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Introduction
As digital technologies increasingly shape democratic processes, societies face urgent questions about how data and AI influence governance, public participation, and institutional legitimacy. The rapid integration of AI into decision-making—ranging from algorithmic content moderation to predictive policy analytics—creates both opportunities and risks for democracy. While digital tools can enhance transparency, citizen engagement, and evidence-based policymaking, they also raise concerns about misinformation, political polarization, opaque decision-making, and regulatory gaps.
This special collection (virtual special issue) in the open-access journal Data & Policy (Cambridge University Press) explores how AI and digital data are transforming democratic governance. We invite contributions that critically examine the role of computational methods in understanding and measuring democracy, the potential of AI-driven innovations to support democratic participation, and the regulatory and governance challenges emerging in digital spaces. Key questions include: How can we use novel data sources and AI to understand political decision making? In what ways can AI-driven tools empower citizens while safeguarding against manipulation? How should governments regulate algorithmic decision-making to ensure fairness and safeguard democracy?
By bringing together research from political science, computational social science, law, and public policy, this special issue aims to bridge disciplinary perspectives on different aspects of democratic decision-making in times of AI. We seek empirical studies, theoretical reflections, and policy analyses that illuminate the intersection of AI and democracy, with a focus on understanding decision-making processes, or providing input for policy considerations. Ultimately, this issue seeks to provide actionable insights for policymakers, researchers, and civic actors working to ensure that digital governance strengthens democratic processes and values rather than undermines them.
Policy significance of this collection
Given that digital technologies transform the traditional practices across many fields, it is important for decision makers to provide not only regulatory frameworks for the use of digital technologies, but also to properly anticipate upcoming changes to their communication procedures (e.g. using social media posts instead of press releases to communicate policy decisions). Moverover, in addition to traditional ways of citizens involvement in politics (e.g., voting in elections; signing petitions; protesting), more innovative digital technologies (e.g. organizing digital mini-publics) can be used to involve the citizenry in decision-making.
Key themes
The key themes below cover both the challenges and opportunities of digital tools, but the SI is not limited to the following topics:
- In which way can new methods and data gathered using digital technologies enhance transparency?
- In which way can new methods and data gathered using digital technologies be used to enhance citizen engagement?
- In which way can new methods and data gathered using digital technologies be used for evidence-based policymaking?
- How can civil society actors use digital technologies for decision making?
- How might the usage of digital technologies increase misinformation?
- How might the usage of digital technologies fuel political polarization?
- How can the usage of digital technologies reinforce opaque decision-making?
- What are regulatory gaps when it comes to digital technologies used for informing democratic decision making? And how to overcome them?
Timetable
Deadline for submissions: Friday 3 October 2025, which happens to also be a significant date for democracy in Germany.
Articles will be published as soon as possible after acceptance and added to a collection page; earlier submission therefore may result in earlier publication.
How to submit
Authors should submit articles through the Data & Policy ScholarOne site, using the special collection tag when prompted.
Please feel free to use the journal's LaTeX or Word templates. Note also that we have a template in Overleaf, a cloud-based, which has collaborative features and enables authors to submit directly into the Data & Policy system without having to re-upload files.
Note that Data & Policy publishes the following types of articles, which authors will be prompted to select from on submission:
- Research articles that use rigorous methods that demonstrate how data science can inform or impact policy by, for example, improving situation analysis, predictions, public service design, and/or the legitimacy and/or effectiveness of policy making. Published research articles are typically reviewed by three peer reviewers: two assessing the academic or methodological rigour of the paper; and one providing an interdisciplinary or policy-specific perspective.
- Commentaries are shorter articles that discuss and/or problematize an issue relevant to the Data & Policy scope. Commentaries are typically reviewed by two peer reviewers.
- Translational papers are contributions that show how data science principles, techniques and technologies are being used in practice in organisational settings to improve policy outcomes. They may present original findings but are less embedded in the scholarly literature as research articles. They are typically reviewed by two peer reviewers, who assess the rigour and policy significance of the paper.
- Data papers that provide a structured description of an openly available dataset with the aim of encouraging its re-use for further research.
You can read more on the Instructions for Authors here.
Why submit to Data & Policy?
✔ A venue developed for and expanding the community working at the data science for governance interface, established by the Data for Policy Conference.
✔ Welcomes research, translational articles, commentaries and data papers, plus the Data & Policy blog for more immediate reflections.
✔ Well-cited (2023 Impact Factor: 1.8) and indexed in Web of Science, Scopus and Directory of Open Access Journals.
✔ Open Access with support for authors who do not have access to funding to pay publishing charges.
✔ Promotes open sharing of data and code through Open Science Badges.
Open Access
Any author can publish on an open access basis in Data & Policy, irrespective of their funding or institutional affiliation. Many articles have publishing costs covered through the Transformative Agreements that Cambridge has set up with universities worldwide. Authors not affiliated with these agreements can still publish open access. Authors who have a grant that specifically budgets for open access publication are expected to pay an article processing charge (APC). However, if an author has no funding to pay an APC and no institutional agreement, the charge will be waived. Please feel free to submit to this special collection irrespective of where you are based and whether or not you have research funding.
Guest Editors
- Ingmar Weber, Alexander von Humboldt Professor in AI, Saarland University, Germany
- Daniela Braun, Professor of Political Science, Saarland University, Germany