Dispersion of Power

In The You On AI Field Guide

Applied to the AI transition, the commitment generates a specific diagnosis. The current moment concentrates power in three locations simultaneously: a small number of technology companies that build frontier AI systems, a small number of national governments whose regulatory frameworks shape what the companies may do, and a small number of institutional investors whose capital allocation decisions determine which companies survive. The people affected by the transition — workers whose skills are being repriced, communities whose economic base is contracting, students whose educational investments are depreciating, parents navigating futures they do not understand — have almost no voice in the decisions that shape their lives. This asymmetry is not a temporary feature of an emerging technology. It is a structural condition that will persist absent deliberate institutional intervention.

The historical record Shklar studied suggests that the period of maximum power concentration in a new domain is also the period of maximum political pliability. Institutional arrangements solidify quickly and become difficult to reform once they are established. The AI transition's window for institutional design is closing rapidly as competitive dynamics, regulatory frameworks, and market structures lock in. The specific institutional innovations required — worker representation in AI governance decisions, public participation in regulatory processes, community voice in deployment decisions — must be built during this window or they will face the much higher costs of reforming arrangements already entrenched.

The commitment to dispersion is not anti-power. Shklar did not oppose power; she opposed power without constraint. The goal is not to prevent anyone from exercising power but to ensure that every exercise of power encounters counter-powers capable of constraining it. In the AI context, this means technology companies constrained by regulatory frameworks, regulatory frameworks constrained by democratic accountability, democratic processes informed by workers' direct experience of deployment, and workers equipped with the institutional standing required to make their experience politically consequential. Each element of this structure already exists in attenuated form. None exists at the strength required to constrain the current concentration of power.

The framework's distinctive contribution is its refusal to accept the substitution of voluntary self-regulation for external constraint. The technology priesthood's self-assessment — we are building responsibly, we have safety teams, we are committed to beneficial outcomes — is not an adequate substitute for the dispersion the framework demands. Self-regulation fails reliably at the moment of maximum pressure, when the regulator's interests and the public's interests diverge and the regulator, possessing the information asymmetry, is positioned to resolve the divergence in its own favor. Shklar understood this about every priesthood she studied. The commitment to dispersion is therefore not hostile to the priesthood's intentions. It is the recognition that intentions, however admirable, cannot substitute for institutional structure.

Origin

The commitment runs throughout Shklar's work but is articulated most directly in "The Liberalism of Fear" (1989) and in her analyses of constitutional design across Montesquieu (1987) and earlier works.

Key Ideas

Concentration is the precondition for cruelty. The historical pattern is consistent: power accumulated in a single location produces cruelty when no counter-power constrains it.

Dispersion is structural, not cultural. The framework demands specific institutional arrangements that distribute power, not merely cultural commitments to pluralism.

The AI moment is a design window. Institutional arrangements solidify quickly in emerging domains; the current period offers pliability that subsequent periods will not.

Self-regulation is not dispersion. Voluntary constraint by the powerful fails reliably at the moment of maximum need; external institutional constraints are required.

Voice for the affected is structural. The people downstream of AI deployment require institutional standing that makes their experience politically consequential, not merely consultative inclusion.