Review: Book Reviews

Reviewed Work(s): Inclusion and Democracy by IrisMarion Young,

Review by: MarkE. Warren
Source: Ethics, Vol. 112, No. 3, Symposium on T. M. Scanlon's What We Owe to Each Other
(April 2002), pp. 646-650
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/338619
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 BOOK REVIEW

Young, Iris Marion. Inclusion and Democracy.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. 304. $29.95 (cloth).

With the recent surge in democratic expectations and experiments, progressive

democrats now face the difficulties that come with relevance. From a theoretical
perspective, the institutions of democracy are not themselves in question: the
right to vote, freedoms of speech and association, and the mechanisms of ac-
countability and transparency that transform these rights and freedoms into
familiar forms of democracy. The difficulties have to do with how these insti-
tutions realize those many ideals we have come to associate with democracy,
including equal say over collective decisions, freedom from oppression, legiti-
mate governance, pluralism, and even self-realization. Progressive democrats
have always argued for tight connections between institutions and ideals, and
the gaps have always provided plenty of opportunities for criticism. But for a
variety of reasonsthe end of the cold war, globalization, increasing complexity
and pluralism, and the congestion of political institutions, to name a fewthe
republican and socialist images of democracy that often inspired critique seem
no longer attuned to the political landscape.
It is at least ironic, then, that the same developments that show up the
deficiencies of progressive theories of democracy have also made progressive
democratic ideals and institutions more relevant than ever before. Theories of
representative democracy emerged on the heels of the consolidation of nation-
states, and most of their concepts are state-centered. Today, even as state ca-
pacities increase, politics is less predictably institutionalized. Politics has seeped,
as it were, into the fabric of society and economy. So, while it is not conceivable
that state-centered democracy will become unimportant in the near future, the
project of democratizing the state is rapidly becoming only one of many trajec-
tories of democracy, thus providing precisely the kinds of opportunities for which
progressive democrats have long argued.
Given these new opportunities and challenges, we are fortunate indeed to
have Iris Youngs latest book, a work of critical theory attentive to the immanent
possibilities of emerging practices. The book is reasonably but not obsessively
rigorous, full of common sense, ambitious but unpretentious, and conversant
with a wide range of social science literature. Organized into three sections, the
book covers the territory necessary for any relatively comprehensive approach
to democracy today. The first is normative, defining the ideals of inclusive de-
mocracy. The second focuses on the question of what democratic inclusion can
mean in pluralistic societies with millions of people. The third addresses the
scope of democracy under conditions of complex social interdependence.
Young describes her problematic as one of inclusive democratic commu-
nication under circumstances of structural inequality and cultural difference
(p. 66) and understands her book as a contribution to the emerging literature
of deliberative democracy. Deliberative theories are united, roughly, by the views

000

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000 Ethics April 2002

(a) that the point of distributing political power equally is that it inclines col-
lective decision making away from money and guns, and toward talk, and (b)
that inclusive talk is creativeof better judgments, new norms, legitimacy, and
even better citizens. In chapter 1, Young contrasts deliberative theories with
aggregative theories of democracythose of public choice, rational choice, and
American pluralism, for example. Aggregative theories view democratic pro-
cesses as instruments that aggregate the interests and identities of individuals
and groups. Such theories conceive political decision making as bargains whose
legitimacy depends on the extent to which participants achieve some portion
of their prepolitical aims. Aggregative theories are remarkable for the questions
they exclude: what provides for the legitimacy of the rules of bargaining? Why
do losers often accept outcomes as legitimate? Can interests and identities
change in response to democratic experiences? Can individuals learn to become
better citizens as a result of participation? Are deliberative decisions better de-
cisionsmore rational or more just, for example?
While all deliberative democrats find such questions important, they do not
agree on what, exactly, the theoretical agenda ought to include. Some delib-
erative democrats are interested primarily in whether deliberation produces
more rational and just decisions, more consensus, or more community. In order
to conceive these goals, these theorists often recommend constraints on dem-
ocratic processes that would exclude behaviors that are uncivil, unruly, ill-inten-
tioned, and irrational. Young rightly notes that such approaches depoliticize
democracy. Every such constraint excludes, and every exclusion externalizes
conflicts that are then resolved, if at all, by nondeliberative means. By speaking
of inclusive democratic communication (p. 6), Young seeks to keep politics
front and center. She thus avoids the common temptation to stipulate commit-
ments to desirable outcomes as conditions of democratic processes. Of course,
if inclusion is not to trump deliberation, it is important to show that deliberative
effects can come with many forms of communication. In chapter 2, Young argues
that the more we can recognize deliberation in forms of communication that
do not look like argumentin rhetoric and narrative, for examplethe less
exclusive deliberative democracy will be.
Indeed, it is important to Youngs take on deliberative democracy that she
put inclusion in the foreground rather than deliberation, since the normative
legitimacy of a democratic decision depends on the degree to which those
affected by it have been included in the decision-making processes and have
had the opportunity to influence the outcomes (pp. 56). Young associates
three other norms with deliberative democracy as well: political equality, rea-
sonableness, and publicity. But her decision to highlight inclusion is strategic:
if we hold that democracy is, in the first instance, about including all potentially
affected by a decision, then we are less likely to confuse other ideals with de-
mocracy. And if we do not, then we can more clearly put the question of the
relationship between inclusion and, say, reasonableness. Moreover, if inclusion
takes priority, then deliberation follows, simply because inclusion means decision
makers are less able to make decisions using nondiscursive means. To be sure,
democracy is enhanced when other normspolitical equality, reasonableness,
and publicityhave presence. But it is also often the case that individuals be-
come more reasonable if they are included, that political equality is an incre-

