Call for papers for the special issue on “Dialogues on democracy in transition: Social-psychological perspectives” celebrating the centenary of Eraldo De Grada’s birth
Guest Editors: Gilda Sensales*, Antonio Pierro*, Marino Bonaiuto*
Submissions:
Start by: September, 2025
End by: 31st, March, 2026
Expected publication: September 2026
Types of manuscripts: For this Special Issue, we accept Original Articles, Research Notes, and Annotated Bibliographies (Authors' Guide)
Dialogues on democracy in transition: Social-psychological perspectives
Former students of Eraldo De Grada (1925-2012), the founder and first leader of the Roman School of Social Psychology (see Mecacci, 1995, p. 28), have decided to dedicate a special issue to celebrate the centenary of his birth. The title "Dialogues on Democracy in Transition: Social-Psychological Perspectives" evokes the context where Eraldo De Grada took his first steps. Europe blossomed, and democracy recovered, in the years after the end of the Second World War and the dark years of Fascist and Nazi dictatorships. Scientists were called upon to find answers to the economic, social, and psychological causes of the involutional processes that had led to the outbreak of the war and to the atrocities committed by the dictatorships that had destabilized Western democratic structures in the first half of the twentieth century. The end of the war ushered in a period of significant intellectual momentum that operated in a world in transition and traversed by demands for social change, to which social scientists were called upon to contribute. The response to this call had not always been effective elsewhere, such as in the United States. From 1954 onwards, mainstream Social Psychology (SP), with its experimentalist and laboratory turn, was characterized by a sort of escape from social reality, in contrast to what had occurred during the war years when the very same SP had been actively involved in the war effort (Sensales, in press). During those same years, a tendency was developing in Europe to oppose the American turn that culminated in the so-called SP "crisis" of the 1970s. Thus, in Europe, critical perspectives and approaches took shape in order to revitalize our discipline. De Grada was a prominent member of that group of scholars who maintained an openness to the social as a foundational aspect of their scientific practice, without ever losing the firm ground of a solid methodological basis. He had directly experienced the impact of the loss of freedom during his time as a prisoner of war in Kenya from 1940 to 1947. That experience may have led him to take his first steps in the research world, engaging in the study of the authoritarian personality (Adorno et al., 1950). This study had strong social and political significance. The analysis of Adorno and colleagues (1950) would lead him to author the Italian translation of the authoritarianism scale and to implement surveys to test its validity (De Grada et al., 1975). In this effort to interpret social-psychological dynamics, he always avoided reductionist psychologizing distortions, aware of a continuous interchange between micro- and macro-level processes. Thus, at the conclusion of the volume entitled "Introduction to Social Psychology," he wrote, "Authoritarianism can be modified only by stripping it of its functions, its valorizations, its social supports, and this can only occur through a profound transformation of the social system that encourages and nourishes it" (De Grada, 1972, p. 227). Thus, his commitment as a researcher was based on the awareness of the close interdependence between psychological, social, and cultural factors. This ample view always accompanied him across his scientific endeavors and, together with a sharp attention to methodological rigor, was one if his great legacies to his students and colleagues. In contemporary times, we find ourselves in a new transition, which, however, seems opposite to that experienced in the post-war period. At that time, the society that emerged from a period of great political and social instability had the idea of building a more equal and free reality capable of curbing the power of the oligarchies that had brought the world to the brink of destruction. The blossoming of the European Union was one of the most remarkable epiphenomena of this global process. Today, about eighty years later, the rise of populism signals democracy’s precarious state of health. As Nadia Urbinati (2019), a student of Norberto Bobbio, points out, populism emerged in response to the failure of two promises of representative democracy (i.e., the "broken promises of democracy" outlined by Bobbio 2014), namely: 1) the reduction of economic and social inequalities; and 2) the downsizing of national and global oligarchies. These two promises have not only been unfulfilled but have turned into their opposite, with an unprecedented growth of inequalities fueled by fierce economic competition; and an authoritarian or hierarchical inegalitarianism that values politics as a race/contest that ensures the winner a superior position in the governance of society. Thus, a process emerges that allows the seizure of power by a single individual who proclaims him/herself the representative of a collective entity, the people. The leader/individual offers to effect remedial change concerning existing injustices, even at the cost of violating all democratic rules. In this way, a "disfigured democracy" (Urbinati, 2014) is created, according to which populism in power attacks representative democracy by implementing all possible measures to stabilize its position of power indefinitely. It is a process that demonstrates how populism requires democracy to assert itself but at the same time must deny it to preserve its position of dominance. Once populists have seized power, in the name of their presumed moral superiority, they claim to maintain it forever by altering the rules of respect for minorities and alternation, which are the basis of representative democracy. Autocratic systems thus spread, in which individual and social freedoms are challenged, initiating a transition from democracy to hybrid, or decidedly authoritarian, regimes as a response to a generalized framework of uncertainty that has made the broken promises of representative democracy more salient. As Sensales (2024) points out, citing Casas-Zamora (2023), the number of countries moving towards an authoritarian direction continues to triple the number of countries moving towards a democratic direction, demonstrating how representative democracy is an open system with historically determined forms and, therefore, subject to historical mutations, of which populism is a specificity. A conservative, no longer emancipatory, democracy can thus be affirmed. Through identity-based discourses, it builds divisions and barriers, erasing rights based on recognizing diversity and free choice values. In this complex and contradictory context, these processes are not given once and for all; rather, they require rejecting an apocalyptic vision by recognizing the significance of the symptoms that have allowed populism to assert itself in order to counter them.
