On Authority

Legitimacy, Authority, and Democratic Duties of Explanation

Abstract Increasingly secret, complex, and inscrutable computational systems are being used to intensify existing power relations and to create new ones; in particular, they are being used to govern. To be all-things-considered morally permissible new, or newly intense, power relations must meet standards of procedural legitimacy and proper authority. This is necessary for them to protect and realise democratic values of individual liberty, relational equality, and collective self-determination. For governing power in particular to be legitimate and have proper authority, it must meet a publicity requirement: reasonably competent members of the governed community must be able to determine that they are being governed legitimately and with proper authority. The publicity requirement can be satisfied only if the powerful can explain their decision-making to members of their political community. At least some duties of explanation are therefore democratic duties. This chapter first sets out the foregoing argument, then applies it to opaque computational systems, and clarifies precisely what kinds of explanations are necessary to fulfil these democratic values.

The Authoritarian Stack: Mapping Big Tech’s Capture of State Power - Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung

A new project exposes the infrastructure of techno-oligarchic control — and why Europe must act

Human-Computer Insurrection: Notes on an Anarchist HCI

The HCI community has worked to expand and improve our consideration of the societal implications of our work and our corresponding responsibilities. Despite this increased engagement, HCI continues to lack an explicitly articulated politic, which we argue re-inscribes and amplifies systemic oppression. In this paper, we set out an explicit political vision of an HCI grounded in emancipatory autonomy - an anarchist HCI, aimed at dismantling all oppressive systems by mandating suspicion of and a reckoning with imbalanced distributions of power. We outline some of the principles and accountability mechanisms that constitute an anarchist HCI. We offer a potential framework for radically reorienting the field towards creating prefigurative counterpower - systems and spaces that exemplify the world we wish to see, as we go about building the revolution in increment.

Human-Computer Insurrection: Notes on an Anarchist HCI

The HCI community has worked to expand and improve our consideration of the societal implications of our work and our corresponding responsibilities. Despite this increased engagement, HCI continues to lack an explicitly articulated politic, which we argue re-inscribes and amplifies systemic oppression. In this paper, we set out an explicit political vision of an HCI grounded in emancipatory autonomy - an anarchist HCI, aimed at dismantling all oppressive systems by mandating suspicion of and a reckoning with imbalanced distributions of power. We outline some of the principles and accountability mechanisms that constitute an anarchist HCI. We offer a potential framework for radically reorienting the field towards creating prefigurative counterpower - systems and spaces that exemplify the world we wish to see, as we go about building the revolution in increment.

To Repress or to Co‐opt? Authoritarian Control in the Age of Digital Surveillance

This article studies the consequences of digital surveillance in dictatorships. I first develop an informational theory of repression and co-optation. I argue that digital surveillance resolves dicta...

Fascists and Rakes

It feels like most people have a moral intuition along the lines of "you should let people do what they want, unless they're hurting other people". We follow this guideline, and we expect other people to follow it. I'll call this the permissiveness principle, that behaviour should be permitted by default. When someone violates the permissiveness principle, we might call them a fascist, someone who exercises control for the sake of control.

Psychological Perspectives on Legitimacy and Legitimation

Legitimacy is a psychological property of an authority, institution, or social arrangement that leads those connected to it to believe that it is appropriate, proper, and just. Because of legitimacy, people feel that they ought to defer to decisions and rules, following them voluntarily out of obligation rather than out of fear of punishment or anticipation of reward. Being legitimate is important to the success of authorities, institutions, and institutional arrangements since it is difficult to exert influence over others based solely upon the possession and use of power. Being able to gain voluntary acquiescence from most people, most of the time, due to their sense of obligation increases effectiveness during periods of scarcity, crisis, and conflict. The concept of legitimacy has a long history within social thought and social psychology, and it has emerged as increasingly important within recent research on the dynamics of political, legal, and social systems.

Is Socialism Undemocratic?

Socialism is often conflated with authoritarianism. But historically, socialists have been among democracy's staunchest advocates.

Time and the Neo-Monarchist Turn

One of the classical arguments against democracy concerns its supposed short-termism. Early-modern political thought contrasted the pitfalls of elected authority, whose timebound character was seen to invite inconstancy, instability and plunder, with the merits of indefinite rule on the model of kingship. Such reasoning has seen two revivals in recent years, first in a neo-liberal form as an argument for technocracy (see independent central banking), second in a neo-reactionary form as an argument for an all-powerful executive or ‘monarch’ (see the contemporary international far Right). This article looks at the structure of these political arguments and the work they do. Having reconstructed their historical background, it charts how the neo-monarchist turn marks a radicalisation in democracy-scepticism, guided by a patrimonial logic of authority as property ownership. The article goes on to examine the political-economic factors to which this responds, as well as the contradictions to which neo-monarchism is prone. As the article concludes, temporal arguments for authoritarian politics may be dubious in substance but merit careful observation in a context of widespread disaffection with existing institutions.

Obeying Nobody: Public Service and the Ordinary Evil of Administration - Roy L. Heidelberg, 2026

This essay explores administrative evil by reconsidering it through Weber’s ideal-type of bureaucracy and Arendt’s concerns over the bureaucratization of social...

Whitepaper — The Collective Intelligence Project

I. Capitalist Acceleration: Sacrificing safety for progressII. Authoritarian Technocracy: Sacrificing participation for safetyIII. Shared Stagnation: Sacrificing progress for participation

Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization by …

How Control Exists after Decentralization by Galloway, …

'Composable Moderation' May Protect Bluesky from Political Pressure | TechPolicy.Press

Shifting enforcement away from a single platform and into a distributed ecosystem should blunt interference by authoritarians, writes Audrey Hingle.

Palantir's social media manifesto is a blueprint for technofascism

The surveillance firm’s viral X post calls for hard power, conscription and the end of pluralism. AI expert and academic Mark Coeckelbergh on what happens when technology becomes the gateway to authoritarianism

Researchers Detail How AI Systems Can Enable Authoritarianism

A new preprint study of authoritarianism-enabling AI presents another set of evidence of the gaps in safeguards, writes Tim Bernard.