The Financing of Politics: Latin American and European Perspectives. Edited by Eduardo Posada-Carbó and Carlos Malamud. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution Press, 2005. 266p. $65.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Edited books are never consistent across all chapters, but like this one, they can be fun. The book's organization is straightforward: a brief introduction, three increasingly specific theoretical chapters, and seven country case studies covering Latin Europe (Italy, Spain, and France), Britain, and South America (Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, and Uruguay).