Will Kymlicka's Multicultural Odysseys is an impressive evaluation of the effort to deploy liberal multiculturalism as a model for addressing ethnic and racial hierarchies in Western democracies, post-communist states and post-colonial states. While the title indicates that Kymlicka sees the difficult path of multiculturalism around the world as a collection of odysseys, a better analogy might be a long car-trip with one's parents, sitting restlessly in the backseat yelling, “Are we there yet?” To be clear, I am referring here to the effort to address group-based hierarchies, not Kymlicka's book, which is a serious, comprehensive study that area scholars and political theorists alike will find reasons to engage with, learn from, and likely argue with. In general, Kymlicka finds Western liberal democracies succeeding, on balance, in legitimating and practising a liberal form of multiculturalism, which adheres to norms “inspired by underlying liberal values of freedom, equality, and democracy” (18). On the other hand, he discovers that the effort of international organizations to encourage this development in post-communist and post-colonial states has generally failed, for conceptual, conditional and security reasons. It is with regard to this latter set of findings especially that the book's narrative assumes the tone of a lamentation for a lost opportunity to seriously address group-based hierarchies.

The book is composed of eight chapters divided into three parts, the first being “The (Re-) Internationalization of State-Minority Relations.” By Kymlicka's account, the assumption that recognition of minority rights would destabilize states and threaten universal human rights ceded way in the 1980s to a view that sub-state minority groups have at least a “right to enjoy one's culture” and that indigenous peoples have a “right to (internal) self-determination” (36). He sees two key factors encouraging this shift in the international world-view; one is the fear of the “spread of ethnic violence after the collapse of Communism,” and the second is the “hope for the possibility of a viable liberal–democratic form of multiculturalism” (48). The result of this shift is that now a “‘normal’ or ‘modern’ state is one that recognizes minority and indigenous rights,” and any state that refuses to do so endangers its status in or entry into the “club of liberal democracies” (43).

Part 2 seeks to “make sense” of liberal multiculturalism by unearthing its origins and forms and evaluating its accomplishments, especially in Western democracies. As to origins, Kymlicka places multiculturalism as the third stage in the twentieth-century human rights revolution, with global decolonization and desegregation in the United States standing as the first and second stages respectively (91). As to forms, the “three general trends” that have emerged are defined in relation to those who fall under the three categories of indigenous peoples, sub-state/minority nationalisms and immigrant groups, with a policy index of targeted differentiated rights for each composed by the author in collaboration with Keith Banting (66–74). To this reviewer, Kymlicka's most convincing positive evaluation is that the “sort of multiculturalism that has emerged within the West has transformed nation building, not replaced it” (83). This transformation has directed a clear challenge against both the dominant national majority's claim to the state and to the assimilatory norm of policies directed towards or of concern to minority groups. This is where multiculturalism claims its most laudable advance, as in so-called liberal multicultural states “ethnic politics has become ‘normal’ politics, operating within peaceful and legal channels” (166). But this advance, important as it is, has its limits. In this regard, consider the status of indigenous nations in the various settler states and that of African-Americans in the United States. For indigenous nations, Kymlicka acknowledges that the next step may well require solutions that adhere to liberal norms but do not “depend exclusively or primarily on the authority of the settler state's institutions” (152). But maybe the priority should be on first addressing the yet to be completed decolonization stage in settler contexts, as the primary focus on liberal norms may be putting the cart before the horse. As it concerns African-Americans, ironically, while the desegregation stage in the human rights revolution is a product of African-American struggles and politics, one can hardly find any consistent application of liberal multiculturalism meant to resolve their subordinate status in the American racial hierarchy. Maybe, again, the cart is before the horse here, where the desegregation stage and its critical linkages to addressing historic and contemporary racial injustices remains incomplete, forestalling meaningful racial equality. Kymlicka asserts “cautious optimism” about liberal multiculturalism in Western democracies (167), but looking forward I would keep my eye on the status of indigenous nations and African Americans to better determine whether pessimism or optimism is most warranted.

Understandably, Kymlicka reserves his deepest concern for the negligible advance of liberal multiculturalism in the rest of the globe. In the book's introduction he sets out the three central problems with this effort: i) confusion about the categories that define types of minorities and their attendant rights; ii) the problem of “conditions and sequencing” in the development of state institutions and practices; and iii) the possible threat to “justice and security” presented by increasing ethno-political mobilization (8–9). These three issues dominate part 3, “Paradoxes in the Global Diffusion of Liberal Multiculturalism,” which looks first at the European experiment after the collapse of Communism (chap. 6) and then at the global challenge concerning post-colonial states (chap. 7). For both, Kymlicka finds three main approaches to advancing liberal norms and minority rights: i) publicizing best practices; ii) devising minimum legal, liberal norms; and iii) formulating case-specific solutions. The results of these efforts are disheartening, and the overall theme of both chapters is summed up by the author's use of terms such as “schizophrenic” and “contradictory” to describe the messages conveyed by the international community to post-communist and post-colonial states. Given Kymlicka's political and intellectual investment in the liberal multicultural project, it is to his credit that Multicultural Odysseys offers an unsparing and often bleak look into its prospects, and still he refuses to surrender its aims. In all, Kymlicka has given us his sense of the lay of the land, and the sweeping breadth of the picture he paints is one that anyone concerned with racial and ethnic hierarchies cannot ignore. It provides a challenge and guideposts to figure out not so much if we are there yet, but what exactly there is supposed to look like.