Why does AI hinder democratization?

C. Y. Cyrus Chu (), Juin-Jen Chang and Chang-Ching Lin
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C. Y. Cyrus Chu: a Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica , Taipei 115024 , Taiwan
Juin-Jen Chang: a Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica , Taipei 115024 , Taiwan
Chang-Ching Lin: b Department of Economics, National Cheng Kung University , Tainan 701410 , Taiwan

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2025, vol. 122, issue 19, e2423266122

Abstract:

This paper examines the relationship between democratization and the development of AI and information and communication technology (ICT). Our empirical evidence shows that in the past 10 y, the advancement of AI/ICT has hindered the development of democracy in many countries around the world. Given that both the state rulers and civil society groups can use AI/ICT, the key that determines which side would benefit more from the advancement of these technologies hinges upon “technology complementarity.†In general, AI/ICT would be more complementary to the government rulers because they are more likely than civil society groups to access various administrative big data. Empirically, we propose three hypotheses and use statistical tests to verify our argument. Theoretically, we prove a proposition, showing that when the above-mentioned complementarity assumption is true, the AI/ICT advancements would enable rulers in authoritarian and fragile democratic countries to achieve better control over civil society forces, which leads to the erosion of democracy. Our analysis explains the recent ominous development in some fragile-democracy countries.

Keywords: AI; information and communication technology; big data; corridor of democracy; fragile democracy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nas:journl:v:122:y:2025:p:e2423266122

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