RobinWilsonMeeting the Challenge of Diversity in EuropeCheltenham, UK and Northampton, Massachusetts: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018. 240 p. $120.00 (hardcover)

Abstract

This book is a wide-ranging effort to engage national, ethnic, and religious diversity in Europe. The author is polyvalent: academic, journalist, experienced player in the Northern Ireland reconciliation process, and senior consultant to the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe (CoE). The book commences with a call for a post-normal, non-positivist approach to diversity. The author is to be complimented on the rich fabric he weaves from economics, psychology, political and moral philosophy, neuroscience, etc.; all brought to bear on the dialectic of Self and Other. Where a modernist would pay more attention to objective interests than subjective perceptions, Wilson privileges the latter, to which he credibly attributes the rise of right-wing nationalist populism. Althusser's concept of interpellation brought in to good effect; a rare tribute from the mainstream to that unhappy philosopher. Chapter 1 sets the stage by describing the 2015 refugee crisis. This is at some risk of diverting the reader, since that was a one-off catastrophe. Additionally, Europe's long-term struggle is to deal with the Sisyphean rock of immigration, not refugee crises. The fundamental underlying demographic and economic forces driving European diversity deserved more attention, but that is not the author's strong suit. Chapter 2 perceptively analyzes the failure of the two traditional European approaches to diversity, assimilationism and multiculturalism. The first is static and rigid, inclining to cultural arrogance. The second leads to a cacophony of legitimacy claims and ultimately a sort of Hobbesian intolerance of all against all. In the place of these failed models, Wilson calls for “interculturalism” across the diversity board; cosmopolitanism minus rootlessness plus loyalty / solidarity. That, this critic comments, is nice work if you can get it; to which the author replies, with evidence-based argument, that you can get it if you try. Chapters 3 and 4 examine the “morbid symptoms” (Gramsci there) of the two failed models; symptoms that present so clearly that they need not detain the reader of this short review. In Chapter 5, the author goes off on a bit of a frolic of his own; grounding these failures in rotten European governance: Brussels’ kowtowing, against all advice since Bagehot, to the German compulsion to inject morality into the management of financial crises. The chapter, which could well stand alone, is the strongest in the volume, even if there is much in it with which this reader disagreed. It is easy, from Strasbourg, to pummel German ordo-liberal orthodoxy; it is more difficult to tackle Greece, Spain, and Italy for having borrowed at German rates to keep unsustainable social protection systems and petrified labor markets alive on the European Union (EU) respirator. The latter parts turn to the role of the CoE. Keeper of the flame of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and host to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) that adjudicates it, the 47-member state CoE—which has nothing to do with the EU—implements a triangle of standard setting, member compliance monitoring, and cooperation; that is, provision of donor-financed advice and projects to help its members address mutually identified shortcomings. From its origins in promoting core Enlightenment values, such as the right to life, right to a fair trial, freedom from torture, freedom of expression, etc., the CoE has broadened its sphere, in part out of conviction and in part out of financial incentive—intolerance, gender equality, football hooliganism, prescription drug counterfeiting, organ trafficking, etc. Promoting intercultural paths to social harmony was in line with this move to extensive margin, and Wilson played a major role in bringing this theme to Strasbourg, leading along the way a cooperation project on intercultural cities. Having trod the corridors of the CoE a bit himself, this reader was interested in this part of the story, but many readers of this review likely will not be. What goes before, though, is well worth reading by all interested in European [mis-] management of diversity. Bibliography; index.