Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia : A Comparative and Historical Perspective (Contemporary South Asia)

Rating:
Summary: good solid academic text, but needs to be seriously edited
Review: Pretty good comparative study of politics in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The author has some great insights on the similarities and differences between the (political) cultures of the different nations, and generally explains them well.

However, I found the author's writing style very taxing. Take this sentence:

"Unless capable of extending their voting rights beyond the confines of institutionalized electoral arenas to an effective struggle against social and economic exploitation, legal citizens are more likely to be the handmaids of powerful political manipulators than autonomous agents deriving concrete rewards from democratic processes" (48).

Or this one:

"If [General] Zia was the pious and humble Allah had chosen to pull Pakistani society out of the depths of moral turpitude, then Ishaq was responsible for charting the wilier aspects of the enobling turnaround." (101)

I have no problem with the jargon: to some extent, that is necessary in an academic work; but I question the need of the author to load a sentence with as many adjectives as she (?) possibly can.