Rousseau's dilemma has vexed theorists and political actors alike. Ultimately, Rousseau settled for the deus ex machina of the “lawgiver.” So too have many powerful leaders who have made themselves the arbiters of their peoples' conflicting claims to status, wealth, and justice. We have seen, however, that postcolonial Costa Ricans solved this dilemma differently. They forged a national identity that conceived of “the people” not as a republican abstraction but as a historically grounded group whose defining narrative trumpets its high normative worth and the practical attributes associated with its collective virtues.

Such practical attributes, it should be noted, included not only the competencies but also the vulnerabilities that attached to their defining virtues. Furthermore, both in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, the narratives themselves were not reducible to a shared identity that hinged merely on a common “sense of belonging” either to a “distinctive culture” or “to a polity.” Rather, the narratives flowed from “belonging” to a system of normative scheming that enabled actors to make political and institutional choices they could claim to be both realistic and appropriate.