Publication Date
2025
Publication Title
Public Law & Legal Theory
Abstract
This essay offers a new analytic lens for evaluating the design of digital platforms from the perspective of democratic values. It develops a model of desirable platform design, and them ask present legal interventions move is toward that aspiration. The aspirational model is not draws on an idea found in the scholarly literatures in political science and sociology about economic development . This is the notion that development policy should aim to seed “islands of integrity,” into patrimonial or nepotistic state structures as a way of building foundations for a more robust and hence public-regarding state apparatus. This literature explores how one seeds and nurtures zones where public-regarding norms, not self- regarding or selfish motives, dominate as a means of generating public goods. By analogy, the essay identifies examples of “islands of algorithmic integrity” that advance epistemic and deliberative public goods with due regard for the potential for either exploitation or manipulation inherent in the use of sophisticated computational tools. This lens allows us to see some of the limits of existing regulatory strategies in respect to social platforms, and opens up new opportunities for improved public and private governance.
Number
25-05
Recommended Citation
Huq, Aziz Z., "Islands of Algorithmic Integrity: Imagining a Democratic Digital Public Sphere" (2025). Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers. 25-05.
https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/public_law_and_legal_theory/901
