First Published in 1993. This is the second of two collections devoted to the question of local government in Europe. This volume deals with the financing of local (including, where applicable, state, provincial, and regional) governments in western Europe. The eight sections bring together an unusually large number of country studies in one volume: France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, The Netherlands, four Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, – and Spain, as well as a comprehensive survey of grant systems in western Europe. The studies reflect the diversity of both the inherited finance systems and, despite a general trend of greater fiscal pressure in the 1980s, some diversity of the changes in the levels of financial discretion between countries.