Democracy and Democratic Erosion in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Thursday, September 3, 10:00 am to 11:30 am
2026 APSA Annual Meeting & Exhibition — Boston, MA | Register here
Co-sponsored by Division 08: Political Methodology
In-Person | Created Panel
Participants:
- (Chair) Jacob M. Montgomery, Washington University in St. Louis
Session Description:
This panel examines how large language models are reshaping the study of democracy by transforming how scholars measure discourse, model democratic change, and observe coercive state practices. The papers deploy AI to disentangle rhetorical convergence from substantive ideology in far-right mainstreaming, to model democracy as a dynamic and interconnected system rather than a static outcome, and to construct expert-aligned measures of surveillance and censorship from human rights texts. Taken together, they show both the promise and the stakes of using AI to study democratic erosion: these tools can reveal patterns previously hidden in scale and complexity, but they also demand careful theoretical grounding to avoid mistaking surface signals for democratic substance.
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