From Democratic Liberalism to Neurocratic Determinism: The Fascinating Evolution of Modern Western Liberal Democracy as we move in the AI era

Abstract

Can liberal democracy retain elections while surrendering more of the conditions under which political preferences form? This essay tests Neurocratic Determinism as a proposed trajectory, not an established regime classification. It reconstructs the uneven emergence of modern democratic citizenship, distinguishes recent institutional decline from its possible technological causes, and examines the interaction of surveillance capitalism, algorithmic curation, and artificial intelligence. Its central hypothesis is dual enclosure: predictive environments may shape citizens’ preferences while parties adapt to engagement signals those environments help produce. Evidence establishes extensive commercial data practices, politically consequential changes in exposure, and persuasive capacities in controlled AI experiments. It does not establish inevitable preference capture or a completed democratic transition. The Systemised Self, Hollow Demos, and Hollow Absolute provide speculative connections between individual dependence, diminished collective agency, and systemic closure; Aligarchy identifies a possible infrastructure controlling elite. Historical conflicts and consequences for the Global South require contextual rather than universal explanations. The concept is strongest as a falsifiable account of mutually reinforcing dependence, and weakest when it treats influence as determinism or democratic decline as the work of technology alone.

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