Michael Rabinder James addresses one of the most pressing problems facing liberal democracies: how to deal fairly and justly with group conflict and identity-based political claims. Although a normative theorist at heart, James understands the problem as both a question of stability and of justice. Prudence can tell us that reducing antipathy and mistrust between groups is a good thing, but in reducing tensions between groups, we also need to be sensitive to the legitimate claims and calls for justice on behalf of groups. His normative approach is refreshingly pragmatic and empirically well informed. But as mentioned, he is at heart a normative theorist, and at the heart of this book is a normative concept of deliberation that focuses on the way dialogue and conversation between groups can promote mutual understanding, reduce tension, enhance stability, and address deep-seated justice claims.

The first step in negotiating the treacherous terrain of identity politics is to foster understanding between groups. Understanding, or what James calls deliberative reciprocity, is a prerequisite to legitimate and stable conflict and dispute resolution. At the most general level, his concept of deliberative reciprocity does break new ground within the now very large field of deliberative democracy. Where Deliberative Democracy and the Plural Polity makes its mark is in fleshing out both the conceptual and institutional infrastructures necessary to be able to understand and explain when, where, and why deliberative reciprocity is likely (or unlikely) to take place. Here James has something new to say.

In the first place, the book brings together an impressive array of literatures. Not only does James straddle a number of divides within political theory by covering identity theory, deliberative theory, justice theory, and rational choice theory but he also introduces the empirical research analysis of comparative politics and electoral and public opinion research to the mix. Although deliberative democratic theory is becoming more concrete and focused on intuitional and policy design, it is rarely well versed in empirical research. James uses empirical research to great effect in his analysis. The book is both rich in empirical detail and effective in integrating theoretical models, such as empirically based models of identity construction, with normative theory, for example, justice between groups theories. But more generally, the empirical component is used to highlight the complexity of real world cases and the ways in which contemporary normative theory has failed to address that complexity.

There are three areas in which James argues that deliberative democratic theory, in particular, has failed to acknowledge dimensions of complexity that have significant impact on the prospect of deliberation. The areas in question are identity formation, motivational and incentive structures, and electoral design. When one tries to think through the possibility of groups addressing their differences and resolving their conflicts through deliberative procedures, each of these dimensions can introduce complicating factors that must push the theorist into an ever-narrower contextualist approach.

With regard to identity politics, James insists that it is impossible to generalize about the nature of group identity and the justice claims that can be sustained by that identity. No two identity-based claims are identical because no two identities are identical. People gain, reject, adopt, inherit, and are saddled with identities in many different ways. Although he appeals to four general empirical models of identity formation, even within these categories there is a great deal of variation. As an illustration of complexity, James discusses four American “identities”: Native American, Asian American, Hispanic American, and black American. The literature appealed to here is very broad and the discussion very rich. He concludes that political claims that emerge from these identities must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis but within an overarching framework of fair deliberation, or what he calls plural deliberation. Indeed, while appealing to broad procedural categories that are a fixture within deliberative democratic theory, James returns over and over again to a contextual account.

Connected to identify formation is the question of motivational and incentive structures in which groups find themselves. These frameworks can both explain and give us insight into why some groups might pursue a strategy of reciprocity while others not. James has no problem borrowing the framework of strategic action in explaining why groups might adopt the normative-based perspective of reciprocity. Indeed, if we want people to act nonstrategically, we have to create the proper incentives. In illustrating how incentive structures can inhibit deliberative reciprocity, he appeals to a comparison between northern and southern Jews with regard to their attitude toward the African American Civil Rights movement. Many Jewish groups in the North developed solidarity with southern blacks and pursued a policy of deliberative reciprocity. This attitude was not as evident among southern Jews, who were at times hostile toward African American justice claims. The explanation cannot be found within Jewish identity but rather in the relative security of northern Jews compared to southern Jews. The insecurity that southern Jews felt with regard to their own place within the white world led to an affirmation of their place within that world, which was largely hostile to Civil Rights claims, instead of leading to solidarity with other insecure groups. The author's larger point with this illustration is that understanding the motivational dynamics produced by incentive structures is an important step in thinking through how to overcome intergroup divides.

James's final innovative contribution to debate on deliberative democracy centers on the insight that different institutional contexts offer different opportunities and risks for pressing identity claims. While his discussion of civil society and the public sphere is informative, it does not contribute as much to the deliberative democracy debate as his discussion of electoral systems. Formal institutions like parliaments are limited in their flexibility and create different incentives than, say, the free-wheeling debate of an election campaign. While very familiar to empirical research, electoral design has been sadly neglected in normative theory. The question of how different electoral designs might structure debate and create incentives or disincentives to engage in deliberative reciprocity is undertheorized in deliberative democracy. The author has tackled this issue with admirable sophistication. He comes out tentatively in favor of an STV system (single transferable vote) at the state and local level and of increasing the number of districts at the national level. Whether or not these reforms are feasible, the contribution of this chapter is really in charting a comprehensive account of the connection between electoral design and deliberation between groups.

As with all contextual approaches, there is a risk that the center will not hold, that by the end of the book the reader is left with a series of interesting and informative vignettes but nothing permanent to hold onto. James escapes this fate. This is a noteworthy achievement. The complexity and sheer messiness of real-world identity formation and group conflict is not smoothed over or simplified for the sake of neat normative conclusions. Nor does he fall back on deep description when faced with complexity. Although rich in empirical detail and case studies, the analysis remains rigorous and systematic.