This volume, the fourth in a series arising out of the “Real Utopias” project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, offers some fascinating reflections on the possibilities of “empowered participatory governance.” Four major case studies taken from actual experiences with the decentralization of decision making and the devolution of power to local groups—in contexts as varied as Porto Alegre, Brazil; Kerala, India; and Chicago, Illinois—suggest that meaningful, deliberative, locally based democracy is not nearly as far-fetched a goal as the increasing authoritarianism of U.S. society might lead us to believe. Critical commentaries on the cases round out the anthology, providing the reader both with useful additional perspectives and further questions to explore.

In rich introductory and concluding essays, editors Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright set out the issues that structured the conference on which this book was based—“Experiments in Empowered Deliberative Democracy”—and make clear the larger theoretical implications of the project. In recent years, Juürgen Habermas's theories of discursive (or deliberative) democracy have become the starting points for a broad array of theorizing about democratic theories and practices. Even those (especially feminists and critical race theorists) who have questioned whether it is possible to create egalitarian discursive communities in the absence of social and economic equality have, nevertheless, taken seriously the perspectives of Habermas and his followers (see, for example, Seyla Benhabib, Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, 1996; and essays in Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere, 1992). Fung, Wright, and the other contributors to this volume are well aware of concerns about equity; indeed, they make clear that the goal of “empowered participatory governance” is the creation of an institutional model that would “guarantee fairness and efficiency within a deliberative framework” (p. 45) and that would achieve efficiency and equity, as well as (and as a consequence of) broad-based popular participation. The key question, then, is: Is the goal of empowered participatory governance an achievable one? And, more to the point, will popular participation in decision making, in fact, generate the positive effects that democratic theorists lead us to expect?

The core of the book is comprised of four case studies—on participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil; decentralized planning in Kerala, India; decentralized policy making about education and policing in Chicago, IL; and habitat conservation planning under the Endangered Species Act in the United States. While the contexts are diverse, what unites the cases is a focus on decentralized decision making that maximizes the power of what used to be called the “popular classes.” As such, the cases are meant to provide tests, not only of Habermasian-style deliberative democracy but also of theories about the educative effects of participation that go back to Aristotle, Alexis de Tocqueville, and John Stuart Mill. Thus, in their introduction, Fung and Wright lay out the questions the cases address: 1) How genuinely deliberative are the decision-making processes? 2) How effectively are the decisions translated into action? 3) To what extent are the deliberative bodies able to monitor the implementation of their decisions? 4) To what extent do these deliberative practices nurture innovation and allow for the diffusion of those innovations to other local units? 5) To what extent do deliberative processes constitute “schools for democracy”? and 6) Are the actual outcomes of these new deliberative processes “more desirable” than those of prior institutional arrangements? (p. 30). Following the case studies, five commentaries raise important questions that carry the theoretical discussion further.

The resulting volume—which combines the best of a theoretically grounded case-study methodology with more traditional political theorizing—is extremely compelling, and should be of interest to a broad range of scholars. The case studies are fascinating, in themselves, and provide a wealth of information about the possibilities of creating more democratic political bodies—even in the most unlikely of contexts. But, beyond that, they also move forward important political theoretical debates, which all too often take place in the abstract, as if no relevant substantive data exist. Since both the case studies and the commentaries in this volume are thoroughly grounded in the political theoretical literature of democracy, the authors can—and do—draw out the critical lessons (and questions) from their materials. Thus, while this reader, at least, would have liked to see more explicit attention to some of the many feminist critiques of Habermas's approach (although a number of the case studies address women's participation, fewer of them engage specifically with the broader criticisms raised by, e.g., Iris Young, Nancy Fraser, Ruth Lister, Shane Phelan, or Anne Phillips), nevertheless, the studies—and the commentaries—make a significant contribution to these debates, particularly with respect to two questions: a) the place of “self-interest” in deliberative democracy, and b) how to achieve meaningful equality of participation in the absence of “background conditions” of social and economic equality.

Thus, Jane Mansbridge, Rebecca Naera Abers, and Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers, for example, question the assumption of deliberative theorists (including Fung and Wright) that participants in a deliberative democratic process should base their votes on their best judgment of what constitutes the common interest, rather than on what would forward their private, or personal, interests. In some ways, of course, this is the contemporary version of the debate between Rousseau and Mill on how to achieve a “common good.” These commentators suggest that background inequalities matter, and that, in such a context, the demand that heretofore-disempowered people put their self-interest aside may well have the consequence of once again silencing those who have never had an opportunity to have their self-interest reflected in public policy. They seem to be arguing, instead, for something like Tocqueville's notion of “self-interest rightly understood”—a position that Fung and Wright apparently accept in the concluding essay. That essay also addresses the question of inequality in the form of a discussion about “countervailing power,” offering a number of helpful typologies of governance structures and of adversarial versus collaborative decision-making processes, and arguing that, “in general, collaborative governance without an appropriate form of countervailing power is likely to fail” (p. 263).

While the final essay (and the volume as a whole) offers some clues as to how countervailing power might be constructed, it raises more questions than it answers. But that is the real strength of Deepening Democracy: It encourages scholars to explore other real-world experiments with democracy, and to carry on this project of what might be termed applied democratic theory. This wonderful volume is a truly fine expression not only of the difficulties but, most especially, of the rewards of such an approach.