Technology in Society 71 (2022) 102145

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Technology in Society
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/techsoc

From politics to ethics: Transformations in EU policies on

digital technology
Vanja Carlsson a, *, Malin Rönnblom b
a
School of Public Administration, University of Gothenburg, Sprängkullsgatan 19, 411 23, Gothenburg, Sweden
b
Department of Political, Historical, Religious and Cultural Studies, Karlstad University, Universitetsgatan 2, 651 88, Karlstad, Sweden

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Artificial intelligence (AI) and digitalisation have become an integral part of public governance. While digital
AI policy technology is expected to enhance neutrality and accuracy in decision-making, it raises concerns about the status
AI ethics of public values and democratic principles. Guided by the theoretical concepts of input, throughput and output
European union
democracy, this article analyses how democratic principles have been interpreted and defended in EU policy
Public sector
Democracy
formulations relating to digital technology over the last decade. The emergence of AI policy has changed the
The political conditions for democratic input and throughput legitimacy, which is an expression of a shift in power and in­
fluence between public and private sectors. Democratic input values in AI production are promoted by ethical
guidelines directed towards the industry, while democratic throughput, e.g., accountability and transparency,
receive less attention in EU AI policy. This indicates future political implications for the ability of citizens to
influence technological change and pass judgement on accountable actors.

1. Introduction such as mechanisms of accountability and transparency) [6,7], have

Technological developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and algo­
rithms have become an integral part of public governance. While such
technologies are expected to enhance neutrality and accuracy in
decision-making, the implementation of AI technology in the public
sector raises questions and concerns about the status of public values
and democratic principles. Policymakers, scholars and the tech industry
have stressed the importance of preventing the irresponsible develop­
ment of AI in society, citing discrimination and bias, privacy in­
fringements and lack of transparency [1]. In this debate, the responsible
governance of AI is often labelled ‘AI ethics’ [2,3].
Previous empirical research has shown that different systems of
privilege affect AI systems and that these digital tools tend to replicate
and reproduce injustices [e.g., 4, 5. These findings have contributed
important knowledge regarding the democratic output and outcome
legitimacy of AI technology – that is, the effects of AI systems on demo­
cratic goals, such as justice and non-discrimination. However, despite
their fundamental importance for democratic governance, the pre­
requisites for the input legitimacy of democracy (i.e., input values and
decision-making procedures) and throughput legitimacy of democracy (i.
e., internal organisational performances with democratic significance,
been overlooked in empirical studies on the public governance and
regulation of AI [8,9]. The interpretation and defence of these demo­
cratic principles in AI policy formulation is important for the ability of
citizens to influence technological change and pose questions to, and
pass judgement on, accountable actors. Furthermore, how these demo­
cratic principles are interpreted and how they are intended to operate in
society is linked to the status of the political; that is, the public space for
collective actions based on social and economic relations, and the
articulation of political conflicts in the context of AI policy [cf., 10, 11.
While democracy is often central to discussions about AI, a fully-
developed definition of democracy is frequently lacking. Starting from
the argument that democratic input and throughput principles are
important facilitators of the political, this article engages in the debate
on the democratic implications of AI policy through a systematic anal­
ysis based on a theoretical operationalisation of the concept of de­
mocracy. Empirically, we analyse EU policies on digital technique – i.e.,
published text documents relating to digital technological change and
agenda-setting introduced by the EU – over the last decade, and consider
how they relate to the democratic mechanisms of input and throughput
legitimacy that underlie democratic outputs and outcomes. Rather than
addressing how AI technology can be used to strengthen democracy, we

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: vanja.carlsson@spa.gu.se (V. Carlsson), malin.ronnblom@kau.se (M. Rönnblom).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2022.102145
Received 16 May 2022; Received in revised form 5 October 2022; Accepted 7 October 2022
Available online 22 October 2022
0160-791X/© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
V. Carlsson and M. Rönnblom
are interested in how policies give meaning to such technology and its
application from a democracy perspective. We do not focus on devel­
oping a fixed definition of AI technology, but on how the implementa­
tion of digital technology in the public sector is conceptualised in policy.
Not only are systematic analyses of the democratic dimension of the
EU’s AI policy lacking, but the contemporary development of efficient
digital technology that can make decisions for us poses a significant risk
to the fundamental democratic principles and mechanisms of public
institutions. This is because these technologies are ‘controlled by cor­
porations that are less accountable than any in modern political history’
[12, p.8]. Drawing on Runciman [12] and other scholars engaged in the
relation between AI developments and societal power relations [cf., 13,
8, 14, this article provides a detailed analysis of how the large and
influential political and government institutions of the EU create space
for democratic participation, public accountability and transparency in
relation to policies on AI and digital technologies. The aim is to analyse
how EU policy has interpreted and promoted the development and
deployment of digital technologies in the context of democratic influ­
ence and responsible governance, and to discuss the democratic impli­
cations of this policy in terms of the conditions that emerge for the
political as a central aspect of democratic governance through the
following research questions:
• What understandings of democratic input and throughput principles
and procedures are embedded in key EU policy documents on digital
technology published during the period 2010–2020, and how are
they conceptualised in the context of digital technology
implementation?
