"This is an important book, with a clear message, well organized and well documented. Ever since Habermas, we have been flooded with theories of democracy that see it as a result of a consensus resulting from rational deliberation. But these theories have been largely normative and based on a priori assumptions about rationality. Reykowski's attempt is ground-breaking in seeking to establish individual and social psychological bases of consensus building. He invokes
a massive amount of empirical literature. Moreover, he has the distinction of having been a prominent participant in an event that best exemplifies the consensus building that he is after: the 1989 negotiations that led to the fall of communism in Poland. His account of these negotiations is
riveting."
Janusz Reykowski is Professor of Psychology at the Polish Academy of Science and co-founder and Chairman (until 2013) of the Academic Council of the Warsaw School of Social Psychology. He is a member of the Academia Europea, a Past President of the Polish Psychological Association, Past President of the International Society of Political Psychology, and an Honorary Member of the Polish Society of Social Psychology. In the last three decades, his
research has focused on political psychology, specifically on solving political conflicts and on the development of democratic attitudes. He has published 10 books and over 150 articles and chapters in various languages. He was also awarded the Sanford Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Political Psychology by the
International Society of Political Psychology.