Book Review: Digital Democracy from Below — Taking AI Back to the Town Square
A new open-access collection from the University of Virginia argues that democratic control over artificial intelligence will not be won in summits or terms of service, but in procurement rules, local infrastructure and everyday civic practice. A review of what it offers leaders who want technology to strengthen, not replace, participation.
Executive summary
- The book: Digital Democracy from Below: Resisting AI and Techno-solutionism, edited by Jess Reia, Jonathan van Geuns and Nicole Bassoff (University of Virginia, Digital Technology for Democracy Lab). Published October 22, 2026, in open access.
- The format: 34 short, public-facing essays in five parts, closing with a practical roadmap for participatory workshops.
- The thesis: AI is becoming pervasive in everyday life, but its political direction is not settled. Democratic influence must be rebuilt from below, in places that rarely make headlines.
- The verdict: a useful corrective to the idea that technology governance happens only at the top. Strong on perspective and practice; lighter on systematic evidence.
Why this book, this month
The past weeks of this column have dealt with AI from the top down: a book on political freedom in the age of AI, a study of AI-written petitions, and the epistemic risks of algorithmic feeds. This collection asks a different question. If AI is reshaping public life, where can ordinary citizens, local governments and civil society actually influence how it is used?
The editors' answer is direct. In their words, "the situation is not hopeless or settled." The book treats democracy not only as institutions and elections but, as they put it, as "a way of living, and as a skill that can be practiced."
What the book argues
Against techno-solutionism
The subtitle places the book in a familiar tradition. More than a decade ago, Evgeny Morozov (2013) criticized "solutionism," the habit of redefining complex social and political problems as technical problems that software can fix. The contributors extend that critique to artificial intelligence. Their concern is not AI as such, but the assumption that adopting it is inevitable and that its design belongs to engineers and companies alone.
Democracy in unexpected places
The most original feature of the collection is where it looks for democratic leverage. Instead of focusing on national legislation or global summits, the editors highlight less visible arenas: public procurement, where governments decide which systems to buy and on what terms; watershed boundaries, where data centers compete with communities for water and energy; tax treaties; user-written benchmarks; and the legal assumptions that define how technology is supposed to work.
For anyone in government or public affairs, this is the book's most practical insight. A procurement clause or a local permit can shape the deployment of AI more concretely than a declaration of principles.
A broader map
The collection includes contributors from history, data science and communication, including Mar Hicks, Rafael C. Alvarado and David Nemer, and extends beyond the United States to other regions. That breadth matters for readers in Latin America, where public debate on AI often imports frameworks designed elsewhere.
Structure
The essays are organized in five parts:
- Seeing through the fog: clarifying what AI is and is not doing in public life.
- Recognizing the limits of infrastructure: the material costs and constraints of AI systems.
- Fighting erasure: the communities and knowledge that automated systems overlook.
- Practicing everyday democracy: participation as a daily practice rather than an occasional event.
- Resisting, organizing and re-building: collective strategies and institutional alternatives.
The final section, a roadmap for organizing participatory workshops, turns the book from analysis into a tool.
Theoretical frame
Beyond Morozov, the collection speaks to a long debate about the quality of participation. Sherry Arnstein's "ladder of citizen participation" (1969) distinguished between forms of involvement that merely inform or placate citizens and those that give them real power. Much of what is presented today as public consultation on AI sits on the lower rungs of that ladder. Digital Democracy from Below is, in effect, an argument for climbing higher.
Strengths
- A grounded perspective. It moves the debate from abstract ethics to concrete decisions that institutions make every day.
- Practical orientation. The workshop roadmap makes it usable for municipalities, universities and civil society organizations.
- Accessible format and free access. Short essays and an open license make it easy to share across teams.
Limitations
- Uneven depth. As with most collections of short essays, some contributions are more developed than others.
- Limited systematic evidence. The book prioritizes perspective and case insight over comparative data. Readers looking for measurable impact will need to pair it with empirical research.
- A specific normative stance. The volume is openly critical of dominant AI narratives. That is its purpose, but decision-makers should read it alongside work that weighs the benefits of adoption.
Applications for leaders
- Treat procurement as policy. Every AI system a government or company buys embeds decisions about data, transparency and accountability. Write those decisions into contracts.
- Consult before deploying, not after. Participation that arrives once a system is in place sits on the lowest rung of Arnstein's ladder.
- Map local impacts. Energy, water and labor effects are where public opinion about AI will be formed, and where conflicts will begin.
- Build civic capacity. Citizens who understand how systems work are better partners and stronger critics. Both are useful.
- Beware of solutionism in your own messaging. Promising that technology will "fix" a social problem invites a reputational crisis when it does not.
Closing note
The book's title is also its method. Much of the conversation about AI and democracy assumes that the important decisions will be made in a few capitals and a few companies. Digital Democracy from Below reminds us that democracy has always been built in smaller rooms: city councils, procurement offices, community meetings. For leaders who want legitimacy for the technologies they adopt, that is where the work begins.
Where to read it
- Free, open access (full text): Zenodo, University of Virginia
References
Arnstein, S. R. (1969). A ladder of citizen participation. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 35(4), 216–224. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944366908977225
Morozov, E. (2013). To save everything, click here: The folly of technological solutionism. PublicAffairs.
Reia, J., van Geuns, J., & Bassoff, N. (Eds.). (2026). Digital democracy from below: Resisting AI and techno-solutionism. Digital Technology for Democracy Lab, University of Virginia. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23580697
