The Possibilities and Limits of Dialogue in a World of Political Populisms: A Positional Editorial Reflection

On this occasion, this editorial article is a substantive and positional one in relation to the overall theme of this special edition of The Journal of Dialogue Studies which explores and engages with the possibilities and limits of dialogue in a world in which there would appear to be a rising tide of political populisms that have been challenging existing political norms, institutions, and processes.

The movements associated with such populisms have often been led by ‘charismatic’ leaders who make an appeal to ‘ordinary people’ over and against ‘the establishment’, in the process of which they employ contentious and polarising rhetoric which brings serious challenges to social cohesion, civility, and truth in public life.

In pursuing its overall argument, as well as briefly introducing each of the "Articles in This Special Issue", the article has sections which discuss: "Wedge Issues: Economic Distress and Culture Wars"; "Populist Waves of the Age and Some Turning of the Tides?"; Political Visioning, Populist Perspectives, and Progressive Politics".

It concludes that that dialogical engagement informed by intellectual clarity, political incisiveness, and practical wisdom is needed, especially if those populism(s) that are strongly informed by exclusionary approaches to certain groups within a society are actively to be challenged rather than to be indulged in the likely misleading hope that they will simply disappear on their own.

But in recognising and advocating for such possibilities, it also argues that it may be important to differentiate between the attempt – and arguably
also the imperative – dialogically to engage with individuals who may have
sympathy for or be members of organisations and parties that employ right-wing
populist tropes (and may do so out of a range of experiences, motivations and decisions), and the question of whether, in the public sphere, there are limits to such dialogical engagement and therefore that, while dialogue is likely to be of central importance for the ability of societies to be able to operate in an inclusive and therefore properly democratic way, dialogue is also unlikely to be completely and always sufficient and that, therefore, the defence and preservation of the foundational possibilities of a democratically dialogical inclusive society might, in the public sphere, make it appropriate or even necessary, if not also an imperative, to recognise the limits of dialogue and to adopt a more ‘distanced’ form of engagement as opposition to such organisations and parties.

And, finally, it concludes that at in at least some circumstances, it might also seem necessary through the rule of law also to place constraints upon their activities, but always within a context in which those so constrained are able, in principle and in practice, to contest such constraints through the reconsideration of relevant evidence in the context of democratically inclusive legal processes.