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.

Chapter 2 examines the capacities of citizens in light of what deliberative democracy seems to require of them. Skeptical survey researchers and psychologists think these capacities are conspicuously lacking and that what we see instead is widespread incapacity to make any sort of reasoned choice. And even when choices are made, they are under the influence of motivated reasoning that seeks evidence only to confirm existing positions that people hold and all kinds of biases that produce polarization. Thus we cannot expect more of democracy than existing electoral processes supply. Extreme skeptics suggest we should not expect even this and so recommend we dispense with democracy instead. We look at the skeptics’ charges and show in a reading of the available evidence why we think they are mistaken. We sketch a deliberative psychology that understands citizen competence and motivations as variables that can be invoked if the circumstances are right and so make essential contributions to countering the diabolical soundscape. We can explore these ideas in the context of deliberative forums, interpersonal networks, and the broader public sphere.

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.

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.

This chapter asks how political systems with deep-rooted democratic pathologies can be rebooted in a more deliberative direction, taking stock of the prospects for democratic repair and renewal in light of our analysis in the preceding chapters. It begins with possible reform of the representative institutions of liberal democratic states, in light of the fact that states with consensus institutions have higher quality public deliberation and stronger defenses against transgressions than do adversarial systems. Next the chapter examines how institutional democratic innovations such as mini-publics can contribute to democratic renewal, before exploring possibilities for more deliberative politicians and parties. Finally we take a citizen-centric view and discuss how a discursive infrastructure combining old and new media with personal networks and political activism can support democratic viability and vitality. A deliberative systems perspective means that no single institution or specific factor will drive democratic renewal, which rather depends on the interplay of the various factors we identify. Since this is not easy to imagine in the abstract, we apply this framework to an unhealthy system – the United States – and healthier ones – Germany and Switzerland. We finish with some take-home lessons for diabolical times.

Chapter 3 expands on the diabolical aspects of the contemporary political soundscape and develops initial deliberative responses to its key problematic aspects. These aspects include an overload of expression that overwhelms the reflective capacities of listeners; a lack of argumentative complexity in political life; misinformation and lies; low journalistic standards in “soft news”; cultural cognition, which means that an individual’s commitment to a group determines what gets believed and denied; algorithms that condition what people get to hear (which turn out to fall short of creating filter bubbles in which they hear only from the like-minded); incivility; and extremist media. The responses feature reenergizing the public sphere through means such as the cultivation of spaces for reflection both online and offline, online platform regulation and design, restricting online anonymity, critical journalism, media literacy education, designed forums, social movement practices, and everyday conversations in diverse personal networks. Formal institutions (such as legislatures) and political leaders also matter.

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.

While it is common to speak of the crisis of democracy, we prefer to speak of the multiplicity of diabolical challenges that democracy now confronts. Challenges are diabolical when they have multiple dimensions and are potentially catastrophic, subtle, and interconnected. But crucially, there are clever operators who have figured out how to prosper in this environment. The challenges include a problematic political soundscape, right-wing populism, extremism, denial, and authoritarianism, all of which are the subjects of subsequent chapters. We sketch the beginnings of a deliberative response to these challenges, which puts citizens at the center, while recognizing the importance of attending to elites. A deliberative constraint can restrict what elite operators can do. We set out the essential elements of deliberative democracy and how we understand its practice, especially in deliberative systems and the public sphere.