Artificial intelligence is no longer merely a technological tool operating within institutions. Increasingly, algorithmic systems participate in the processes through which institutions classify, prioritize, allocate resources, evaluate conduct, and shape human decisions. As these systems become embedded in public and private governance, they raise a deeper question: what happens when functions traditionally associated with institutions begin to be performed, influenced, or transformed by algorithms?
Algorithmic Institutionalism examines this emerging transformation through the relationship between power, legitimacy, governance, law, technology, and institutional theory.
The book develops the concept of algorithmic institutionalism as a framework for understanding how algorithmic systems can acquire institution-like effects: stabilizing expectations, distributing opportunities and disadvantages, influencing decisions, and shaping behavior at scale. The issue is not simply whether artificial intelligence can make decisions, but how the growing presence of algorithmic systems changes the architecture through which authority is exercised and legitimized.
At the center of the analysis is the tension between algorithmic power and institutional legitimacy. Traditional institutions operate through recognizable structures of authority, procedures, rules, responsibilities, and mechanisms of accountability. Algorithmic systems can operate differently: their criteria may be difficult to inspect, their behavior may change through training and updating, and their effects may extend across institutional boundaries. This creates new questions concerning responsibility, transparency, accountability, human oversight, and the legitimacy of decisions influenced by computational systems.
The book therefore approaches artificial intelligence not only as a technological development, but as a potential transformation of institutional power.
Drawing on perspectives from law, political theory, technology, and institutional analysis, Algorithmic Institutionalism invites readers to reconsider how governance functions when algorithms become part of the infrastructure through which decisions are made and social expectations are organized.
Rather than presenting artificial intelligence as either an inevitable threat or a universal solution, this work proposes a framework for examining, questioning, and reconstructing the institutional relationships emerging around algorithmic systems.
