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.

Denial means rejecting the best knowledge we have about the state of the world. In its extreme (but not rare) manifestations, denial means that no amount of evidence or argument can change that rejection. The main forms of denial dealt with here concern climate change, Holocaust, election results, and pandemic. Chapter 6 examines the sources of denial in both the psychology of identity and in the political economy, which involves powerful interests such as fossil fuel corporations organizing denial, before moving on to the range of communicative responses to denial. The discussion here begins with the more obvious (and likely ineffective) responses of presenting the facts and promoting objectivity. More promising deliberative approaches involve communication and rhetoric that might reach denial via discursive bridges, and sometimes even draw deniers into deliberative interactions. If that fails, denial might be diverted or kept out of places in deliberative systems where it can do the most damage.

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.

Political extremists want to redefine and narrow who belongs and who does not in a society, often by trying to push groups such as immigrants, other ethnic groups, races, or religions out. This is what far-right extremists try to do. Redefinition can also mean trying to pull one’s own group out of society. This is what radical Islamists in Western societies try to do. Extremists of whatever variety have a common interest in fracturing the public sphere where broad-scale public deliberation is engaged. Non-deliberative approaches to extremism include bans and restrictions on extremist expression and consensus institutional designs to induce moderation. After noting their limitations, Chapter 5 turns to deliberative responses, beginning with the (limited) prospects for direct engagement with extremists. A multilayered approach involves starting with possibilities for reaching those who might be attracted to extremism (but also be attracted to other possibilities), deploying discursive psychology in the interests of building bridges. This approach then moves on to contemplation of the role that designed deliberative forums might play and finishes with a look at how performances by political leaders can try to set terms of discourse in the public sphere that can negate extremist appeals.