Abstract The Dispersion of Power is an urgent call to rethink centuries of conventional wisdom about what democracy is, why it matters, and how to make it better. Drawing from history, social science, psychology, and critical theory, it explains why elections do not and cannot realize the classic ideal of popular rule, and why prevailing strategies of democratic reform often make things worse. Instead, Bagg argues, we should see democracy as a way of protecting public power from capture—an alternative vision that is at once more realistic and more inspiring. Despite their many shortcomings, real-world elections do prevent the most extreme forms of tyranny, and are therefore indispensable. In dealing with the vast inequalities that remain, however, we cannot rely on standard solutions such as electoral reform, direct democracy, deliberation, and participatory governance. Instead, Bagg shows, protecting and enriching democracy requires addressing underlying inequalities of power directly. In part, this entails substantive policies attacking the advantages of wealthy elites. Even more crucially, deepening democracy requires the organization of oppositional, countervailing power among ordinary people. Neither task is easy, but historical precedents exist in both cases—and if democracy is to survive contemporary crises, leaders and citizens alike must find ways to revive and reinvent these essential democratic practices for the twenty-first century.
The Myth of Authoritarian Efficiency
When it comes to getting stuff done, democracies win every time.
Five dimensions of scaling democratic deliberation: With and beyond AI
DemocracyNext's new paper on Five dimensions of scaling democratic deliberation: With and beyond AI
Cambridge Analytica and the end of elections
The latest Cambridge Analytica leaks show just how compromised voting - one of the pillars of democracy - has become.
Priorities | celeste4sos.com
The right to vote, better representation and election integrity.
Verification, Deliberation, Accountability: A new framework for tackling epistemic collapse and renewing democracy
Demos is Britain’s leading cross-party think-tank. We produce original research, publish innovative thinkers and host thought-provoking events.
The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission
The Crisis of Democracy: On the Governability of Democracies was initially a 1975 report written by Michel Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington, and Joji Watanuki for the Trilateral Commission and later published as a book. The report observed the political state of the United States, Europe and Japan and says that in the United States the problems of governance "stem from an excess of democracy" and thus advocates "to restore the prestige and authority of central government institutions."
Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development
Under anarchy, uncoordinated competitive theft by “roving bandits” destroys the incentive to invest and produce, leaving little for either the population or the bandits. Both can be better off if a bandit sets himself up as a dictator—a “stationary bandit” who monopolizes and rationalizes theft in the form of taxes. A secure autocrat has an encompassing interest in his domain that leads him to provide a peaceful order and other public goods that increase productivity. Whenever an autocrat expects a brief tenure, it pays him to confiscate those assets whose tax yield over his tenure is less than their total value. This incentive plus the inherent uncertainty of succession in dictatorships imply that autocracies will rarely have good economic performance for more than a generation. The conditions necessary for a lasting democracy are the same necessary for the security of property and contract rights that generates economic growth.
Democracy and the Epistemic Commons - The Consilience Project
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From Democracies to Autocracies: How AI Systems Enable Authoritarianism by Design
AI-enabled authoritarianism is not confined to autocracies. In this paper, we provide greater transparency by investigating and mapping the lifecycles of six AI systems deployed in different political regimes, ranging from the US to China. By drawing on an extensive range of sources (academic publications, investigative research reports, third-party evaluations, media interviews, government procurement notices), we conduct a systematic, qualitative comparison across systems to identify the critical technical and operational features that enable authoritarianism within their respective political contexts. We find that enabling features include the centralization and co-optation of administrative data for law enforcement and political punishment, regulatory gaps that fail to deter misuse, weak user compliance that nullifies human oversight mechanisms, and the encoding of protected group traits that identify members of vulnerable populations. We find that these features are present across systems deployed in autocratic and democratic regimes, albeit in varying configurations. We also find that both centralized and fragmented AI systems can contribute to authoritarianism by exploiting governance gaps: centralized systems directed by executive authorities, particularly within security and military institutions, are often not subjected to formal oversight mechanisms, while fragmented systems diffuse accountability between stakeholders, paving the way for entrenchment. These findings reveal that AI-enabled authoritarianism is distributed, resulting from design and operational choices made by developers, administrators, and users alike. We conclude with recommendations for developers and policymakers to mitigate these risks.
From Democracies to Autocracies: How AI Systems Enable Authoritarianism by Design
AI-enabled authoritarianism is not confined to autocracies. In this paper, we provide greater transparency by investigating and mapping the lifecycles of six AI systems deployed in different political regimes, ranging from the US to China. By drawing on an extensive range of sources (academic publications, investigative research reports, third-party evaluations, media interviews, government procurement notices), we conduct a systematic, qualitative comparison across systems to identify the critical technical and operational features that enable authoritarianism within their respective political contexts. We find that enabling features include the centralization and co-optation of administrative data for law enforcement and political punishment, regulatory gaps that fail to deter misuse, weak user compliance that nullifies human oversight mechanisms, and the encoding of protected group traits that identify members of vulnerable populations. We find that these features are present across systems deployed in autocratic and democratic regimes, albeit in varying configurations. We also find that both centralized and fragmented AI systems can contribute to authoritarianism by exploiting governance gaps: centralized systems directed by executive authorities, particularly within security and military institutions, are often not subjected to formal oversight mechanisms, while fragmented systems diffuse accountability between stakeholders, paving the way for entrenchment. These findings reveal that AI-enabled authoritarianism is distributed, resulting from design and operational choices made by developers, administrators, and users alike. We conclude with recommendations for developers and policymakers to mitigate these risks.
Democracy has Hamlet’s Problem: The Search for Relevance in a Complex World
To cope with the complexity of the world, cognitively limited agents must employ framing to identify what is relevant and stabilise meaning. Yet democracy rests on the Popperian fallibilist imperat...
Democracy is an epistemic discipline, it only works if truth can constrain power. Without a faster, more transparent architecture for shared reality, the arc of democracy bends away from substance, through simulation, and toward authoritarianism. Without major action, it's the inevitable end state.
It can also be argued that authoritarianism is just politically superior at administering a political economy of broken promises and stagnating or falling standards of living. hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674976788
The Triumph of Broken Promises — Harvard University Press
www.hup.harvard.edu🧵 Democracy feels like it's in a rough state at the moment across the globe, and we hear various explanations, like polarisation, extremism, disinformation, and loss of trust. But what if those explanations are mainly symptoms and we've been trying to treat them rather than the underlying causes?
Fix the internet, save democracy
The internet has evolved into a state that is actively hostile towards global democracy. A thesis is emerging that to save global democracy, you must fix the internet.
The IndieWeb Is Punk Manifesto
The Retweeting Class
Funding The Web: From Cartel to Covenant
Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech
The architecture of the internet creates risks for democracy
