AI for Civic Engagement and Democratic Decision-Making — a full-day workshop bringing together researchers from AI, HCI, political science, and digital democracy practice.
View Schedule →Democratic political regimes face unprecedented challenges from declining public trust, polarization, disinformation, and external competition from authoritarian systems deploying AI for centralized control.
Simultaneously, recent advances in artificial intelligence — especially large language models — have created new technical capabilities to support democratic deliberation, civic engagement, and inclusive political participation at scale.
This workshop brings together researchers from AI, HCI, political science, computational social science, and digital democracy practice to critically assess the state of the art and collaboratively design next-generation AI systems that strengthen democratic decision-making by the people and for the people.
A core challenge in democratic theory is the deliberative trilemma: achieving simultaneously broad participation, high-quality deliberation, and political equality is extremely difficult.
We invite long papers (up to 7 pages plus references), extended abstracts (up to 2 pages plus references), position papers, and system demonstrations on the following topics.
17 August 2026, Bremen, Germany — Full-day workshop.
| 09:00–09:15 | Opening | Opening Remarks and Workshop Framing Introduction to the deliberative trilemma · Overview of objectives and structure |
| 09:15–09:45 | Invited Talk | [Title to be announced] Michiel A. Bakker · Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge · AI-mediated synthesis and common ground formation |
| 09:45–10:15 | Invited Talk | AI-mediated Deliberation Davide Grossi · University of Groningen · Collective Constitutional AI and democracy-by-design |
| 10:15–10:45 | Invited Talk | Hybrid AI to Support Democratic Debate Monica Palmirani · Full Professor of Legal Informatics · University of Bologna |
| 10:45–11:15 | Break | Coffee Break |
| 11:15–11:45 | Invited Talk | Deliberation Quality and Platform Design Horacio Saggion · University Pompeu Fabra · Measuring and ensuring deliberative quality in online platforms |
| 11:45–12:15 | Lightning Talks | State of the Art: Paper Presentations 5-minute presentations of accepted papers and demos · Existing systems, empirical findings, and current challenges |
| 12:15–13:30 | Break | Lunch Break Poster session and demo stations during the break |
| 13:30–15:00 | Breakout Studios |
Parallel Design Studios (90 min)
Studio A · Consensus & Minority Protection
Studio B · Deliberation Quality & Truthfulness Studio C · Inclusion & Multilingual Participation Studio D · Democracy-by-Design & AI Alignment |
| 15:00–15:30 | Break | Coffee Break |
| 15:30–16:30 | Plenary | Report-Back and Synthesis 10-minute presentations from each studio · Identification of cross-cutting themes · Consolidation of design principles |
| 16:30–17:15 | Panel | From Research to Impact Moderator: Hilke Brockmann · Real-world deployment · Institutional adoption · Policy implications |
| 17:15–17:45 | Networking | Consortium Formation Future collaborations · EU/national funding opportunities · Working group sign-ups |
| 17:45–18:00 | Closing | Closing Remarks and Next Steps |
We welcome contributions from researchers and practitioners across AI, computational social science, political science, HCI, civic technology, and related fields.
Up to 7 pages plus references · Original research, empirical findings, or system descriptions
Up to 2 pages plus references · Work in progress, position statements, or preliminary results
All submissions must use the IJCAI-ECAI 2026 conference paper template. Page limits are exclusive of references. Submissions should be made in PDF format.
Submissions will be reviewed by the programme committee. Accepted papers must register for IJCAI-ECAI 2026.