AI and Classical Liberalism
Guest editor, Emanuele Martinelli

AI is one of the biggest – if not the biggest – transformative factors for the future of society and the economy. And yet, what this transformation will look like is not clear. AI poses a challenge to dispersed knowledge and power, while also offering unprecedented tools for individual empowerment and market coordination.

Langdon Winner, in ‘Do Artifacts Have Politics?,’ wrote that nuclear energy is a kind of technology conducive to authoritarianism, for it requires a great concentration of resources for investment and maintenance. AI not only requires a great concentration of resources but also of competences, given its technical complexity and the wide array of its applications. On the one hand, AI has been used by governments around the world to roll back individual freedom and further surveillance. On the other hand, AI can be a tool for individuals to gather information and skills, creating opportunities for emancipation especially in developing countries. The platforms and hardware behind AI technology require a great concentration of economic power in the hands of a few companies, and so-called ‘techno-feudalism’ is the view that these companies are thereby accumulating worrying amounts of political power as a result. Conversely, AI and big data analysis are contributing to the ongoing personalization of prices, tailoring offers and advertisements to the needs and purchase history of individuals – ideally perfecting the interplay of supply and demand at the individual level.

The question of how AI may transform society and the economy in a positive way, compatible with freedom and democracy, relies on implementing it according to the principles of classical liberalism. The core values of individual life, liberty, and property should be the guiding principles in evaluating the risks and benefits of pervasive AI technology. Existing regulatory frameworks such as the EU AI Act do gauge the permissibility of AI applications against the threat of infringement of individual rights; at the same time, heavy regulation risks stifling investment and innovation, as opposed to a free-market approach.

This special issue welcomes contributions on the relationship between AI and the principles of classical liberalism. Possible topics may include (but are not limited to):

• How democratic societies should introduce AI into society.
• What is the best regulatory approach to introducing AI in society, e.g., between the EU AI Act and more business-friendly approaches.
• Is AI an inherently emancipating force for individuals, or does it pose a threat of authoritarianism and control?
• How will AI transform fundamental individual rights?
• What is the relation between AI and property? In particular, intellectual property with reference to machine learning models exploiting copyrighted material in their training?
• Who does and should own the data involved in AI training and operations?
• How do AI, predictive algorithms, and big data analysis transform the market order?
• How does AI transform market coordination and/or entrepreneurship?

Timeline

Proposals (abstract, 500-1000 words) due: June 1, 2026
Accepted proposals to be decided by: July 1, 2026
Final drafts (4000–8000 words) due: January 15, 2027
Editorial feedback: April 1, 2027

Submission
Please send submissions to Emanuele Martinelli at: emanuele.martinelli@uzh.ch

Conservatism, postliberalism, and Islam

Debates about the ‘compatibility’ of Islam with Western values and norms are a perennial occurrence. They take on new and unpredictable valences, however, against the backdrop of what Philip Pilkington calls the “collapse of global liberalism” and the resurgence of new and often radical forms of conservatism on the political right.

Postliberals believe, in the words of Patrick Deneen, that liberalism “has failed because it has succeeded”. For postliberal thinkers, the liberal project of emancipating individuals from the constraints of tradition, religion, and community has yielded a radically amoral and atomized society, where—in the face of the decline of the family and other intermediary institutions—only the impersonal, bureaucratic state can manage the conflicts that emerge between the self-seeking agents we have become. An ideology that promised the liberation of human capacities from arbitrary controls has degenerated, claim postliberals, into a nightmare world of loneliness, addiction, and deaths of despair.

Postliberalism’s critics, of course, view the diagnosis as overblown and the prescription—the wholesale abandonment of liberal commitments—as disastrous. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that, whether viewed principally as a framework for the international order or an ideology for domestic governance, liberalism is rapidly losing its hegemony. How can liberals respond to a world in which, for the first time since the fall of the USSR, theirs is no longer the only political game in town? How can what even many postliberals admit are the gains of liberalism—the rule of law, relative prosperity and peace—be preserved in a world moving beyond liberalism’s horizons?

If liberalism is waning, conservatism, of one kind or another, might appear to be waxing. In the Cold War era, ‘fusionist’ conservatives sought to ‘fuse’ a commitment to traditional social and religious values with a classically liberal political and economic order. But today, conservative public intellectuals renounce the neoliberal project as an enemy of faith, flag, and family, recalling Marx’s dictum that, under capitalist governance, “all that is holy is profaned”.

The rise of right-wing populist nationalism across the Western world might appear to vindicate conservatism’s vitality, but the link between the populist phenomenon and intellectual conservatism is contestable. If conservatives should, as Michael Oakeshott put it, “prefer the familiar to the unknown”, can they really endorse radical upstart movements seeking to unsettle longstanding, seemingly workable systems of multicultural accommodation? For some right-wing postliberals, the question is irrelevant: if migrant-origin Muslim communities pose a latent threat to the secular West, this only demonstrates the self-undermining character of godless liberalism. Only a return to premodern, openly theocratic visions of Christian nationalism or neo-ultramontane Catholic integralism can save us from the green peril.

Other conservatives, however, have sought constructive dialogue with Muslim thinkers, and some Islamic scholars have reciprocated. The Muslim theologian Abdal Hakim Murad, himself a reader of conservative thinkers like Roger Scruton, strikes a postliberal note when he blames the drive to enforce liberal “body beliefs” about sex and gender for stoking anti-Muslim hatred. From the other side of the aisle, the British journalist Peter Hitchens asks, provocatively, whether a Muslim-majority Europe might actually be preferable for conservative Christians to the irreligious status quo.

The Muslim world is not postliberal, mainly because it was never really liberal. The gradual transition from secular postcolonial dictatorship to varying ensembles of ‘Islamist’ accommodation is tolerated by many but praised by few serious thinkers. Perhaps, however, the Muslim world might learn from Western conservatism in charting a course that acknowledges both the value of religious liberty and the importance of traditional notions of ‘public morality’.

In this period of global transition, our special issue invites contributions addressing the relationships between Islam, conservatism, and the postliberal moment. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

● Conceptualizing liberalism and liberty: what would it mean to move beyond them?
● The vitality, or otherwise, of liberalism as a political philosophy and an international order
● Developments in Islamic political and social thought in both the Muslim world and the West
● Conservative political thought and its relationship to real-world parties and movements
● Understandings of Islamophobia and their links to liberal, postliberal, or conservative paradigms
● The role of religion(s) in charting a path away from liberal hegemony
● Islamic perspectives on religious and personal freedom and its limits
● Intellectual dialogue between Muslim thinkers and the political right

Timeline

Proposals (abstract or draft, 500-1000 words) due: April 1
Accepted proposals to be decided by: June 1
Final drafts (4000-8000 words) due: Feb 2027
Editorial feedback: Apr 2027

Submission

Please send submissions to jacob.williams@politics.ox.ac.uk