In a series of recent posts on this blog, we explored how Brazil’s Federal Senate has reinvented citizen lawmaking by developing a set of robust channels that enable greater citizen engagement in each stage of the lawmaking process and how artificial intelligence (AI) could deepen and improve these mechanisms. A series of response posts from guest authors offered additional reflections on the opportunities and limitations of these approaches.
We’ve compiled all of these posts into a collection of essays exploring Brazil's pioneering democratic innovations and how AI could be used to further improve, expand, and deepen engagement with citizens.
Based on interviews with the head of the Brazilian Senate's e-Citizenship office and a leading expert on legislative innovation in Brazil, the first essay by Beth Simone Noveck, Luis Kimaid, Alisson Bruno Dias De Queiroz and Dane Gambrell describes the Senate's four groundbreaking citizen participation mechanisms—the legislative idea, interactive event, legislative workshops, and public consultations—and how AI can could make citizen participation even more impactful.
The second essay, authored by Cristiano Ferri – the former director of the Hacker Lab in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies – offers practical insights about how AI can deepen deliberative democracy in Brazil—and the challenges we still face ensuring that public input feeds into political processes in meaningful ways.
Finally the third essay, by Pompeu Fabra University professor José Luis Martí, frames Brazil's experiments within four essential pillars of democratic innovation—defining clear participation goals, developing an engagement economy, honoring citizen contributions, and embracing deliberation.
Collectively, these essays tell the story of a nation transforming democracy from within and offer vital lessons for democratic renewal in our digital age.
The collection “From Citizen to Senator: Artificial Intelligence and the Reinvention of Citizen Lawmaking in Brazil” is available for download here.