In this highly problematic context, social psychologists are once again called upon to apply their expertise to existing social balances, disseminating knowledge; but also understanding that knowledge can be transformed into operational guidelines capable of resolving ongoing involutional processes. Social psychological concepts such as "conspiracy theory", "victimization", "identity tribalism” and other defensive forms of group or territorial attachment, “group-centrism,” "breakdown in social fabric”, “cultural backlash”, “cultural tightness”, “system justification”, “conservative shift”, “shared reality”, “extremism as motivational and attitudinal imbalance”, "need for cognitive closure", "need for meaning", "authoritarianism", "social dominance orientation", "leadership styles", "sustainability goals", “ecological or energy transition”, "ideological divide" and "linguistic sexism" are, among others, heuristic tools that can help us read, interpret, and transform social reality. In addition to the aforementioned contributions on authoritarianism, some of the other concepts mentioned above have been direct objects of Eraldo De Grada's studies (see, for example, Kruglanski, Pierro, Mannetti, De Grada, 2006), while others would certainly have challenged him to address them, including all the diverse methodological choices he favored (from mainstream to critical; De Grada, Bonaiuto, 2002).
The intention and hope is that the response to this call will provide a range of proposals that foster a dialogue among social scientists to help understanding, and possibly coping with, the current historical moment.
References
Adorno, T., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D., Sanford, N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. Harper & Row, New York City.
Bobbio, N. (2014). Il futuro della democrazia [The future of democracy]. Einaudi, Torino.
Casas-Zamora, K. (2022). Preface. In IDEA, Global state of democracy report 2022: Forging social contracts in a time of discontent (pp. IV–V). International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.
De Grada, E. (1972). Introduzione alla psicologia sociale [Introduction to social psychology]. Bulzoni Editore, Roma.
De Grada, E., Ercolani, A. P., Areni, A., Ardone, R. G., D’Atena, P., Badolato, G., Gaudenzi, M., & Leuzzi, A. (1975). Autoritarismo e Fascismo Potenziale [Authoritarianism and potential fascism]. Bulzoni Editore, Roma.
De Grada, E., Bonaiuto, M. (2002). Introduzione alla psicologia sociale discorsiva [Introduction to discursive social psychology]. Editori Laterza, Roma-Bari.
Mecacci, L. (1995). Storia della psicologia del Novecento [History of twentieth-century psychology]. Laterza Editore, Bari.
Kruglanski, A. W., Pierro, A., Mannetti, L., & De Grada, E. (2006). Groups as epistemic providers: Need for closure and the unfolding of group-centrism. Psychological Review, 113(1), 84–100.
Sensales, G. (2024). Concluding Remarks. In G. Sensales (Ed.), Political psychology perspectives on populism (pp. 437-468). Palgrave, Cham.
Sensales, G. (in press). Il delinearsi della psicologia sociale come scienza.
Riviste, interpreti, indirizzi di ricerca (1875-1954). [The emergence of social psychology as a science. Journals, interpreters, and research directions (1875-1954)]. Carocci Editore, Roma.
Urbinati, N. (2014). Democracy disfigured: Opinion, truth, and the people. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Urbinati, N. (2019). Me the people: How populism transforms democracy. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
