Democracy’s Operating System: On Efficiency, Resilience, and the Quiet Power of Procedure

Kevin W. Settles

doi:10.22151/politikon.CON6

Authors

Kevin W. Settles https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4537-3700

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.CON6

Keywords:

Artificial Intelligence and Democracy, Democratic Resilience, Parliamentary Procedure, Throughput Legitimacy, Artificial Intelligence in Legislatures, Institutional Capacity

Abstract

This essay argues that democracy’s resilience lies less in grand reforms than in the quiet, continuous maintenance of its procedures. Tracing a lineage from early parliamentary record-keeping to contemporary AI tools, it shows how digital infrastructures mostly reinforce—rather than reinvent—existing legislative practices. These systems enhance institutional capacity by managing complexity, enabling parliaments to function under growing informational strain. Efficiency is thus reframed as throughput legitimacy: the ability to transform collective intent into coherent decisions without sacrificing representation. Yet this procedural competence must remain democratically guided. When aligned with deliberative purpose, technological innovation strengthens democratic stability rather than hollowing it out.

Author Biography

Kevin W. Settles

Kevin W. Settles studied Political Science and Sociology at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and is a pre-doctoral political scientist and Research Associate at the Institute for Parliamentary Research (IParl) in Berlin. He studies how political representation, institutional design and evolving communication infrastructures shape the relationship between citizens and elected officials, with a particular focus on parliaments. His current work examines how local representatives understand and perform their roles, how citizens experience and evaluate participatory formats, and how digitalisation and AI-driven tools in legislatures reconfigure transparency, accountability and public engagement. He teaches qualitative research methods in the Master of Public Administration programme at UNIKIMS (University of Kassel), drawing on theories of political representation, parliamentary studies, deliberative and participatory democracy, and institutional innovations that strengthen democratic linkages between citizens and political actors.

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