WORK
Justice by Means of Democracy
Allen's 2023 systematic statement of power-sharing liberalism, the theoretical framework that grounds her subsequent applied work on AI governance.
Justice by Means of Democracy argues that the traditional liberal framework—which treats democracy as instrumental to the protection of individual rights—has the relationship backwards. Democracy is not a means to justice; justice is achieved by means of democracy. The book develops this inversion into a full theory of power-sharing liberalism that integrates classical liberal commitments (rights, rule of law, limited government) with republican commitments (non-domination, civic participation) and capability-theoretic commitments (substantive freedom, material conditions of agency). The framework provides the normative foundation for Allen's specific proposals about AI governance, educational reform, and democratic renewal.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The book synthesizes two decades of Allen's work on democratic theory, drawing together themes from Talking to Strangers (2004), Our Declaration (2014), and Education and Equality (2016). The central argument is that the dominant traditions of political philosophy have systematically mistaken the relationship between democracy and justice—either subordinating democracy to other values (as in some strands of liberalism) or treating it as valuable only