The Paradox of Progress: When Innovation Threatens Democracy

Francis Fukuyama took the political science world by storm in his 1989 essay ‘The End of History?’. Amidst the impending collapse of the Soviet Union, he celebrated the triumph of capitalism, liberalism, and democracy over communism, authoritarianism, and tyranny. And in Fukuyama’s view, this triumph was for good; a permanent, final stage of the evolution of our systems of governance (Fukuyama 1989).

Looking at Fukuyama’s hypothesis through today’s lens, it seems highly naive and fantastical as democratic backsliding becomes increasingly common. Research from the V-Dem Institute (2026) shows that nearly a quarter of countries around the world are experiencing democratic backsliding, with 60% of these countries located in Europe and North America - countries that have historically been considered wholly “democratic”.

There is reason for doom and gloom. The rapid growth in the capabilities of artificial intelligence in recent years is a threat to democracy, with malicious actors now being able to manufacture content to sway public opinions, emotions, and discourse. This has already occurred in India during the 2024 general elections, where personalised deepfakes of politicians were produced and used to contact voters, who were unaware of the artificial nature of these videos and audio recordings (Raj 2024).

With AI’s ability to replace humans in creating, mobilising, and persuading - key tenets in the upholding of democracy - it reduces the expertise and motivation required to launch political movements, lowering the barrier to entry and therefore diluting the quality in politics (Altman 2026). For example, a fringe movement would no longer require lawyers, researchers, and politicians to be able to produce large amounts of materials such as manifestos, legal challenges, or draft legislative bills; an AI tool would be all that is required. AI also erodes trust in the democratic process due to its inherently opaque nature, making accountability increasingly scarce (Altman 2026).

Many also lament the impact of political polarisation on our democracies, especially with the rise of social media, where false information is awash and drives political polarisation (Falkenberg et al. 2026). Such divisions are particularly pronounced in the United States, where social media has played a major role in the past few presidential elections, as well as the storming of the Capitol on January 6th 2021.

Yet, our democracy is not completely doomed.

As economies grow, education improves, and information becomes more accessible, these provide a stronger foundation for the development and longevity of democracy (Welzel 2021). Welzel argues that “emancipative values” such as freedom, individual choice, and equality of opportunity are on the rise, potentially allowing for a “fundamental shift” in societies around the world. This is on a continuously upwards trend - the percentage of the global population with some form of education has increased from 54% in 1950 to 81% in 2000 and 87% in 2020 (Roser et al. 2023). And while policies and governance has yet to keep up with the pace of AI, we are still in the early stages of its development and have the time and resources to improve our safeguards and rules.

By Macy Ng

Altman, David. 2026. ‘The AI Democracy Dilemma’. Journal of Democracy 37 (1): 32–44. https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2026.a977942.

Falkenberg, Max, Matteo Cinelli, Alessandro Galeazzi, et al. 2026. ‘Toward an Integrated and Globally Equitable Understanding of Political Polarization’. Nature Communications 17 (1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-76110-5.

Fukuyama, Francis. 1989. ‘The End of History?’. The National Interest 16 (16): 3–18. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24027184.

Raj, Suhasini. 2024. ‘How A.I. Tools Could Change India’s Elections’. The New York Times, April 18. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/18/world/asia/india-election-ai.html.

Roser, Max, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Hannah Ritchie, Veronika Samborska, and Natasha Ahuja. 2023. ‘Global Education’. Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/global-education.

V-Dem Institute. 2026. ‘Democratic Backsliding Reaches Western Democracies, With U.S. Decline “Unprecedented” – V-Dem’. V-Dem.Net, V-Dem, March 17. https://www.v-dem.net/news/press-release-democratic-backsliding-reaches-western-democracies-with-us-decline-unprecedented/.

Welzel, Christian. 2021. ‘Why the Future Is Democratic’. Journal of Democracy 32 (2): 132–44. https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2021.0024.