The most striking thing about Elizabeth Ben-Ishai’s book is the way she skillfully moves between the conceptual and the concrete, using theory to reflect upon the implications of public policy and using studies of public policy implementation to build and rebuild theory. In doing this, Fostering Autonomy brings together two concerns that have long occupied feminist and democratic theorists: autonomy and the role of the state. More specifically, Ben-Ishai brings discussions of relational autonomy—a much appreciated corrective to overly atomistic ideas about the autonomous individual—into conversation with state cautionary perspectives, such as those of Wendy Brown or Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward. The result is a careful study of the ways in which states might foster, rather than impede, the autonomy of individuals, particularly the most vulnerable individuals who most often must rely on the state.

Ben-Ishai’s work develops from two central premises, laid out at the start of the book. First, autonomy is integral to the practice of democratic citizenship; second, since it develops out of our relations with others, the state is always at work shaping the individual in some way. Thus, it is critical to consider ways in which the state can be marshaled to aid in the project of individual autonomy. The author then looks to several cases of social service provision, elucidating the moments in which autonomy gets fostered and the moments when domination takes hold. The first chapter introduces and outlines her argument; Chapter 2 further elaborates on the concept of social citizenship and the state cautionary perspectives. The rest of the book is devoted to looking at these issues in specific contexts. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on aspects of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act and offer numerous examples of state interventions that clearly fail to foster autonomy (Chap. 3 examines conditionality and “new paternalism,” while Chap. 4 looks at immigrants’ claims to welfare supports). Chapters 5 and 6 offer glimpses of success, focusing on coordinated community response (CCR) programs for victims of domestic abuse (Chap. 5) and on harm-reduction programs for drug-users (Chap. 6).

Ben-Ishai’s notion of autonomy holds that it is both an ascribed status and a set of capacities gained through social interactions. Following from feminist critics of conventional accounts of autonomy, she argues for a relational conception, drawing attention to the contexts that shape our ability to choose our own life paths. She distinguishes between procedural and substantive conceptions of autonomy, defending a “weak” substantive account, arguing that the “substance of autonomy must be figured with attention to the specificity of a given context” (p. 6). This allows her to open up those substantive accounts, lest they become too exclusionary, while maintaining a set of critical competencies required for autonomous action (but which must always be judged in concrete situations). At the same time, she is plenty aware of the importance of recognizing autonomy and the fact that the ascription of autonomy might in itself foster autonomy—as well as the difficulties and pains of misrecognition.

The author’s discussion of the state and its role in fostering autonomy or preventing oppression is particularly adept. Political scientists and democratic theorists have long grappled with how—and even whether—to engage with the state. Is it a site of further oppression, control, policing, and marginalization, or a site of enhanced opportunities, protection from oppressive individuals, and autonomy-fostering practices? Ben-Ishai introduces this debate in the first chapter, with subsequent chapters building her argument, while anticipating and responding to potential critiques. She takes the view that the state is made up of many disaggregated sites, and so we cannot speak of it as a monolithically good or bad entity. Instead, particular locations and the interactions between particular locations within the state provide opportunities for fostering autonomy in democratic ways. She finds that in cases where there is embodied recognition, user involvement, 2and coordinated fragmentation within the state, the state is better able to foster autonomy, rather than reinscribe oppression and marginalization. This explanation offers theorists, activists, public policy researchers, and service providers critical purchase on determining whether particular programs are “empowering” or not. There is a great deal to recommend here, and readers from a wide range of disciplines and subfields will find arguments that challenge their assumptions and open new potentials.

As with all books, this one leaves some questions unanswered. For example, the discussion of paternalism is deft, but perhaps too easy, given the problems with the “new paternalist” arguments upon which Ben-Ishai focuses. More challenging would be the more recent work by “libertarian paternalists” like Cass Sunstein or “structured paternalists” like Sigal Ben-Porath. By the time Ben-Ishai finishes with the new paternalists, it is painfully clear how terribly they misunderstood the social context and how full of logical holes that approach was. The case is so easy that it almost seems unfair to attack it (except, of course, for the huge impact its advocates had on welfare reform, a point I wish the author had done more to stress). She argues that when “power is used in coercive fashion that serves oppressive ends [is when] paternalism can be seen” (p. 48). Meanwhile, if something “opens up the space for democratic participation,” it is not paternalistic. But I doubt that a structured paternalist—the paternalists most active within political theory today—would ever accept this formulation. An engagement with these versions of paternalism might lead to further insights because the challenge is simple and more compelling. And, certainly, the libertarian and structured paternalist observation that there is no neutral default is in line with Ben-Ishai’s emphasis on the critical importance of carefully thinking through the concrete specifics of service delivery because of the inevitable effect of the state on the individual’s autonomy.

Moreover, it is not always clear that Ben-Ishai is as far removed from those versions of paternalism as she wants to be (a distance enabled by her particular definition of paternalism). Is it okay to override people’s expressed desires in order to foster their autonomy if their decisions were the result of “oppressive socialization”? This is the tricky question that she grapples with in her discussion of coordinated community response programs—and it is a question that scholars such as Ben-Porath have written much about. After reading Fostering Autonomy, I really wanted to figure out where Ben-Ishai and structured paternalists might overlap and if they diverge as much as Ben-Ishai’s general rejection of paternalism would indicate. In fact, the author maintains that we must make these difficult decisions to intervene if we are indeed committed to fostering autonomy. What is required, she argues, is an openness to continued contestation and a commitment to accountability; “we cannot ‘fix’ the substance of autonomy in place; it is within a given context that the substance of autonomy must be worked out, negotiated, and challenged” (p. 157).

In the end, the reframing of questions of autonomy and dependence in light of Ben-Ishai’s arguments for relational autonomy yields a number of insights. Her case studies engage ably with questions of political responsibility and immigration (Chap. 4), the role of the fragmented state in fostering autonomy under conditions of gender oppression (Chap. 5), and harm-reduction programs and problems of misrecognition (Chap. 6). She is always careful to go where the argument leads, without overstating it. As she argues in the concluding chapter: “some arms of some states sometimes effectively foster autonomy in some of their citizens through the delivery of social welfare services” (p. 153). Ben-Ishai carefully outlines these conditions, alongside the theoretical insights that spring from her engagement with concrete questions of power. Her attention to the lived experience of individuals as they engage with the state is a wonderful example of practical political theorizing that has the potential to expand and enrich democratic politics for us all.