• What are the implications of these policies for the space for collective
political action and the articulation of political conflicts?
Below, we situate the study in relation to previous research, then
explain our theoretical and methodological framework. In the second
part of the paper, we present our empirical analysis, discussion and
conclusions.
2. Situating the study
Since the late 2010s, the EU has promoted a ‘Digital Europe’, with
the EU Council [15, p.5] declaring that ‘the EU needs in particular
governments and public sectors that are fully brought into the digital
age’. The EU’s intense focus on AI technology was initiated between
2016 and 2017 by the European Parliament [16]. In 2018, the European
Commission (EC) published a strategy on AI [17] and established two
expert and stakeholder groups, the High-Level Expert Group (HLEG) on
AI and the AI Alliance, to kick-start the AI policy machinery. What fol­
lows can be described as an explosion of EU policies on the theme of
‘Trustworthy AI’.
Ethical problems have received considerable attention in these pol­
icies. Critics have argued that ‘AI ethics’ are toothless, easy for the tech
industry – i.e., companies engaged in digital technological innovation
and growth – to manipulate and unable to ensure compliance [18,19].
The HLEG on AI’s ‘Ethical guidelines for trustworthy AI’ [20] have been
criticised for serving as industrial ‘ethics washing’ and for being
‘watered down’ as a result of compromises between the public interests
of sustainability and ‘the common good’ and the tech industry’s interests
of boosting industrial capacity and growth [21,22]. Furthermore, the
guidelines have been criticised for not addressing power or the control of
AI development, and EU institutions have been criticised for avoiding
legally binding sanctions in situations where tech companies have acted
unethically [14].
As well as empirical studies on EU policies on digital technology, this
study is situated in relation to the growing research field of AI tech­
nology, trust and society and of AI and democracy, and to literature on
contemporary challenges to liberal democracy. The relationship be­
tween AI technology, trust and society is presented as having important
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Technology in Society 71 (2022) 102145
implications for the implementation of AI decision-making in the public
sector. Above all, scholars engage in this debate from perspectives of
‘responsible AI’ and ‘explainable AI’, and have suggested ways to pre­
vent negative societal outcomes stemming from AI decisions. Such
studies argue that AI decisions in public institutions must be transparent
and explainable in order to gain legitimacy and trust [23–25]. They
largely focus on the practical use and improvement of AI technology to
achieve accountable and reliable systems capable of social re­
sponsibility, and have drawn up recommendations for policy actors and
stakeholders with the aim of shaping a ‘good AI society’ [26,27]. These
recommendations concern how to transform the principles of explic­
ability, transparency, fairness, security and privacy into technological
practice.
While important contributions have been made in the areas of
responsible and explainable AI, this literature mainly concerns the
legitimacy of AI decision-making systems, and has devoted less attention
to the governance, or the political and democratic implications, of AI
policy. Hence, it is important to also consider the processes leading up to
decisions and the practices of implementing AI systems in the public
sector – processes that concern the dimensions of democratic input and
throughput. Recent research into the ongoing challenges facing liberal
democracy has made an important contribution by indicating how
economic and neoliberal values have replaced democratic values – and
thus have limited the potential for the democratic system to decide what
is best for its citizens [28] – and how the combination of a marketised
state and technological development enhances this trend. For example,
O’Neil [5] and Zuboff [29] discuss how multinational tech companies
create and strengthen societal injustices while operating outside of
systems that are subject to democratic control. Furthermore, recent
studies have stressed that the EU’s policy on AI and digital technology is
developing in the midst of tensions between calls for fundamental rights
and EU values and calls for the shaping of markets [16,30]. The AI
market and the influence of private companies within the EU might even
lead to a situation where ‘legal norms are potentially replaced by tech­
nological standards outside any democratic check or procedure’ [31,
p.23].
Although Western states are deeply committed to this far-reaching
technological change, the private sector accounts for and controls a
large proportion of technological production. While the EU is currently
exploring different ways of regulating its digitalisation policy [32],
critical scholars have called for state institutions to assume greater re­
sponsibility for AI development and its impact on the public sector. This
includes being more active in the state’s statutory function [33]. Veale
[14] has similarly criticised the EU for not taking full responsibility for
defining the societal problems that AI technology is supposed to solve
and for generally overestimating its benefits. In response, we use an
analytical method that allows us to identify in detail how democratic
principles are articulated in policy.
