6TH CONGRESS OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

FUTURE POLITICS

Increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithms excel in writing, painting, facial recognition, predicting behavior, in short – replacing and surpassing humans in many areas of their activity. They are also increasingly embodied in robots and other intelligent machines. Biotechnology allows manipulation of genes, creation of bionic organs, thereby transforming humans at the physiological and psychological levels. The human living environment undergoes profound changes: the transformation of the biosphere accompanies the transfer of a significant part of our activity into the virtual world.

The permanence of these trends is uncertain, but undoubtedly, it is worth considering their various consequences, including political ones. In our daily political thinking, we are naturally influenced by current events, especially conflicts and crises. However, processes unfolding before us may have significant effects on politics in the medium and long term, beyond the next elections or wars. As political researchers, we should try to look beyond the horizon of daily events.

The future of politics is uncertain, but politics would not disappear given that its essence is managing the production and distribution of common resources. These resources will undoubtedly be of a different kind, and the nature of conflicts around them will change. However, fundamental, evolutionarily shaped predispositions to cooperation, rivalry, and stratification of human groups will likely continue to shape our social life.

What will the politics of the future look like? Will it rely on the same institutions, processes, mechanisms of power? Will they be adequate for the future political community, a hybrid society composed, perhaps, of human and non-human entities? Will we grant subjectivity to these non-human beings, or will we treat them instrumentally? What role will developing information technologies, especially artificial intelligence, play in wielding power? Will progress in bio- and nanotechnologies lead to changes in our values and goals, and consequently, in political ideologies and concepts of social order? Finally, what shape will international relations take?

We invite all political researchers to reflect on these and many other issues, regardless of their areas of interest – political scientists, political philosophers, specialists in international relations, security, social communication, public policy, and administration. Importantly, this task is not exclusive to futurologists because a thorough understanding of past and current states of phenomena, processes, and institutions is an essential starting point for predicting the future. We encourage all political researchers to consider the consequences of current processes and trends – social, economic, technological – for their specific fields. The diagnosis of the current state of research in a given field is as significant and valuable as long-term forecasts.

Attempting to understand the political aspects of the future is not only an intellectually fascinating challenge but also a social duty of our community. Identifying trends and probable scenarios will facilitate the design of strategies, shaping laws, and redefining the role of political institutions to respond to future challenges and avoid the lurking threats. The Congress of Political Science is an excellent forum for such discussions.

I. DEMOS

What shape will the political community of the future – demos AD 2050 – take? Today, there is a clear trend of including beings other than humans in this community. There are calls for the subjectification and political representation of animals, rivers acquire legal personality, and soon robots, AI-based machines, and various intermediate categories between humans and machines (cyborgs - robo sapiens) may join this pluri-verse of beings (Latour). How will power relations in such a hybrid society be shaped? Will homo sapiens maintain their dominance, or will they share political rights with other beings, thereby redefining the concept of political representation? Will transhuman beings gain the status of sub- or super-humans? Will the category of human rights remain valid, or will it become rather a manifestation of speciesism? Importantly, these kinds of questions can be approached not only via long-term forecasts, but also by the analysis of the current state and trends in the field of civil society, representation or political rights. 

II. POWER AND POLITICAL LEADERSHIP

Will political power retain its traditional role in the future, i.e. resolving conflicts, distributing limited resources, reconciling conflicting interests, organizing collective effort (while the types of these resources, interests and contents of conflicts will probably be different)? Or will this role be reduced to the “administration of things”, i.e. managing resources in conditions of convergence of values, needs and goals?

Tools based on AI algorithms, used today for political marketing based on micro-targeting (á la Cambridge Analytica), and in the future for many other, yet unknown ways, will certainly become a permanent part of the arsenal of political power. Does this mean extreme technocratization of leadership? Or will charisma and other personal traits of leaders retain their significance in politics? On the other hand, social evaluation systems, modeled on the Chinese social credit system, may not only be a tool of political control, but also a basis for a new social stratification – social advancement based on individual achievements, not group affiliation. 

III. POLITICAL SYSTEM: INSTITUTIONS AND PROCEDURES

Will the possible extension of the political community to new categories of beings be reflected in the institutional architecture of future political systems? In the literature, there are already proposals for solutions serving the representation of non-human beings (e.g. a third chamber of parliament) and future generations (F-representatives - representatives of the future). And what will the elections AD 2050 look like? Not very differently, except that  computers will speed up the process of casting and counting votes? Or maybe we will entrust powerful machines based on AI to create a profile of our preferences, match it to the profiles of candidates and cast a vote for us?

