CONCEPT
Power-Sharing Liberalism
Allen's theoretical framework—developed in Justice by Means of Democracy (2023)—that treats rights of social participation as foundational to democratic life, alongside the classical liberal rights to bodily protection and freedom of conscience.
Power-sharing liberalism puts human flourishing at the center of political inquiry and treats positive liberties—the substantive capacity to participate in collective life—as no less fundamental than negative liberties. Building on Amartya Sen, Philip Pettit, Elizabeth Anderson, and Elinor Ostrom, Allen developed the framework as an alternative to both market liberalism (which reduces freedom to non-interference) and social-democratic paternalism (which substitutes state provision for citizen agency). Applied to AI, the framework insists that governance must be proactive and generative—asking what the technology should be for—rather than merely reactive and harm-preventing.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Allen's framework emerged from sustained engagement with three traditions. From republicanism, she took the concept of non-domination—the insistence that freedom requires not merely the absence of interference but the absence of another's arbitrary power over you. From the capability approach, she took the focus on substantive freedom and the recognition that material conditions determine whether formal rights become lived capacities. From