Benhabib is against the idea of the strong incommensurability of cultures that Herder and Taylor propose- the idea

that cultures must preserved as a matter of public policy due to their essential nature to members. She mentions several reasons for this- cultures are not internally uniform- there is dissent. Identities for Benhabib are formed through dialogue from different individuals and groups. These are identities are created across culture and not within them. The boundaries are not as sharp as Taylor would like to pretend they are and their internal elements are not as harmonious as Taylor suggests. Benhabib states that this theory from Herder and Taylor is incoherent, cultures are not so distant and these separate worlds between cultures do not truly exist. For her, Charles Taylor places too much emphasis on the preservation of existing cultures due to their commitment to cultural essentialism. BUT!

Benhabib does not support the universalists (equal dignity) either. Benhabib states that these views do no acknowledge cultural disadvantage nuances that cannot be explained by economic or legal inequality. (Support for Taylor)!. We mustnt withhold recognition of a persons group identity because this could hard individuals. So she supports this point by Taylor, just not the cultural essentialism.
The idea of overlapping consensus is also problematic this is where citizens agree about the most fundamental principles and the most controversial issues (way of life, values) will be left for the private realm. She is skeptical of the prospects of such a consensus being reached due to multicultural diversity. She then makes her own proposal- DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY- no privatization of culture and filtering- instead she highlights the importance of public dialogue and debate. Her response to multiculturalism is deliberative democracy- controversial issues of public policy should be decided through a process of open discussion in which all the affected parties have a voice and can justify their positions so other parties can understood their position. Deliberation- public debate and this stands in contrast with liberal reliance on constitutional principles and with relativist conceptions of cultural boundaries that settle issues before debates. Deliberative democracy is a universalist position in that it appeals to the possibility and authority of disinterested reason. She is reflecting her commitment to discourse ethics of Habermas in which universal principles of respect and reciprocity are presupposed by the notion of unforced and unbiased discussion Deliberative democracy is a solution to the problem of multicultural coexistence. This process will allow for constant negotiations through free and fair dialogue. The important aspect of this is its flexibility in contrast with the rigidity of relativist and universalist alternatives. (list of difficulties in deliberative democracy)

Benhabib is well aware of these difficulties and tries to meet them with her notion of a dual-track approach, in which deliberation takes places mainly in the public sphere, situated within civil society, and is hedged about by the standard rights and institutions of liberal democracy. Habermas: Habermas's vision of law and politics prioritizes the ideal of autonomy, thereby inevitably excluding certain conceptions of the self and its relation to the good. In the fourth part of his discussion Taylor proposes a "more hospitable" variant of liberalism that allows for the promotion of strong collective goals and that is, accordingly, deemed more respectful of diversity (p. 52 ff.). But this version of liberalism as Habermas convincingly argues is problematic, for it appears to undermine the very understanding of individual freedom on which liberalism itself is premised. For it could be argued that there is something wrong with his thesis that the politics of equal dignity conflicts with the politics of difference-even where the former is interpreted in terms of procedural liberalism with its underlying view of human dignity as autonomy. In seeing these two modes of politics as conflicting, Taylor appears to make a number of crucial assumptions. . Habermas challenges Taylor's assumption that procedural liberalism suppresses difference. The third interpretation is an interpretation of the politics of difference frequently encountered in contemporary debates, in particular in the context of feminism and, more generally, in connection with the demands for recognition of various disadvantaged groups. This is the interpretation of the demand for recognition of difference on which Habermas focuses. This is evident in Habermas's justification of the importance of public debate on the appropriate interpretation of needs. In the context of feminism, for instance, he sees debate on the appropriate interpretation of needs as necessary for two main reasons: first, in order to highlight the discrepancy between equality "de jure" and actual discrimination against women; second, in order to avoid the overgeneralized classifications used to label disadvantaged situations and disadvantaged groups of women that give rise to new forms of discrimination. In both cases, what is at issue in this struggle for recognition of differences in needs is the achievement of not just "de jure" but "de facto" autonomy. In other words, this version of the politics of difference calls for recognition of the specific needs of socially disadvantaged groups, which result from their specific experiences and situations, in order to permit the members of these groups to operate as autonomous individuals His criticism of Taylor's overly narrow interpretation of the politics of equal dignity is convincing; so too is his critique of Taylor's proposed alternative reading of liberalism that, though it supposedly represents a serious alternative to so-called procedural liberalism, in fact undermines a principle at the heart of all versions of liberalism: the idea of individual autonomy. Not surprisingly, both the idea of ethical discourses and the third idea-the idea that constitutional principles are inevitably interpreted in the light of collective goals and self-understandings-play a prominent role in Habermas's response to Taylor

Habermas's account of the constitutional state presents a version of the politics of equal dignity that takes seriously the demand for recognition of specific identity and is sensitive to many of the issues involved in this regard.