Before the Vote: Agenda Sovereignty and AI-Mediated Democracy

Version 1.0, 10 October 2026. Abstract What if democracy no longer had to depend so heavily on which ideas politicians choose to notice? Artificial intelligence makes it possible to rethink how public decisions are prepared. Citizens can develop ideas, compare solutions, examine evidence, and build on each other's knowledge with far less effort than before. AI can help public institutions examine many more possibilities, and increasingly capable systems may eventually carry out parts of administration itself. Yet much of government still works through slow procedures, fragmented information, and political gatekeepers. The cost is not just bureaucracy. Problems remain unsolved, useful ideas are lost, and opportunities for change pass by. This paper asks what democracy could become if AI were built into the way society discovers problems, develops solutions, and governs public action. It introduces agenda sovereignty: the question of who has the legitimate authority to decide which ideas can become matters of public decision. The proposed Civic Intelligence Loop is an architecture for a more continuous democracy. Citizens could contribute and develop ideas freely in a shared, evolving body of public knowledge. AI would help connect problems, compare competing proposals, question weak evidence, and revisit earlier solutions when circumstances change. Publicly authorized rules would connect this knowledge to government. Institutions would have to explain how they treat selected proposals, make their actions observable, and return what they learn to the shared system. As AI becomes more capable, specifically authorized administrative tasks could increasingly be delegated to it. The goal is not to let a machine decide what society should want. It is to give citizens greater influence over public priorities while making government more capable, accountable, and open to change. The paper examines the economic limits, political risks, and safeguards of this architecture, and proposes a first municipal test. Many of the tools needed to begin are already available. The harder challenge is institutional: redesigning democracy so that the ability to find and act on good ideas is no longer limited by the habits of the past. JEL Codes: D72, D78, H11, O33 Keywords: Agenda sovereignty; AI-mediated democracy; Civic Intelligence Loop; Democratic agenda setting; Artificial intelligence; Citizen participation; Institutional attention; Political accountability