This study explains the adoption of the National Childcare and Development Network in Costa Rica using John Kingdon's multiple streams approach. Traditionally, the literature on social policies argues that in the presence of socioeconomic transformations and pressures from women's movements and from left or center-left governments, the adoption of care policies is more likely to happen. Yet, Costa Rica adopted its care policy during a fiscal crisis, with a lack of demands for care policies from the women's movement, and with a right-wing party in government. Drawing data from documents and semistructured interviews, this article demonstrates the applicability of the multiple streams approach to understand care policy-making processes in developing countries. The study finds that the multiple streams approach effectively explains the adoption of the policy as the product of topdown decisions from the national women's agency that constructs the problem, a close-knit policy design led by technocrats and bureaucrats, and the politicization of care policies to gain electoral support.

This article aims to reveal how Costa Rica and Uruguay succeeded in adopting integrated care policies. By adapting the classic “multiple streams approach,” I analyze the processes leading to the adoption of two care policies in Costa Rica and Uruguay. The findings suggest that the key to understanding the adoption of care policies lies within the interplay between agents and contexts in different streams. Problems can be constructed as a top-down process by a women’s agency or as a bottom-up process from a feminist organization. Solutions can be designed in close-knit policy networks of technocrats/bureaucrats or in open policy networks of bureaucrats and civil society organizations. Care policies become prominent items on government agendas in the presence of programmatic political parties and high electoral competition settings that prioritize the issue to attract voters or consolidate support. The alignment of problems, solutions, and politics identify different pathways that lead to the adoption of care policies.