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.

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.

This chapter discusses the analysis of language attitudes as they are expressed in spoken interaction. Although the approach might be considered to have some limitations because it is generally confined to smaller samples of data, it offers valuable insights by providing greater contextualisation of attitudes as they are communicated, whilst also accounting for their fluid and shifting nature as they emerge in discourse. Key points of departure are ideas from discursive psychology and the application of discourse analysis to studying attitudes. The chapter proceeds to outline fundamental developments in this line of enquiry, ranging from work on discourse strategies to more recent research which has placed increasing focus on the elicitation and investigation of language attitudes in the context of interaction between the study participants. The chapter provides information on practical issues of planning and research design for such studies, followed by potential strategies for the analysis and interpretation of the resultant data. The main points arising from the discussion are illustrated by a case study undertaken in the post-industrial urban Ruhr region in Germany, where attitudes towards the local variety – Ruhrdeutsch – were investigated.

Our focus is on three key aspects of self-identity, continuity, uniqueness, and agency. They have been researched from a diverse range of theoretical and methodological perspectives. Our aim is to articulate the different ways in which these intangible qualities have been translated into objects of research and knowledge, and the assumptions that researchers make in the service of that translation. Our broader aim is to use studies taken from the wide-ranging literature to show the correspondence between theoretical assumptions and the rationale for asking certain kinds of questions; between assumptions made about the ontology of each phenomenon and the methodology used to render it researchable. For example, questions about why we think we are stable or how we balance needs for uniqueness and sameness presuppose that stability is merely a perception, or that we are biological or cognitive beings. Furthermore, different epistemological assumptions determine what kind of object is researched: a measurable “psychological object,” a discursive practice, or an experience. They determine whether it is located within the person, in narratives or interactions, or beyond the discourse. Showing how assumptions are realized brings into sharp relief the important subjective element in researching self-identity which is manifested in the choices and the decisions we make. In conclusion, we outline two key challenges for identity researchers: one is to make explicit the assumptions and decisions that drive the research, and the second is to consider whose interests are addressed; the researcher’s conceptual or participants’ practical concerns.