateness in central america, as well as to researchers engaged on broader comparative research about stateness in Latin america. some preliminary findings are reported and guidelines for future research are suggested.

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* el autor agradece a noel cuevas vargas, quien recolectó la información de base para este artículo. natalia morales actualizó los indicadores del cuadro 1. Costa RiCa: una deCisión estRatégiCa en tiempos inCieRtos

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