3. Theoretical and methodological framework
3.1. Democratic AI as political AI
This article addresses the relationship between technology, politics
and democracy, a relationship whose essence has been widely debated
in the context of AI technology. Our understanding of AI development,
deployment and implementation is informed by a position that em­
phasises the political and social nature of technology. We start from the
perspective of human agency and focus on the relations that create and
control AI development [34], the assumptions and interests that moti­
vate technological development, how these are articulated in policy and,
thus, their democratic effects. Hence, we operationalise democracy in
terms of input and throughput in order to discuss the democratic im­
plications of policy and policy shifts in more detail.
The input legitimacy of democracy generally refers to the democratic
character of decision-making procedures and the equal opportunities of
V. Carlsson and M. Rönnblom
citizens to participate, directly or indirectly, in decision-making pro­
cesses [7]. Throughput legitimacy refers to the procedures, practices and
activities that translate inputs into outputs (e.g., policies) within
accountable institutions, and the democratic mechanisms used to con­
trol the exercise of authoritative power, such as the accountability,
transparency and openness of these institutions [35]. Liberal democracy
‘makes sure that inputs are processed and transformed into outputs in a
way that is oriented towards producing responsiveness and account­
ability’ [9, p.3].
Moreover, we consider the political to be an essential dimension of
both democratic input and throughput: a viable democracy needs space
for the articulation of the conflicting positions and interests of various
social groups, what Mouffe [10] conceptualises in terms of agonism.
Choosing to disregard the political dimension of policy processes thus
becomes a form of depoliticising democracy, which may harm subor­
dinate groups by reducing the space for political struggle and change.
Therefore, policy processes that recognise power relations and conflicts
are more likely to correspond to established democratic principles. A
depoliticised policy risks hampering the influence of democratic and
public actors, limiting the possibility of alternative perceptions to in­
fluence the process and circumscribing opportunities for broader soci­
etal change. In the context of public-sector AI development, the
transparency and traceability of the interests and assumptions that in­
fluence and inform digital technology have democratic significance.
Hence, we argue that the political aspect is an integral part of the
input/throughput perspective on democratic legitimacy.
Human agency is deeply involved in decision-making about the
design of AI technology [36,37]. As Crawford [38] noted, these de­
cisions are made in a social environment that is already full of conflicts
of democratic importance. By investigating how the EU conceptualises
the relation between the development of digital technologies and the
core democratic principles of input and throughput, we hope to
contribute to a broader discussion about possible challenges to de­
mocracy in the wake of AI implementation. We believe that a political
science perspective, based on existing research exploring key demo­
cratic mechanisms and prerequisites, can provide important insights
into the relationship between AI and democratic governance.
4. Materials and methods
4.1. Empirical material
In order to capture changes in the overarching interpretations of the
relationship between digital technology and democracy expressed by
the EU, we chose to analyse and compare policy documents published at
the EU level between 2010 and 2020. Together, these policy documents
create an overall understanding of and orientation within the policy
area. Although digital and AI technology has relevance for several policy
areas, such as security and healthcare, our interest in the democratic
elements of digital policies per se led to our choice to focus on the policy
area of ‘Digital Europe’. The empirical material is based on a total of 19
policy documents relating to digital technology published between 2010
and 2020. We started by searching broadly for documents within the
policy area and, from an overview of these, we selected 18 that included
formulations about the relationship between digital technology and
democracy. The selection of documents was made on the basis of their
significance for the policy area at the European level – a criterion which
means that not only are the formal strategies or resolutions of influential
EU institutions included in the analysis, but also the chosen documents
have a high intertextual status, meaning that they are constituent of
other texts and part of the shaping of a political discourse [39]. Guide­
lines, reports and studies initiated by, published for, yet not an official
representation of an EU institution are therefore included in the analysis
on the condition that other EU policy documents refer to them as
influential texts written within the EU discourse on digital technology.
However, the documents were mainly published by the EC, the
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Technology in Society 71 (2022) 102145
Parliament and the Council. Three were published by HLEGs commis­
sioned by the EC, and two are published reports and studies commis­
sioned by the Parliament. Our ambition was not to include all policy
documents relevant to digital technology and democracy, but to select a
sample that, overall, is representative of the political discourse on this
policy area at the EU level.
The number of documents dealing with digital technology and
democratic values increased during the period under study in conjunc­
tion with the rapid technological change of the late 2010s. During this
period, questions about the relationship between digital technology and
democracy were emerging at an increasing rate. Hence, more of the
analysed documents were published during the second half of the time
period under study.
