A Critical Civil Society: An Ethical Framework to Control the Power of Algorithms

Abstract

Given that any democratic proposal must account for the institutional skeleton that sustains it, the aim of this article is to show that this articulation cannot be limited to the state and its laws. Instead, it requires a vision of democracy based on a two-way perspective in which state and civil society complement each other, while being aware, as we have seen, that it is in civil society, and through the use of communicative action, that both political power and economic power are shaped and legitimized. It is within this context that this article proposes institutional ethics perspective for deliberative democracy based on participation within institutions. It aims to contribute two closely linked aspects to the discussion on the possibilities of achieving deliberative democracy: the value of civil society and an ethical perspective on institutional design. Both aspects must be taken into account if we are to continue along the path of achieving a democratic theory capable of curbing and reinstating the claims made for algorithmic democracy. The possibility of establishing the meaning of a human-centred Artificial intelligence lies not only within the state, nor its laws, which are totally necessary but insufficient; instead it is located in the institutional structure of civil society.

First, civil society is no longer considered s system of needs understood primarily in economics terms. Now civil society is seen as a system of ideas, values, ideologies, and, yes, interests understood primarily in sociological and political terms. Second, the central role of hegemony leads to the semiautonomy of the words of ideas from the economy…Today, critical theory as one of the heirs to Gramsci and neo-Marxism sees civil society as a sphere of identity formation, social integration and cultural reproduction, and although economic relations and the state play a part in these functions, their roles are, or ought to be, supporting, not leading.

Simone Chambers, “A critical theory of civil society” (2002, 91)