Since the rise of states and empires, most people have lived under authoritarian regimes, and authoritarianism has made a comeback after a brief few decades in which liberal democracy looked like it was on the road to dominating the global stage. However, while still existing in some countries, the straightforwardly coercive authoritarian style has become hard to sustain. The new authoritarianism is more subtle in how it secures power, using seemingly democratic devices, including deliberative ones. Authoritarian devices are increasingly deployed by leaders in nominally democratic states. Authoritarianism is also a problem for democracy if it is embodied in the political attitudes held by significant numbers of citizens, including in states that remain democracies. Chapter 7 develops responses to the old authoritarianism, the new state authoritarianism (paying special attention to China), creeping authoritarianism in democratic states (such as the United States, Poland, and Hungary), and authoritarian attitudes. Contestatory public deliberation enters in different ways in the first three of these contexts, but cultivation of a democratic public sphere to resist authoritarians is always important. Drawing on discursive psychology, people with authoritarian attitudes may be drawn into deliberative engagement given that such people may have access to both authoritarian and democratic discourses.

Most people in most societies do not fall into the four problematic categories of populists, extremists, deniers, and authoritarians. It is important to consider deliberation involving everybody else in these diabolical times. We could then get a deliberative democracy and a citizenry that are robust in the face of the threats to democracy and that can join in with deliberation against these threats. Equally important in light of the specific concerns we have raised in the previous four chapters, truly inclusive and effective public deliberation should reduce the proportion of people who, out of despair at the democratic alternatives, find themselves attracted to the four problematic positions. This includes allegiant citizens satisfied with existing democratic institutions, dissatisfied citizens, and critical citizens who want to participate more. We then turn to categories of people whose voice ought to be facilitated more effectively in public deliberation, including the working class, women, and marginalized cultural groups. Different deliberative forms are likely to attract different kinds of citizens, which suggests a variety of differentiated practices ranging from contestatory deliberation to more constructive and respectful deliberation oriented to the common good, all of which can join active resistance to anti-democratic transgressions and contribute to democratic renewal.

Right-wing populism has been widely implicated in the destabilization of democracy in traumatic events such as the presidency of Donald Trump. Chapter 4 examines the cultural, economic, and communicative aspects of populism and its origins, addressing arguments for including populist parties and leaders more effectively in conventional party politics, before moving on to a deliberative response. It may be possible to engage citizens attracted to populism (though not leaders) in deliberative terms. Populist leaders can be demagogues uninterested in abiding by democratic norms of any sort, least of all deliberative ones, though it might be possible to induce somewhat better democratic behavior on their part. Populist citizens are more promising in deliberative and democratic terms because some of their concerns and insecurities have a reasonable core: society really is dominated by an elite, just not the one that populist leaders stress. This core could be reached by deliberation, however much its concerns have been more effectively exploited by demagogues to date. Discursive psychology can be deployed in thinking about deliberative bridges to populist citizens. Populist citizens may be attracted to democratic innovations such as deliberative mini-publics. Contestatory deliberation involving democratic activism can counter populist leaders.