4.2. Methods of analysing the EU’s policies on digital technology
A qualitative ideology analysis [40,41] was applied to the empirical
material in order to explore the relationship between the EU’s policies
on digital technology and their implications for democracy. In the policy
documents, we analysed embedded assumptions about democracy in
terms of democratic input and throughput principles and the political
dimensions of the policies. The analysis was based on three ideological
components: a) an ontological component covering assumptions about
what democratic participation, influence, accountability and trans­
parency are; b) a normative component covering assumptions about
how democratic participation and influence, accountability and trans­
parency should be promoted; and c) an action-oriented component
covering the implications of the ontological and normative components
for the space available for collective action and the articulation of
conflicts.
5. Analysis
We start with an introduction to the EU policy process on digital
technology and AI during the period 2010–2020. Then, we present three
prominent shifts illustrating how the conceptualisation of digital tech­
nology and democracy that we have identified in the empirical material
changes. We call these three shifts ‘from public to private’, ‘from public
politics to human resource management (HRM)’ and ‘from politics to
ethics’. These shifts are based upon an analysis of the embedded as­
sumptions contained within democratic input and throughput and thus
identify changes in the ontological (a) and normative (b) components of
the democratic input and throughput principles. In the conclusions, we
discuss the implications of these embedded assumptions for the space for
collective action and the articulation of conflicts, i.e., the action-
oriented component (c).
5.1. An outline of the EU policy process on digital technology, 2010–2020
During the period 2010–2016, AI technology had not yet been
initiated or established as a policy area. Instead, the EU developed
policies and strategies relating to the infrastructure of the internet,
mobile telephones and so on, and it approached digital technology via
concepts such as digitalisation and information and communication
technology (ICT) [42]. In 2010, the EC published an eGovernment ac­
tion plan [43] and the HLEG on Scientific Data was established. This
group, which mainly consisted of academic researchers on digital
technology from across Europe, became involved in the EU’s policy­
making efforts relating to technological development [44]. In 2015, the
EC published a strategy for the digital single market [45], and in 2016 a
new action plan on eGovernment was published [46]. Here, the digital
transformation of public administration was emphasised as a key
element for the success of the internal market. The action plan on
eGovernment, as well as the two previous plans [43,47], was described
as a political instrument with explicit political priorities and focused on
eGovernment’s potential to increase transparency and facilitate
V. Carlsson and M. Rönnblom
democratic participation.
In the mid-2010s, EU institutions began to request policies on AI, and
the Parliament commissioned a study on the ethical aspects of emerging
AI technologies. The study labelled the relationship between citizens,
public institutions and democratic principles an ethical relationship
[48]. In 2017, the EU Council stated:
The EU needs in particular a sense of urgency to address emerging
trends: this includes issues such as artificial intelligence and block­
chain technologies, while at the same time ensuring a high level of
data protection, digital rights and ethical standards. [15, p.7]
Since then, the concept of ethics has been centre stage in the EU’s
discourse on digital and intelligent technology [see 49]. In 2017,
Parliament recommended that the EC develop ethical guidelines for AI.
However, it [50, pp.1–2] stressed that these guidelines should be
developed in a way that does not impede technological innovation or the
discretion of developers: ‘It is vitally important for the legislature to
consider its legal and ethical implications and effects, without stifling
innovation’. In the same year, the Council called on the EC to urgently
formulate an ‘AI approach’ [15]. The Council wanted the EU to be part
of global AI development, to explore new markets and play a leading
role in the industry.
In 2018, the EC, at Parliament’s request, published an AI strategy
[17] and established two expert and stakeholder groups to influence AI
policymaking: the HLEG on AI and the EU AI Alliance. The former was
tasked to produce reports, guidelines and legislative proposals on behalf
of the EC. Individuals were allowed to nominate themselves for the
HLEG on AI, with private companies being the largest interest group
represented. The same outcome was observed in the AI Alliance.
Compared to the HLEG on Scientific Data, which was involved in the
EU’s 2010 policymaking efforts relating to technological development,
there was a noticeable shift from members representing academia to
those representing the business community. The HLEG on AI and the AI
Alliance are important platforms whereby the tech industry has gained
considerable influence over AI policymaking at the EU level. As the
analysis will show, the EU encouraged companies to engage in similar
constellations at different levels of AI policymaking [51–54].
Our analysis of policies during the period 2010–2020 involves the 12
documents referred to above and another 6 documents. The analysis
indicates three shifts related to the conceptualisation of input and
throughput democracy. Presented below, along with a discussion of
their potential consequences for democratic input and throughput
principles.
5.2. From public to private
Before AI technology was established as a policy area (2010–2016),
the EU emphasised good governance and services to citizens as impor­
tant democratic values related to digital technology. Public institutions
were made responsible for the democratic implementation of technol­
ogy [see 44, 45, 46 and were supposed to make use of digitalisation to
improve their capacity because ‘eGovernment supports administrative
processes, improves the quality of the services and increases internal
public sector efficiency’ [46, p.2].