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 Book Review 000

mental achievement that begins with inclusion, and that publicity follows when
more people are in the know. Moreover, political inclusion is the first element
in real struggles for more democracy.
The norm of inclusion has an important strategic relationship to justice as
well. Young follows Habermass discourse ethics in holding that a decision is
just when people deliberate under democratic conditionsthat is, when each
individual affected has the chance to influence the outcome, under circum-
stances in which only the powers of deliberation hold sway. As Young notes,
from a political perspective the ideal is circular: For a democracy to promote
justice it must already be just (p. 35). Since political situations are often defined
by injustices, a democratic theory that assumes ideal conditions does not have
any work to do. The norm of inclusion breaks the circularity: it is easier for
people to agree to inclusion in deliberations about justice than to establish justice
as a condition for deliberation. Young follows this important idea right through
to the final chapters of the book. The scope of democracy, she argues, should
be coextensive with the reach of justice. Following Onora ONeill, Young argues
that an agent stands in relations of justice with all those others whose actions
that agent assumes in the background of his or her own action (p. 223). It
follows that the scope of democratic empowerment ought to correspond to the
scope of obligations of justice incurred through such interdependency. If po-
litical conflicts are likely to include relations of injustice, then there is an intrinsic
connection among the domain of justice, the domain of politics, and the norm
of democratic inclusion.
Youngs conceptual design is principled without being apolitical. It is de-
manding, but in a way that exploits emerging, issue-based, postsovereignty forms
of governanceforms that increasingly follow issues out to civil society (chap.
5), down to regions and locales (chap. 6) as well as up to global venues
(chap. 7). In these chapters, Young addresses forms of governance that would
encompass complexity and differentiation, enable the autonomy of locales, while
having the capacities to address the higher-level structural injustices that come
with interdependencies. As many decisions as possible would devolve to local
and regional governments, as well as to the associative venues of civil society.
State and issue-segmented statelike global structures would enable, empower,
and equalize political actors in ways that would mitigate domination and en-
courage deliberative decision making. Young understands that differing modes
and levels of governance have differing strengths and weaknesses as venues of
democracy. Local government can enable more participation and can be atten-
tive to local differences but will lack capacities to deal with high-level structural
issues. Civil society venues enable self-determination but are weak in dealing
with oppressions that affect self-development in part because they lack high-
level structural capacities. One of the many virtues of Youngs formula is that it
breaks with several polarities that have defined much of the literature of pro-
gressive democracy, such as those of participation versus representation (both
are necessary in complex, large-scale societies) and localism versus high-level
governance (levels of governance should match the scale of the issue and the
kinds of tasks).
Chapters 3 and 4, on difference and group representation, extend and
refine Youngs previous work. Certain strains of democratic theory see group

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000 Ethics April 2002

identity-based claims as a threat to community, common goods, and rational

deliberation. Young shows how these fears depend on essentialist conceptions
of identity that lack credibility from a social-psychological perspective. Indeed,
the very concept of group identity is theoretically incoherent: individuals are
the bearers of identities, which they develop out of options structured in part
through group relations. What needs to be explained is why identity matters in
politics. The answer most of the time is that group differences are related to
other inequalities. As a political matter, then, identity is relational, and expla-
nations should be structuraland this means that democracy can do creative
work in recognizing and bridging differences when they become sources of
conflict. For such work to occur, of course, group differences must be repre-
sented, which is the argument of chapter 4. While other modes of representation
can get interests and opinions into the process, the justification for group rep-
resentation is epistemic: group location produces experiences that only group
members can represent, although others can come to understand these expe-
riences once they are represented. Finding mechanisms that do not freeze group
identities in place is a more difficult matter. Following Lani Guiniers excellent
proposals, Young notes that multimember districts with cumulative voting would
allow group identities to be represented, but with a fluidity that corresponds to
their political salience.
A book as good as this one invites critical engagement, and there are three
issues I would have liked addressed. As Young recognizes (e.g., in an incisive
discussion of residential segregation through self-selection), inclusion cannot be
a universal norm in a free society of self-governing individuals. Exclusion comes
with choice; it is undemocratic only when it supports oppression or domination.
But there remains much work to be done in understanding the kinds of exclusions
that enable deliberations in complex societieswhich will, of necessity, occur in
many different ways. Rules of exclusion, and maybe evensometimessecrecy,
can enable deliberative venues (such as consciousness-raising among disadvan-
taged minorities) to survive within highly strategic political situations. Can delib-
erative democrats say anything about desirable exclusions, mindful of the many
dangers? Second, it is often remarked that democracy requires time, and time is
scarce. Can an inclusive deliberative theory of democracy say anything about le-
gitimate nonparticipationin the form, say, of warranted trust or legitimate au-
thority? Third, what can political equality mean once the state, with its relatively
simple procedures of inclusion, is no longer the sole venue of democracy? If
complex interdependencies produce multiple democratic entitlements, the mean-
ing of political equality becomes much more complex as well. There are many
other issues, of course. Thanks to this book, progressive democrats should now
have a better sense of what they are.

Mark E. Warren
Georgetown University

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