Guest lecture in artificial intelligence and political science

Next Friday, we will welcome our next guest lecturer, Emilija Tudzarovska. She will discuss populism and legitimation in the era of AI.

There is a growing evidence of the popular disaffection with the performance of governments largely expressed in an anti-incumbent backlash and rising support for populist insurgents in the EU. We are also witnessing presence of populist parties in government within the EU institutions and normalization to the anti-system politics linked to vote‐seeking strategies, where populist governments use EU decision‐making to mobilize domestic audiences. This expression of resentment against the traditional forms of representative democracies disclose the use of the language of popular sovereignty against the institutions of representation. At the same time, the regulation of the digital technology and the AI’s (mis)use in electoral strategies in the EU requires re-examining the capacity of the representative democracies in providing legitimacy in the age of digital market economy. This lecture will discuss the capacity of the traditional political parties in providing legitimation and public scrutiny over digital technology, amidst the rising presence of popular parties in the EU governments.

Emilija is Assistant Professor in European Politics at Charles University in Prague. Her research lines bring together multidisciplinary research in EU contemporary politics with a focus on the EU democratic legitimacy, state transformation, party politics and EU economic governance. She examines the the crisis of democratic representation in the EU, from the aspect of legitimization, public scrutiny and oversight of public policies, including in the field of digital technology. Her published work appears in Palgrave Macmillan, Routledge, Central European Public Administration Review Journal, and Bloomsbury publishing (forthcoming). She is a former practitioner with active practice in politics and policy-making (2007-2017), leading UK-funded, EU-funded and German-funded projects and programs with a focus on the process of Europeanization and democratization. She is media contributor to: Social Europe, International Politics and Society (IPS), ECPR Blog and elsewhere.

We at the Centre are all looking forward to meeting her!