The EU policies of the early 2010s described the potential of up­
coming digital developments as particularly beneficial for the relations
between European citizens and public institutions, evidence-based po­
litical decision-making and the European economy. The ‘Digital Agenda’
included goals, formulated as political priorities, aimed at strengthening
relations between governments and citizens by providing ‘better public
services with fewer resources’ [43, p.3]. Furthermore, digital technol­
ogy was assumed to provide a better basis for policy decisions, (thus)
increasing citizens’ trust in political and administrative institutions.
HLEG [44, p.5] suggested that when ‘policy makers are able to make
decisions based on solid evidence […] Government becomes more
trustworthy’.
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The EC’s 2015 strategy for the digital single market framed tech­
nological development as a matter of economic growth and competi­
tiveness, which would ‘ensure that Europe maintains its position as a
world leader in the digital economy’ [45, p.3]. This strategy underlined
the importance of maximising the potential for economic growth. Public
administrations were urged to embark upon digitalisation in order to
combat inefficiency and create better platforms for communication be­
tween public institutions and citizens.
At the outset of this period, the relationship between digital tech­
nological development and democratic principles was centred around
democratic throughput legitimacy. Accountability and transparency
were stressed and were to be identified in the quality of public institu­
tional processes (ontological assumptions about what democracy is). Digi­
talisation was largely framed as something good for throughput
democracy by means of a focus on how the practices, processes and
administration of public institutions could be supported by the use of
digital technology (normative assumptions about how to promote
democracy).
Gradually, an emphasis on aspects of economic growth emerged due
to the perceived need to secure the EU as a world leader in the digital
economy. Although the overall goal of digital policy could be described
as supporting openness and availability by improving internal organ­
isational performances, economic rationalities were also on the agenda.
The EC’s action plan on eGovernment [46] revealed tension between an
emphasis on public politics on the one hand and economic competi­
tiveness and growth on the other. The Action Plan, described as a po­
litical instrument, focused on eGovernment’s potential to increase
transparency and facilitate democratic participation by advancing ‘the
modernisation of public administrations across the European Union’
[46, p.2].
A focus on digital technology as beneficial for the principles of
democratic throughput remained, with access to data and information
described as vital for transparency and accountability and able to bring
public institutions closer to citizens [46]. Public administrations were
also responsible for opening up data to third parties and balancing
public values with a perspective that emphasised economic growth:
‘opening public sector data and services to third parties, in full
compliance with the legal framework for the protection of personal data
and for privacy, can contribute to growth and competitiveness’ [46,
p.3].
5.2.1. A European call for strong public–private cooperation
From 2016, ethics was emphasised as an important value related to
democracy. The formulations of Parliament’s study [48, p.36] on robots
and ethics are constitutive of the emerging AI ethics discourse: ‘the
values enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights represent the
normative framework on which a common understanding of the ethical
risks […] could be built’.
This study suggested that the EU should create an ethical code of
conduct for the development of robotics and AI, and the concept of
ethics was explicitly based on the democratic input values drawn from
the fundamental rights guaranteed by the EU, as formulated in the EU
Treaty and Charter. Interestingly, neither of these documents mentions
the concept of ethics, but the fundamental rights were now being
reframed into a discourse on ethics. The ethical challenges of intelligent
technology were described in terms of fundamental rights being over­
looked in AI development.
As democratic perspectives shifted from technological use to tech­
nological development, a shift also emerged in how technological re­
sponsibility was framed; namely, from belonging to public institutions,
in their adoption and use of technology, to belonging to the developers
of technology. Developers were expected to safeguard democracy, ex­
ercise responsibility and make fundamental human values the basis for
the design of their AI systems. The focus was on democratic input
principles, and these were identified by fundamental human rights and
values (ontological assumptions about what democracy is) being
V. Carlsson and M. Rönnblom
incorporated into the design of digital technology. The shift from public
to private was strengthened by placing the responsibility on product
developers (normative assumptions about how to promote democracy).
As noted above, the number of members representing the business
community in the stakeholder groups appointed to the EU’s AI policy
increased [30], suggesting that the EC was now allowing the private
sector to have major influence over AI policymaking: ‘It is also essential
to make sure that the private sector is fully involved in setting the
research and innovation agenda and provides the necessary level of
co-investment’ [51, p. 7]. Furthermore, EU institutions promoted strong
cooperation between the public and private sectors [53,54], although
public and private interests were rarely united in the argumentation
around AI development. Instead, public and private interests were
treated separately and emerged as representatives of different spheres of
successful AI implementation. Still, all the policies analysed in the cur­
rent study attempted to balance an economic growth perspective with a
democracy perspective.