However, we do not have to assume that representative democracy (or democracy at all) will be the political regime of the future. Perhaps democracy will pass into history in a few decades, as it will prove to be too inefficient a system for processing and managing a huge amount of data (presumably it will no longer be humans to play the leading role in this processing and management). What will replace it? A decentralized system of regulatory commissions at the local or global level? Or techno-authoritarianism - universal (i.e. multi-species) or based on the domination of one of the categories of beings.

It is also worth considering what role AI algorithms will play in politics, both in the struggle for power (political marketing, deep fake, etc.), and in its exercise (optimization of decision-making procedures, automated aggregation of preferences). If we increase their autonomy, allowing, for example, to read the preferences of citizens directly from their brains (using BCI - brain-computer interface) and implement them into policy decisions, should the process be supervised by human guardians / wisemen?

IV. IDEOLOGY

Should we expect the twilight of ideology in the advanced Anthropocene, due to the far-reaching convergence of goals, values, expectations, definitions of happiness – if only because the transhumanist vision of universal, disease-free and material-worry-free longevity comes true? In other words, will there be a lack of conflicting interests around which ideas would clash? Or, perhaps more likely, ideologies will not lose their significance – only the conflicts and constellations of interests that ideology justifies and generates will change. For example, differences in access to the possibilities offered by biotechnology – life extension, psychophysical improvement – may become a new axis of social conflicts, or even socio-political cleavages, or simply a continuation of existing conflicts between the poor and the rich, the North and the South.

In connection with the emergence of new categories of beings, we should also expect the growth of “inter-species” antagonism. The mechanism of anthropomorphizing of machines (e.g. domestic robots, virtual assistants) and then their secondary dehumanization, may be at work here. The xenophobia inherent in humans may result in a new racism: AI-, cyborg- or robotophobia. Or maybe, on the contrary, all these beings will harmoniously blend into the hybrid society of the future?

The new contents of politics may also require modifications of the existing arsenal of symbols, by means of which the ideas corresponding to these contents are expressed. What could these symbols and myths of the future politics look like? 

V. POLITICAL BEHAVIOR

As long as the vision of extreme convergence of interests and extinction of political struggle does not come true, universal participation should still play an important role in politics. Will the digital world become only an alternative space for existing forms of political activity (virtual demonstrations against “real” politicians, hacktivism as a manifestation of digital disobedience) or, rather, will alternative, competitive political systems emerge in the metaverse, with their own norms, institutions and leaders?

How will new technologies affect political behavior? Computer systems capable of processing huge amounts of data will be an instrument of influencing the electorate, but may also facilitate citizens’ critical analysis of the rulers’ actions. Blockchain technology, used so far mainly for the circulation of cryptocurrencies, can be used for building and decentralized management of independent, egalitarian civic communities. Advanced cryptography will contribute to greater transparency and fairness of elections. Digital society may also foster the activity of social movements based on mass mobilization.

What role will, therefore, fall to political parties, institutions inseparably linked to the currently dominant models of political systems? It can be expected that in response to changing needs and mechanisms of functioning of societies, including in the area of interpersonal communication, parties will change their structures and ways of acting and redefine the functions they perform in the political system.

VI. INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND SECURITY

It is hard to imagine that changes in all spheres of human life would not have a significant impact on international relations. But what could these changes entail? First, will other entities join the traditional ones (states, supranational organizations, large corporations, etc.), such as virtual communities embedded in the metaverse? Will states, if they survive, remain communities that associate different categories of beings? Or maybe transhuman beings will strive for sovereignty (e.g. a cyborg state)? It is not inconceivable, moreover, that state sovereignty will erode, and the world order will take the form of a “new Middle Ages”, with overlapping dependencies of territorial and non-territorial, “real” and virtual entities. Second, what will the relations between these entities be based on? Still on military strength and economic power? Or rather on control over cyberspace as the intelligent beings’ primary living environment? Or maybe the decisive factor will be biotechnological advantage – indestructibility/immortality or superintelligence of posthumans.

The current trends also have undeniable consequences for security at the individual, intra-state and international levels. Advanced technologies may facilitate breaching of security, but also its protection ­– and, consequently, change the definition, meaning and social perception of this concept.