The Robust Federation: Principles of Design. By Jenna Bednar. (Cambridge University Press, 2009.)

idealized deliberative democracy. It will involve agonistic contestation between dominant and subordinate groups (125); and genuine democratic solidarity will be achieved only insofar as contestation over public memory in debates over minority group rights reveals ‘‘the existence of a state organized on the basis of both cultural difference and racial hierarchy’’ (171–72). Hooker offers provocative discussions of each of these topics. Her characterization of the U.S. liberal theorists Rawls and Dworkin as offering a version of multiculturalism is debatable, however, although this does not affect her substantive argument. The liberal multiculturalism of the Canadian theorists stands out partly because it provides a stark counterpoint to the liberal individualism of Rawls and Dworkin. The latter focus on class inequality, most famously in Rawls’s concern for the ‘‘least advantaged’’ members of society, and both are concerned with racial discrimination. Yet I would suggest that the fact that Rawls and Dworkin both treat racism as ‘‘epiphenomenal’’ (61–64) is best explained by their over-riding emphasis on class inequality. As with many early Marxist approaches to racism, they both seem to regard racial inequality as secondary to deeper classbased inequalities. Hooker herself downplays the intersection of race and class. She already covers substantial ground in a compact analysis, so this may be asking for too much. Nonetheless, her suggestion that we rethink the basis of political solidarity in diverse polities ‘‘as the product of structural conditions that require people to develop contingent solidarities’’ (37) begs for attention to the shifting political economy of class, race, and labor migrations as the next step in developing such a theory.