I stake out a contemporary context in which democracy seems to be under attack from the populist right, and neglected by parts of the progressive left caught up with a politics of the personal. In a polarised world, persuading others to change their sense of who they are has become more difficult. I draw on Jonathan Haidt to show how most decisions are made on the basis of emotion rather than reason. Hannah Arendt and Chantal Mouffe argue for the importance of public argument and the theatricality of political life, prioritising social roles over personal authenticity. From a liberal perspective, Judith Shklar speaks to the inevitability of hypocrisy in democratic politics. Matthew Flinders, Alan Finlayson and David Runciman are contemporary theorists who identify the need for political science to take on the problem of rhetoric. From truth and hypocrisy, I turn to the question of representation. A democratic politician represents those who vote for her or him much as an actor in a play represents a character. Theatre offers a lens through which to contemplate problems of selfhood and identity, and the paradox of the sincere liar.

While the political aspect of the traditionalist quest for prescriptive Christianity has been central to the story from the start, this chapter examines, first, the complicated way that religious and political norms are intertwined in American history and dependent on whether the Christian community is in a position of power or not. Second, the chapter examines two aspects of Christian identity that are especially important in understanding contemporary American politics: (1) a global Christian identity that understands Christians as those persecuted by godless secular society, and (2) an antignostic identity that understands Christians as those who wage war against “gnosticism,” a term applicable to whatever conservative Christians are currently combatting in the political sphere.

This chapter explores the place of compromise in transitional justice. While all-pervasive in politics, compromise is a neglected topic, almost a non-topic, within the current transitional justice literature. The chapter is an attempt to reverse this tendency and rehabilitate the notion of compromise. If, as pluralists hold, we are often faced with cases of hard moral choices where, whatever we do, something of value is irreparably lost, then the best we can hope for is some kind of acceptable compromise between clashing goods. The question about the limits of compromise thus features centrally in this chapter. How far should transitional societies go in their willingness to compromise? When is a compromise acceptable, fair, guided by principle, and when is it rotten to the core, simply illegitimate? To what extent is it acceptable to compromise deeply held values such as justice and truth for the sake of other equally important values such as, say, civil peace and democracy? While doubtful that we can settle such issues once and for all, the chapter identifies a range of questions that should be part of the collective conversation about when a political compromise is acceptable and when it is not. The discussion begins, however, with a concrete historical figure, the communist leader Joe Slovo, who played a critical role in South Africa’s negotiated transition from apartheid to democracy. Slovo’s reflections on the nature and limits of compromise in the South African context serve as a central reference point for my discussion throughout this chapter.

This chapter examines pitfalls in current methodological approaches to studying secular apocalyptic thought and proposes an alternative. Over a half-century ago, Judith Shklar and Hans Blumenberg argued that secular apocalyptic thought is an unhelpful and vague concept, which too often functions as a rhetorical weapon. Their critiques largely have been neglected. I make the case for taking these critiques seriously and suggest a strategy to address them: the study of secular apocalyptic thought should focus on examples where secular thinkers explicitly reference religious apocalyptic texts, figures, and concepts so as to avoid making spurious connections and reading into texts influences that are not there.

The chapter argues that the use of fear techniques as a tool of authoritarian governance is central to the reconception of law on anti-liberal and anti-rationalist terms in China’s Xi Jinping era. The changes discussed here impede attempts to continue the legal reform process that began under Deng Xiaoping. To the extent that rule by fear is inherent to authoritarian governance, developments in China expose tensions within the wider project of authoritarian legality and call its chances of success into question. These developments pose challenges to a global community more widely struggling with democratic–liberal decline and authoritarian resurgence. Yet, the Chinese example also indicates that rule by fear is itself prone to challenges from a thus far resilient civil society.