Democracy Kills

Democracy Kills has 79 ratings and 6 reviews. Eda said: I have nothing much to say. I agree wholeheartedly with Hawksley. Definitely worth the read. Howe.
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Hawkesley has long been the Candide of foreign correspondents, beginning as an optimist but, as he has gone round the world posing his deceptively simple questions, progressively exposing how pessimistic the honest observer is forced to become. For more than 20 years he has been embarrassing, irritating and sometimes infuriating politicians, officials and businessmen.


  • Democracy Kills by Humphrey Hawkesley and Freedom For Sale by John Kampfner;
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A typical Hawkesley operation will find him in some remote village talking to a crippled child, a destitute labourer or a desperate ex-soldier about the failure of the powers-that-be to notice their plight. He will then single-mindedly trace the chain of responsibility back through local bureaucrats, national politicians and western businessmen and aid givers, meeting evasion at every turn.

Finally, in some smart hotel where men in silk suits and women in splendid dresses are discussing development, he will cause a commotion by pointing out that what they are doing is not helping the poor. Some of the conversations he reports are surreal.

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Following up gross violations of labour laws at a quarry in the Indian state of Haryana, he discovers that the state employment commissioner, responsible for 17, square miles and 20 million people, does not have a car. How, then, does he inspect sites? The heart of the book is a score or so of such encounters, by turns comical and tragic, which he pulls together to illustrate his theme that democracy makes things worse rather than better in many societies. Indeed, this kind of democracy can kill, as his title suggests, encouraging conflict rather than resolving it.

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It is an engaging record of a dogged and decent journalist at work. If there is a criticism to be made it is that the thesis is very general, and does not sufficiently distinguish between different kinds of democracy.

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