Although issues concerning ethics and democracy are given a great
deal of space in these documents, we argue that the growth perspective
became predominant and was progressively strengthened during the
development of AI as a policy area. For example, the ethical guidelines
published by the HLEG on AI argue that democratic throughput per­
spectives, such as accountability and auditability, are important, but not
at the expense of trade secrets. The HLEG suggested that AI processes
should be assessed and evaluated, but ‘[t]his does not necessarily imply
that information about business models and intellectual property related
to the AI system must always be openly available’ [20, pp.19–20]. While
AI technology was described as beneficial to public administrations by
improving efficiency, accessibility and democratic participation, Par­
liament’s resolution [53] stressed that public regulatory frameworks
must not threaten the innovation and flexibility of the industry. Addi­
tionally, not only did the EC [17] state that the overall goal of its AI
strategy was to maximise investment, but the legitimation of ethics was
repeatedly linked to the growth perspective. The EU’s mission to
develop ethical guidelines was perceived as a competitive advantage
[see 17, 55, and the EU was urged to ‘profit from a lack of competing
global regulatory governance models and take full advantage of being
the “first mover”’ [52, p.1].
EU policies are generally vague about how the ownership of, and
power and control over, technological systems, models and data should
be distributed, and the avoidance of legal control of data mining and
data collection reveals conflicting public- and private-sector interests
[14]. Evas [52] stresses that public–private collaborations are some­
times challenging. The tech industry does not simply create products;
rather, global tech companies often sponsor major AI conferences,
finance AI research and influence AI regulations, with the long-term risk
that public interests and participation are undermined by AI develop­
ment. However, we argue that this should not be interpreted as gov­
ernments ignoring issues of power and control [cf. 14]. Instead, the
policies’ encouragement of the private sector’s influence on policy­
making implies increasing control over public affairs by the tech in­
dustry in the future, a development that is supported by EU policies and
hence is highly political. As Avis [56] argues, the technological devel­
opment of the digital revolution is mainly backed by the interests of
capital.
While the public sector was encouraged ‘to rapidly begin to deploy
products and services that rely on AI in their activities’ [51, p.8, 57], this
sector was nevertheless considered to include some of the most high-risk
areas for AI application, ‘in particular from the viewpoint of protection
of safety, consumer rights and fundamental rights’ [51, p.17]. The
public sector includes areas in which crucial societal and social condi­
tions are at stake. The assumption that public institutions benefit from
AI applications while simultaneously being specifically vulnerable to
these applications raises questions about the fact that EU policies pro­
mote a transfer of responsibilities, power and control to the tech
industry.
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Technology in Society 71 (2022) 102145
Although the tech industry was not more heavily regulated prior to
recent AI policies, the identified involvement of the private sector in
policymaking processes on AI and digital technology constitutes a shift
in the sense that policy formulations made by public–private collabo­
rations at the EU level have gradually played down the role of public
institutions and administration in relation to democratic aspects.
Instead, there has been an increased emphasis on private corporate re­
sponsibility, leading to a significant increase in private-sector agency.
This argument is developed in the next section.
5.3. From public politics to human resource management in the wake of
‘AI ethics’
Since 2016, the concept of ethics has been used to address human
interactions with digital technologies. Policies urge those involved in AI
development and deployment to respect input values such as human
dignity and individual self-determination (ontological assumptions about
what democracy is), an approach that is labelled ‘responsible AI’ and
‘human-centric AI’ [17,55]. The HLEG on AI [20, p.10] stated that
‘respect for human dignity entails that all people are treated with respect
due to them as moral subjects, rather than merely as objects to be sifted,
sorted, scored, herded, conditioned or manipulated’.
The development of ethical guidelines is presumed to solve problems
related to democratic outcome legitimacy, as long as those guidelines
are considered during the development of AI techniques. In the quest for
democratic values and fundamental rights to be integrated into product
design, the EU advocates ‘ethics-by-design’ or ‘values-by-design’
(normative assumptions about how to promote democracy), which is
described as an essential strategy to ensure respect for ethical aspects.
Fundamental rights, transparency and mechanisms for accountability
should be assessed during the design phase, before systems are produced
[see 53, 55, 20. For example, when it comes to non-discrimination and
fairness, the policy documents focus on algorithmic programming, data
collection and data categorisation.
