Technology and Democracy: What to Read This Summer
This list of resources, curated by the GETTING-Plurality Research Network at the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation, highlights emerging ideas at the intersection of technology and democracy.
Technology and democracy are at a crucial inflection point. The outcomes of the historic 2024 election year have revealed both the vulnerabilities and resilience of democratic institutions around the world. At the same time, rapid advancements in artificial intelligence are reshaping our lives, with social, economic, environmental, and geopolitical implications.
For those interested in learning more, the reading list below, curated by the GETTING-Plurality Research Network at the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation, aims to reflect the urgency of the current moment. These books, articles, and videos explore the intersections of technology and democracy across disciplines, including philosophy, political theory, law, ethics, and policy. Together, they highlight the breadth of thought and impact related to technology’s role in our democratic lives, raising warnings and pointing to possibilities for the future.
Hao details AI companies’ quest toward artificial general intelligence, a hypothetical AI that has human-level intelligence, and outlines how they are quickly creating the “modern-day colonial world order.”
Schaake explains how technology companies’ unchecked power is undermining our democracies and shares potential solutions. To learn more, you can view this recording from the Ash Center’s online book talk with the author.
In this collection of essays, leading scholars and experts raise critical questions surrounding power, governance, and democracy as they consider how technology can better serve the public interest.
This report argues that public options for AI, along with utility-style regulation, will strengthen national security by promoting innovation and competition, preventing abuses of power and conflicts of interest, and advancing the public interest and national security goals.
Cohen lays out how tech oligarchs, who wield unprecedented power, are reconfiguring our institutions, hollowing out public capacity, and challenging core democratic norms.
This important document from the Vatican lays out an ethical framework for AI, highlights the importance of human dignity and moral responsibility, and outlines a vision for the responsible development and use of this technology.
This essay series explores how deliberative processes can strengthen democracy, drawing on lessons from citizens’ assemblies and civic technology-enabled tools that are being tested around the world.
At the Paris AI Action Summit, Allen argued that DOGE represents the real-time implementation of an extreme ideological vision that defines the role that technology and a small cohort of its wealthiest leaders should play in the world.
The Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, and Institute of Politics hosted the “Building a Digital Democracy” panel in the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at Harvard Kennedy School which brought together Audrey Tang, Megan Smith, Danielle Allen, and Mathias Risse for a conversation on how technology is being used to transform our political institutions.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) alone and do not necessarily represent the positions of the Ash Center or its affiliates.
Q & A: Crocodile tears, Can the ethical-moral intelligence of AI models be trusted?
As artificial intelligence becomes more embedded in everyday decision-making, its role in shaping how people think about ethics and morality is drawing increasing scrutiny. In this conversation with researcher Sarah Hubbard, we discuss insights from her co-authored paper, “Crocodile Tears: Can the Ethical-Moral Intelligence of AI Models Be Trusted?”—examining how AI systems respond to moral dilemmas, and what this reveals about the risks, limitations, and need for greater transparency and human oversight in AI-driven ethical guidance.
Bootstrap Blackness: Black Men, Conservatism, and Party Politics
A new research article by Dr. Christine Slaughter, Research Fellow at the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation and co-authors examines the narrative of black men’s political “shift right”. The study finds Black men remain overwhelmingly Democratic, despite growing public attention to ideological divides.
Allen Lab Fellow Hillary Lehr convened a Voter Experience Summit at Harvard’s Ash Center in March, bringing together 25 cross-sector experts to rigorously map the voter journey. This essay explores how that collaborative process could lay the groundwork for new interventions to understand and improve the experience of voting for all.
Artificial Intelligence and Democracy: Campaigns, Elections, Movements, and Deliberation
A new chapter in APSA Preprints by Archon Fung, Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government and Director of the Ash Center, Bailey Flanigan, former postdoctoral fellow at the Ash Center and co-authors explores how generative AI is reshaping four dimensions of democratic practice—political campaigns, election administration, social movements, and citizen deliberation. The authors argue that AI’s ultimate democratic impact will depend less on the technology itself, and more on how institutions and leaders implement and regulate it.
Q & A: Crocodile tears, Can the ethical-moral intelligence of AI models be trusted?
As artificial intelligence becomes more embedded in everyday decision-making, its role in shaping how people think about ethics and morality is drawing increasing scrutiny. In this conversation with researcher Sarah Hubbard, we discuss insights from her co-authored paper, “Crocodile Tears: Can the Ethical-Moral Intelligence of AI Models Be Trusted?”—examining how AI systems respond to moral dilemmas, and what this reveals about the risks, limitations, and need for greater transparency and human oversight in AI-driven ethical guidance.
A new report summarizes key insights from the Nonviolent Action Lab’s December 2025 convening on how artificial intelligence can empower pro-democracy movements.
