Algorithmic reason: new forms of government and 'the democratization of democracy'

How can algorithmic reason be politicised? Even as the conditions of political action become more limiting through algorithmic reason, we argue that frictions, refusals, and resistances can reconfigure political interventions in the sense of facing up to governing by algorithms. We situate the analyses of friction, refusal, and resistance within a broader mapping of contestation, controversy, and democratic politics. As controversies over algorithms, data and artificial intelligence unfold, scenes of controversy can also become worksites of democracy in the sense of what Étienne Balibar has called the ‘democratization of democracy’.