The ethics-by-design approach is supposed to be promoted in tech
companies via incentives, such as ‘best practice’ and ethics as a
competitive advantage, and the companies themselves are expected to
initiate such work. The ethical perspectives, in turn, should be supported
by companies ensuring that they have a broad and diverse recruitment
base comprising employees from different social groups, with the
guidance that ‘more women and people of diverse backgrounds,
including people with disabilities, need to be involved in the develop­
ment of AI’ [17, p.12]. Parliament [53, p.24] similarly highlighted ‘the
importance of tackling developer bias, and thus the need for a diverse
workforce in all branches of the IT sector’. So, to reduce the risk of
technology generating a negative impact on democratic outcomes,
companies are encouraged to recruit individuals from marginalised so­
cial groups to the tech industry.
The ‘ethical turn’ involved a shift in the allocation of responsibility
from public institutions and users of technology to the industry and the
developers of that technology. This shift, including the ethics-by-design
approach, resulted in a further shift, namely ‘from public policy to
HRM’: EU policies increasingly suggest solutions to democratic di­
lemmas based on HRM within companies rather than on public policy
and the work of public institutions.
As Veale [14] has argued, the HLEG on AI’s ethical guidelines
attribute ethical responsibility to the moral principles of individual
employees, rather than challenging corporate governance or limiting the
influence of private companies. More confusing still is the fact that the
participation, via recruitment, of marginalised groups in industrial
product design is expected to generate legitimate democratic input in
terms of democratic participation and influence. While it is proposed
that the role of state institutions is that of evaluating AI products,
Member States are also recommended to encourage tech companies to
follow ethical guidelines [51,53]. Instead of public institutions taking
full responsibility for democratic input and throughput principles via
V. Carlsson and M. Rönnblom
truly democratic processes, responsibility is transferred to companies’
HR departments which, clearly, are hardly established institutions of
democratic participation and accountability. As Grybauskas et al. [58, p.
13] states: “most businesses might not feel the need to regulate the social
impacts of their digitalisation agenda”.
We argue that, by suggesting that ethical values should be integrated
into the design of AI products, the method employed by these EU bodies
covers a conceptualisation of democratic principles that primarily aims
to support democratic input. Nevertheless, traditional throughput per­
spectives, such as accountability and transparency, are included in the
ethical discourse – not by promoting a specified method, but via refer­
ences to ‘explicability’ and ‘understandability’ as important factors in
maintaining citizens’ trust in AI systems. The Ethical guidelines for
trustworthy AI states, for example, that ‘the entity accountable for the
decision must be identifiable, and the decision-making processes should
be explicable’ [20, p.13]. Yet, policies are vague about how public in­
stitutions, as users of digital technology, should act in order to sustain
such throughput democracy, and especially about how the account­
ability of public actors can be supported.
5.4. From politics to ethics
During the period studied, the EU was beginning to use the concept
of ethics to approach democracy issues related to digital technology;
nonetheless, AI policy documents produced by or for EU institutions
generally lacked a profound definition of this concept. One exception is
an added value evaluation [52, p.1] written for Parliament. This defined
ethics as ‘principles, values and rules that define substantive content and
boundaries for action or behavior in a given society. Ethical systems are,
therefore, akin to a foundational layer that structures and shapes the
very nature of the particular activity’.
This definition reveals one of the democratic challenges posed by
relying on the concept of ethics in the context of AI development in the
public sector: The definition overemphasises actions in individual situ­
ations at the plausible cost of structural perspectives on social matters,
the interests of social groups and distributions of power. For example, if
AI technologies lay the foundations for technocratic decision-making in
public institutions, decisions are made in a space that involves limited
human agency, a limited capacity for debate and with limited repre­
sentation of different segments of society. Such conditions not only have
conceivable effects on individual decisions or individuals, but they can
also have a far-reaching impact on social relations in the political
domain [9]. At the same time, it is not necessarily ethics itself that is the
problem, but the potential lack of politics. The turn towards ethics is not
an explicit statement in policy documents. Rather, starting in the late
2010s, documents successively removed the concept of politics from
formulations and increasingly turned towards ethics. Furthermore, these
documents shifted from emphasising the distinction between public and
private responsibilities and interests, which is an important aspect of the
concept of the political, towards instead emphasising joint pub­
lic–private collaboration and downplaying assumptions about
distinctions.
At first sight, the shift from using the concept of politics to relying on
the concept of ethics was not a necessary result of the change in the
substantive conceptualisation of the relation between democracy and
technology. Rather, as scholars have argued [e.g., 14], the introduction
of ethics into the discourse on AI was the result of the private sector’s
increased influence on policymaking. From a critical perspective, it
would be natural to assume that such a shift would affect the values that
were promoted in policy. We have already identified that, since the EU’s
AI policy was launched, there has been a reduced emphasis on demo­
cratic throughput principles. One reason for this might be that
throughput principles are ascribed to the performance of public in­
stitutions, and those institutions have become less influential. EU reg­
ulations have progressed in the area of security and privacy – for
example, due to the introduction of the General Data Protection
6
Technology in Society 71 (2022) 102145
Regulation – but legal uncertainties remain in terms of ensuring many
other democratic aspects, such as control, influence, transparency and
accountability during AI production and implementation. These un­
certainties are preferred by the tech industry.
