This project investigates how artificial intelligence is transforming the structure and normative foundations of democratic governance, with a particular focus on the role of public administration. It develops a theoretical framework for understanding how AI-mediated decision-making reshapes the distribution of authority within the state and the conditions under which such systems can be considered democratically legitimate.
The core contribution is the concept of distributed discretion, which reconceptualizes administrative authority as dispersed across multiple layers of governance, including technical infrastructure, system design, legal determination, and mechanisms of civic contestation. This framework enables systematic analysis of how AI systems reconfigure traditional constitutional arrangements and the relationship between democratic institutions and bureaucratic expertise.
Methodologically, the project combines normative political theory with empirically informed analysis of AI use in public administration. It advances arguments about the constitutional function of professional bureaucracy as an epistemic check within democratic systems and examines how this function is altered under conditions of increasing automation. Through engagement with ongoing empirical research on AI deployment in the public sector, the project both tests and refines its theoretical claims.
