The Book · Chapter 2 of 28

Chapter 2The Autonomous Turn in Institutional Action

When consequential governing work moves into computational processes, what makes the institution’s authority, judgment, contestation and correction remain effective?

Summary

A public institution can remain formally responsible while losing effective command of the operations that determine a person’s position. This chapter examines that redistribution of governing work through the distinct functions of recording, inference, generation and action. Its constitutional claim is conditional: where consequential operations relocate, institutions must demonstrate that judgment, contestation and correction remain adequate under the governing law. The argument tests this claim against administrative-law continuity, the many-hands problem, nominal human oversight and philosophical accounts of meaningful control. A limited reading of SCHUFA grounds the importance of practical dependence between decision stages, while normative multiagent systems and constitutional-AI research illuminate different forms of computational participation. The chapter distinguishes norm synthesis, recognition, revision and enforcement without treating any technical capacity as constituent authority. It therefore opens, rather than resolves, the question whether intelligent systems could participate in forming a constitutional order.

• operational autonomy
• institutional adequacy
• meaningful human control
• temporal adequacy
• quasi-automation
• normative participation
• constituted revision
• many-hands responsibility