Paying for Democracy

If there is an area in contemporary politics where black and white analysis is ineffective it is political finance, since transparency rules are weak and reliable information scarce. At least that is the message you get after reading Kevin Casas-Zamora's book. In a thoroughly researched text (based on a doctoral thesis which was awarded a prize by the European Consortium for Political Research in 2004), the author proves his assertion that ' there is hardly an institution of state funding that can be readily advocated or criticized in the abstract, but a myriad of schemes with vastly different levels of generosity, recipients, allocation procedures and disbursement modes'. The scope of the book is wide-ranging, since it is based on a large data set on political financing in more than forty democracies, and thoroughly analyses two specific cases: Costa Rica and Uruguay.... Casas-Zamora offers the reader an illuminating comparative study of the fundamentals of party subsidies. -- Rodolfo Cerdas, 'Journal of Latin American Studies'

Kevin is Associate Professor of State Theory at the University of Costa Rica and an international consultant on political finance issues. He currently coordinates the United Nations Development Program's National Human Development Report for Costa Rica. He holds a law degree from the University of Costa Rica, an MA in Latin American Government and Politics from Essex University and a DPhil in Politics from St Antony's, Oxford. His doctoral dissertation at Oxford won the ECPR PhD Thesis Prize in 2004. He has written extensively on political finance, elections, democratisation and civil-military relations in Latin America.