John Keane is Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney and the WZB (Berlin). He is the co-author (with Debasish Roy Chowdhury) of To Kill A Democracy: India’s Passage to Despotism (Oxford University Press, 2021)
Now beset by a rising tide of strong-armed rulers and demagogues worldwide, democracy is also the best check on their unrestrained power. Those who resisted the Emergency understood this
In these times of rising anxiety about the future of democracy, pay attention to the way democide can happen at tortoise pace -- through the slow-motion, unspectacular convergence of social deprivation and environmental decay
John Keane writes: Populists and elected populist governments in countries such as India and the United States, said to be the world’s largest and oldest democracies, are potentially midwives of despotism.
John Keane writes: When democratically elected governments cease to be held accountable by a society weakened by poor health, low morale and joblessness, demagogues are prone to blindness and ineptitude.
