Politikon: The IAPSS Journal of Political Science

Social Media and Leadership in the 2023 Partito Democratico Primaries

Laura Minguzzi — 2025-12-04

This article examines the 2023 Partito Democratico (PD) primary election in Italy, comparing the digital campaign strategies of Elly Schlein, current PD Secretary, and Stefano Bonaccini, the long-serving President of the Emilia-Romagna region. Using qualitative content analysis of their campaign manifestos and social media data from Facebook and Instagram, the study explores how digitalization and personalization shaped their leadership styles and electoral performance. Findings show that, despite similar policy agendas, Schlein’s inclusive, interactive, and grassroots-oriented communication generated stronger online engagement and follower growth, contributing to her unexpected victory. Bonaccini’s campaign, though well-funded and institutionally supported, relied on more traditional political communication. The research argues that Schlein’s success marks a partial shift within the PD towards a more digital, personalized form of leadership while highlighting the structural resistance that continues to hinder full organizational transformation.

Energy Crisis Revolution?

Francesco Lionetto — 2025-12-04

Since 2021, the EU has been threatened by an energy crisis, causing a dramatic rise in energy prices and the inflation rate. Among the measures adopted by the EU in response is Regulation 1854/2022, introducing a solidarity contribution to be levied on the surplus profits of companies in the energy market. Through the lens of historical institutionalism, this paper analyzes the solidarity contribution to understand what kind of institutional change, if any, it represents for EU fiscal integration. The paper finds that, rather than a revolution, the adoption of the solidarity contribution reflects path-dependence. That is, with the adoption of Regulation 1854/2022, the EU has maintained a fiscal regulatory approach to the energy sector that does not substantially depart from previous fiscal governance modes.

The Politics of Apologies and Colonial Aphasia

Muhammad Anugrah Utama — 2025-12-04

The colonial violence in Indonesia’s War of Independence (1945–1949) remains a controversial subject in Dutch society up to this day. In 2022, former Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte apologised for the “systematic and widespread extreme violence,” prompting renewed debate on how official statements and apologies function as forms of hegemonic remembrance. This paper revisits Ann Stoler’s concept of colonial aphasia and Gloria Wekker’s concept of white innocence. It examines several critical moments that reveal the persistent difficulties of remembering and forgetting colonial violence. Each section presents primary sources related to a specific critical event, followed by speeches, statements, or reports issued by the Dutch government. This research highlights how reports, statements, and apologies have historically been instrumentalised by the Dutch state to construct a nationally accepted hegemonic narrative—one that acknowledges colonial violence while simultaneously evading deeper accountability.

The Ape with Silicon Eyes

Marianna Prysiazhnyuk — 2025-12-04

This essay argues that Artificial Intelligence (AI) subtly destabilizes the human-centered foundations of democracy. While AI does not disrupt formal procedures, it replaces the human judgment that historically grounds political legitimacy. Drawing on theological, literary, and philosophical frameworks, the essay conceptualizes AI as simia hominis—an imitator of human cognition without interiority or accountability. AI-generated speech and decisions create responsibility without an author, breaking the democratic requirement of traceable agency. By filtering information and preconfiguring public reason, AI reshapes the infosphere before citizens deliberate it. Democracy remains formally intact but becomes materially post-human as human judgment becomes optional. It also introduces the symposium discussion in our Conversation section, which brought together nine contributors to consider the question: as AI becomes embedded in campaigning, policymaking, information ecosystems, and surveillance, what is the most urgent challenge it poses to democracy, and which democratic institution is best equipped to address it?

AI’s Impact on Access to Information in Democracies

Julian Neylan — 2025-12-04

One of the most urgent challenges facing democracies is a widening digital divide: wealthier groups will increasingly access expert verified information while lower income communities will not be given tools to navigate an online environment increasingly filled with convincing AI generated content. To safeguard democratic participation, we must democratize AI literacy and detection tools, and integrate civic education. Only by reinforcing these initiatives can democracy remain resilient in the age of AI.

