This volume stresses the need for a comparative approach when dealing with the funding of party politics and a major related aspect - corruption. This topic lies at the heart of any realistic discussion of the logic of democratic representation. Corruption, or the perception of corruption, has led to an ever-increasing concern with political financing. In some cases the trend is toward a greater role for the state in financing political parties, in others the reverse is true. In this collection the individual experiences of several Latin American countries (including Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay, and Venezuela) are examined against the background of Western Europe, with a view to identifying similarities as well as differences. Given the centrality of political parties to liberal democracies, this subject is of great significance.
Contributors include Angel Alvarez (Universidad Central, Venezuela), Kevin Casas Zamora (University of Costa Rica), Fernando Cepeda Ulloa (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia), Pilar del Castillo (Spanish Minister of Education), Justin Fisher (University of Brunel), Manuel Antonio Garreton (University of Chile), Emilio Lama de Espinosa (Real Instituto Espanol Elcano de Relaciones Internacionales y Estrategicas, Madrid, Spain), Juan Molinar Horcasitas (Partido de Accion Nacional, Mexico), Michael Pinto-Duschinsky (University of Brunel), Weronique Pujas (University of Grenoble, France), Martin Rhodes (European University Institute, Florence, Italy), Diego Urbaneja (Universidad Central, Venezuela), and Laurence Whitehead (Nuffield College, University of Oxford, UK).

The five papers presented in this volume discuss various aspects of the politics of Latin America during the nineteenth century. Although the scope of the essays is wide - including topics such as civil wars, political parties and the use of travel narratives for partisan purposes - the overriding concern is with nationalism and the role of the state.