In the following section, which presents our conclusions, we discuss
the implications of the embedded assumptions of input and throughput
democracy that we have identified for the space for collective action and
the articulation of conflicts (the action-oriented ideological component).
6. Conclusions
The influence, participation and responsible governance of citizens
are important democratic norms that are often stressed within the
context of digital technology. In this article, we have aimed to analyse
how EU policy has interpreted and promoted the relation between the
development, deployment and implementation of digital technologies
and democracy. The analysis has brought us to two interrelated
conclusions.
Our first conclusion has already been indicated: the emergence of AI
policy has changed the conditions for democratic input and throughput
legitimacy. The ontological component of democracy has increasingly
emphasised input values such as human rights, dignity and self-
determination. The normative component, addressing how to promote
these values, has increasingly focused on ethical guidelines. Democratic
throughput perspectives began to receive less attention when the EU AI
policy was first formulated. This shift was very much related to the
increased focus on the tech industry as the main actor being targeted in
this policy area. The decreased space for public institutions in policy
formulations reveals a potential long-term limitation on democratic
influence in general. Even if the tech industry commits itself to
respecting and mediating democratic values, the private sector can
never constitute a democratic institution, and, hence, can never repre­
sent the public. This conclusion indicates an erosion of the democratic
basis for future European AI technological change.
The second conclusion is a theoretical implication of the first;
namely, that the status of the political tends to become weakened in the
discourse on AI ethics. The changed conditions for democratic input and
throughput legitimacy are related to changed conditions for the politi­
cal, as well as to changed conceptualisations of and assumptions about
democratic governance. AI policies adopted the concept of ethics due to
pressure from the tech industry, which was keen to avoid legal regula­
tion. From this joint collaboration stems the conceptualisation of dem­
ocratic issues and public values as matters of ethics, which initiated a
shift of focus from digitalisation and politics to AI and ethics. Drawing
on theories of the political and politicisation [10,11], we argue that it is
democratically invalid to exclude conceptualisations of politics from
policies on AI development, deployment and implementation, for the
reason presented below.
The nature of the political concerns conditions related to social and
economic public affairs, conflicts of interest, power relations and the
allocation of resources between social and economic groups. From
within these social and economic conditions, people come together,
mobilise and organise struggles aimed at influencing and changing so­
cial relations. In contrast, ethics, to follow Brown [11], concerns the
value judgement of actions in social situations. Hence, ethics can be
considered an embedded part of politics, yet it is not political. Ethics
draws our attention to important values and empathy in one-to-one
relationships and, like politics, includes value judgements and ideas
about how we ought to care for each other [59]. However, a preoccu­
pation with ethics provides a weak basis for shared interests and
struggles to be mobilised and only limited space for articulating conflicts
of interest. Ethics pushes societal problems towards issues of right and
wrong in individual situations; therefore, it cannot funnel the inherent
political force that exists in social power relations. For example, from the
ethical angle, we can recognise individual racist or sexist people by their
actions, but ethics as a concept makes it difficult to recognise societal
V. Carlsson and M. Rönnblom
structures of racism or sexism and more difficult still to mobilise
struggles against these structures. Thus, the space for collective action
and the articulation of conflicts will be limited (the action-oriented
component of democracy) as an implication of the dominant ontological
and normative assumptions about democracy in an AI context.
If the overall goal of the AI ethics discourse is to promote solid
foundations for democracy in a new digital era, it would be fruitful if the
EU took seriously the conflicting environments and different political,
social and economic conditions of Member States; that is, the contexts
within which AI technology is being developed. A depoliticised con­
ceptualisation of AI and ethics neglects deeply entrenched power-related
interests, which, in turn, risks narrowing our shared perception of the
necessary conditions and mechanisms that democracy entails and which
actors should be invited as representatives in negotiations and decisions
about policy. The ethical perspective’s inherent focus on ‘right’ and
‘wrong’ risks increasing the impact of technocratic experts. Based on the
analysis of input and throughput democratic legitimacy in the EU’s AI
policy, we argue that, no matter how much emphasis is placed on ethics,
if the political dimension is lacking, there cannot be a foundation for
democratic values and principles, as defined to date.
Funding
This work was supported by the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg
Foundation grant number 2018.0116.
Author statement
All persons who meet authorship criteria are listed as authors, and all
authors certify that they have participated sufficiently in the work to
take public responsibility for the content, including participation in the
design, analysis, writing, or revision of the manuscript.
Data availability
The data consist of policy documents available online.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for helpful
and constructive comments.
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