Generative AI as a Disinformation Tool

Marios D. Dikaiakos — 2025-12-04

The rapid spread of Large Language Models (LLMs) is transforming how individuals access and interpret information, increasing societal exposure to sophisticated forms of misinformation. As generative AI becomes a central information gatekeeper, it expands the attack surface for Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI), enabling scalable data contamination, alignment manipulation, and realistic synthetic media. These dynamics weaken critical evaluation skills and amplify latent model biases, paralleling the long-term cognitive effects of traditional disinformation. Using lessons from science misinformation, the paper argues for robust regulation, transparent training practices, and integrated resilience strategies to mitigate emerging systemic risks posed by generative AI.

Algorithmic Colonialism

Meriam Hssaini — 2025-12-04

AI is reshaping governance in Kenya, not only through bias and misinformation but through a deeper process of algorithmic colonialism, where external technologies distort African languages and political realities. Due to limited linguistic coverage and foreign dominance in digital infrastructure, AI systems undermine epistemic access and democratic participation. This paper argues for a Pan-African AI Sovereignty Agency to build sovereign AI hubs, cultural data libraries, and public foundation models, enabling the continent to reclaim algorithmic sovereignty and ensure epistemic autonomy.

From Human Sovereignty to Algorithmic Sovereignty

Laly Warnier — 2025-12-04

Artificial intelligence amplifies contemporary crises by accelerating their dynamics, fragmenting democratic discourse, and weakening state control. This new technology is therefore a decisive factor in the uncontrollability of democracies, due to its speed, opacity, and the transfer of power to private actors. Through an analysis of theories of sovereignty, technological power and algorithmic governance, this essay examines how democracies can regain their capacity for action through a repoliticization of the subject, transparency, and collective deliberation.

Democracy’s Operating System

Kevin W. Settles — 2025-12-04

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.

Expert Foresight on AI-Driven Disinformation

Pedro Peres Cavalcante — 2025-12-04

The 2024 “super election year” demonstrated both the promise and risks of artificial intelligence (AI) in democratic processes. Innovative uses, such as AI-powered fact-checking and voter engagement tools, contrasted with harmful applications including deepfakes. Although the overall impact of deepfakes and other AI-generated disinformation was lower than anticipated, experts predict a substantial rise in AI-powered disinformation in the short term, particularly through synthetic media and foreign influence operations. Evidence of AI-enabled manipulation highlights the need for effective regulation and strengthened oversight to safeguard information integrity in a rapidly changing information ecosystem.

AI Surveillance

Hninn Thanlwin Thit — 2025-12-04

This paper reinterprets Michel Foucault’s Panopticon in the context of AI-enabled surveillance, arguing that algorithmic monitoring now disciplines citizens through pervasive, opaque, and normalized forms of control. While such systems pose a direct threat to democratic freedoms, their global diffusion—evident from China’s practices in Xinjiang to predictive policing and spyware elsewhere—demands proactive and accountable governance. I contend that coordinated export controls, coupled with NGO-led exposure and strategic litigation, form an essential counter-disciplinary framework. Together, these mechanisms constrain abusive surveillance, strengthen democratic oversight, and enable citizens to resist becoming the docile bodies of an increasingly automated surveillance order.

"Public Policy, Responsiveness, and Redistribution in an Era of Rising Economic Inequality" edited by Nicholas Lupu and Jonas Pontusson

Pedro Mendes Rufino Barbosa — 2025-12-04

Unequal Democracies: Public Policy, Responsiveness, and Redistribution in an Era of Rising Economic Inequality

Edited by NICHOLAS LUPU and JONAS PONTUSSON

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023

386 pp., £29.99 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1009428644

"Egyptian Students and Politics beyond Protest" by Farah Ramzy

Hesham Shafik — 2025-12-04

Egyptian Students and Politics Beyond Protest
FARAH RAMZY
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025.
240 pp. $110 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0198945772