Rights, Democracy, and Fulfillment in the Era of Identity Politics: Principled Compromises in a Compromised World.

Vol. 14 No.10 (October 2004), pp.826-828

RIGHTS, DEMOCRACY, AND FULFILLMENT IN THE ERA OF IDENTITY POLITICS: PRINCIPLED COMPROMISES IN A COMPROMISED WORLD, by David Ingram. Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. 280pp. Paper. $27.95. ISBN: 0742533484. Cloth. $75.00. ISBN:0742533476.

Reviewed by Catherine Dauvergne, Canada Research Chair in Migration Law, Faculty of Law, University of British Columbia. Email: dauvergne@law.ubc.ca

David Ingram is an American optimist. Reading RIGHTS, DEMOCRACY AND FULFILLMENT IN THE ERA OF IDENTITY POLITICS: PRINCIPLED COMPROMISES IN COMPROMISED WORLD is, therefore, an uplifting experience. I am left with a lingering and diffuse desire to be a better scholar and a better person, and only a modicum of concern about the gap between what we see out the window – or through the window of CNN – and what Ingram argues. This has often been my experience with political philosophy, and it is wildly unfair to Ingram that I am a feminist Canadian immigration lawyer rather than a political philosopher.

The point of my appearance in the first paragraph is that Ingram’s argument takes up the thorny politics of identity. He focuses on the tension between the potentially divisive politics of identity and the universalizing effects of democratic decision-making. To resolve this tension (because when one is an optimist, tensions do get resolved), he turns to Lyotard and draws on the concept of two types of identity politics: separatist-preservative identity politics and syncretist-transformative identity politics. Ingram makes productive use of this distinction throughout the book. To my mind, separatist-preservative identity politics covers most of what is currently happening on this front. Syncretist-transformative identity politics are a form of democratic interaction marked by an openness and attentiveness to the identities of others, leading to transformations of both politics and identities.

While Ingram believes that it is only syncretist-transformative identity politics that are ultimately able, in a participatory democratic framework, to move beyond divisive standoffs, he nonetheless recognizes the value of separatist-preservative identity politics under present, flawed, circumstances. This is the value of keeping a focus on the compromised world of his title. His engagement with identity politics is important to extending the appeal of his argument to those who have despaired of democratic solutions in the face of utterly incommensurate difference. He is strongly focused on addressing precisely this type of intransigence.

Ingram is at all times focused on the role of participatory democracy in resolving political impasse, both at the national and the international level. Ultimately he argues for participatory democratic global governance, supported by a through and through democratization of politics at all levels ‘below’ the global to support a truly meaningful global democratic structure. He proposes some [*827] specific reforms of the UN system, and embraces some proposals put forward by others (such as Young’s Peoples’ Assembly as a replacement for the UN General Assembly), arguing overall for the development of legislative, executive and judicial capacity on the international plane. Ingram is fully aware that the challenge of building these global institutions pales in comparison with the challenge of developing the multilayered democratic structures which would support them from below.

Identity politics plays a somewhat lesser role in the latter part of the book, and I missed it. I would have liked to have the role of syncretist-transformative politics at the global level spelled out more directly, step by step. This may go, again, to why Ingram strikes me as an optimist – it may extend to an optimism about the learning curve of readers like me.

In developing the argument from identity politics to global participatory democracy, Ingram traverses the scope of (American) electoral politics, the rule of law, human rights, disability discrimination, and global capitalism. The book is rigorously argued and strongly supported. Ingram stakes out his argument at many levels by contrasting Rawls’ contractarianism with Habermas’ discourse ethics, but goes beyond Habermas to craft his own contributions and compromises. The book is multilayered and will speak to many readers across a range of concerns.

I was, perhaps predictably in an identity politics sort of way, particularly interested in Ingram’s analysis of the law. He traces the rise and fall of the American legal realist movement and links it to the struggle for workplace democracy. Building on this trajectory, he isolates a progressive political strand within the legal realist movement (which I might find to be more than a strand) and draws a parallel between this ‘best’ of the legal realists and a discourse ethical account of law. Moving from this account, he offers an explanation for legal decision-making which turns to participatory democratic norms to give substance to the values of fairness and integrity. His analysis pushes beyond both Dworkin and Habermas, but they provide clear antecedents. In this chapter, he makes a thoughtful contribution to the persistent centre of legal theory: what the law is and how it can or should assert a distinction from pure politics.

Ingram uses immigration as a test case for his analysis of perfectable human rights. This is, in my view, the right choice. Immigration is in many ways the starkest challenge to liberal thought. Communitarian analysis supports closing borders. Liberal individualism supports opening them. The twain has not met. Ingram knows this and begins from this point of departure. He looks to the globalized and compromised world to structure his analysis of immigration. He avoids both the Rawlsian trap of assuming immigration away and the Habermasian partial defense of community. In short, what I best like about Ingram’s work is that he tackles the immigration dilemma head on.

What troubles me about his tackling is that he finds a solution. This solution lies in a compromise between national communities’ ability to protect their identities (and some more than others) [*828] and a requirement that immigrants who are willing to integrate to procedural values being admitted. What this means is not clear enough to me, but my hesitancy here may simply return to the fact that Ingram is a better optimist than I. He slips over a distinction between immigrants and refugees which lawyers like myself think is important, and he makes a tantalizing reference to the importance of citizenship rights, which I wanted to hear more about. I have argued before that the liberal dilemma about immigration cannot be resolved. Ingram has left me thinking (maybe even wishing) that I may need to reconsider this. Not for the day to day workings of contemporary domestic or global politics, but because of the place of utopian theory. We cannot move toward something if we cannot yet even imagine it.

Well, in addition to being a lawyer with immigration concerns, I did say that I am also a Canadian and a feminist. So switching the kaleidoscope of my own identity just a notch, each of these perspectives made me somewhat cautious about Ingram’s analysis. Ingram is attentive to feminist analysis at some points, and makes interesting use of the ethic of care. At other points, however, I think he could draw further lessons from feminist theory. He asserts the public-private divide as a key part of the move towards syncretist-transformist identity politics. This skips over the difficulty that feminists have long troubled over of maintaining any control over what and where the divide divides, and over how to solve the ‘private’ problems that fuel much of separatist-preservative identity politics. At several junctures in the book, women and racialized minorities are analogized in a way that begs theoretical support.

Ingram is also (and I admit I was surprised) attentive to Canada. From the Charter of rights to Canadian labour law and Quebec politics, Ingram is on familiar terms with Canada. Pessimist that I am, I did wonder if Canada has solved as many dilemmas as Ingram suggests. (He is also remarkably knowledgeable about Islam.)

Is there any problem, then, with being an American optimist? The book is strongly anchored in American politics and American law, yet aspires to the global. It may not matter terribly that some democratic or human rights analysis that would emerge from Canada, Australia, Europe or the global South are not represented here. The United States is such a dominant player in global politics at present that small challenges from afar are hardly worth raising. I do recognize this. Moving global politics to a different place, requires moving America to a different place. To this end, more American optimists are needed. Ingram’s work is an important contribution to this goal.

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