Retiring the State: The Politics of Pension Privatization in Latin America and Beyond. By Raúl Madrid. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. 336p. $65.00 cloth, $27.95 paper.

Since the Pinochet regime in Chile privatized its public pension system in 1981, several Latin American countries have enacted public pension reforms, usually incorporating some structural reform or privatization. Why have some countries privatized their public pensions (Chile, Mexico, Bolivia), while others add optional private pensions (Argentina, Uruguay), create parallel systems with both public and private pensions (Colombia, Peru), or fail to enact any structural reform (Brazil)? Retiring the State will be required reading for those interested in the answer to this question.