Deliberative Democracy and the Plural Polity.

• Author: Beasley, Vanessa B.
• Position: Book Review

Deliberative Democracy and the Plural Polity. By Michael Rabinder James. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004; pp. xii + 239. $35.00 cloth; $17.95 paper.

What is the political price of diversity? Michael Rabinder James suggests that scholars traditionally have answered this question in one of two ways: The price is injustice (e.g., Jim Crow laws) or instability (e.g., Sarajevo). James also rightly notes that most scholars have viewed these outcomes and their remedies as mutually exclusive. That is, a diverse nation-state dedicated to justice may become unstable in the process of identifying and adjudicating inequity, just as a diverse nation-state most concerned with stability frequently will turn a blind eye to injustices and their disruptive consequences. With the stakes so high, it is no wonder that, to minimize these costs, many scholars have turned to that most universal of all human activities--communication--in order to promote an ideal of deliberative democracy.

To James' mind, this ideal manifests when "members of diverse collective identities ... communicate and make collective decisions in a fair manner" (xi). This simple definition of deliberative democracy reveals a great deal about the merits of James' project. He wants to theorize the ways in which deliberative democracy might promote both justice--typically the province of normative political theorists--and stability--a primary concern for social scientists, especially political scientists, who tend to emphasize institutions and other empirical structures thought to support political systems. Overall, this book's principal argument is that one theory can and should bridge both concerns. James draws from empirical cases, the great majority of which come from the United States (and many of which focus on civil rights), in order to build a fascinating normative model. In James' own words, "supplementing the normative core" of his argument are "analyses of how collective identities are constructed and how different motivations and institutional incentives can aggravate or mitigate group conflict" (5). James therefore boldly steps both inside and outside scholarly boundaries somewhat differently than have many other recent theorists of deliberative democracy.

Yet even as its scope and goals may challenge the conventional thinking in political science, this book also may endorse a stereotype common among scholars of communication, especially political communication. Like the...