Purpose
The Democratic Capabilities Gap Map is intended to track the capabilities, research questions, and product gaps that stand between us and deliberative democratic systems that can handle the challenges posed by AI advances.
This map builds on Democratic System Cards (ICML 2025), by providing a concrete path toward improving each of the core dimensions underlying the quality of democratic processes. The current version is intended to particularly accelerate those focused on improving representative deliberative democratic processes. It provides a map of critical ‘democratic capabilities’ across each dimension and supports prioritization about what to research, fund, build, and apply in order to have the most impact.
Our ultimate goal is that key actors making consequential decisions—especially on AI—have access to processes that are sufficiently high quality (e.g., representative, informed, substantive, deliberative, robust, and legible), whether they are governments, corporations, or transnational institutions. The deliberative processes and systems they employ will vary depending on their purpose and context and we need the toolbox and capabilities necessary to work across those contexts.
Who contributed to this?
- Steering Group: Aviv Ovadya, Kyle Redman, Luke Thorburn
- Core Contributors: Sammy McKinney, Eloïse Gabadou Santiago, Flynn Devine, Quan Ze Chen, Shannon Hong, Oliver Smith
- Contributors: Nabila Abbas, Ione Ardaiz, Fazl Barez, Yago Bermejo, Alex Bleakley, Matt Byrne, Ieva Česnulaitytė, Stephanie Chan, Claudia Chwalisz, Yves Dejaeghere, Maya Detwiller, Joe Edelman, Joe Elborn, Zakia Elvang, David Evan Harris, Daniel Fusca, Lodweijk Gelauff, Andrew Konya, Maximilian Kroner Dale, Scott Lappan-Newton, Kelly McBride, Lex Paulson, Kris Rose, Lukas Salecker, Lisa Schirch, Evan Shapiro, Samantha Shireman, Andrew Sorota, Matt Stempeck, Jorim Theuns, Iain Walker, and Jessica Yu
How should it be cited?
Citation: AI & Democracy Foundation (2026). Democratic Capabilities Gap Map. democracybuild.org [BibTeX]
How does the map work?
This Democratic Capabilities Gap Map is intended to track the work required to improve representative deliberative democratic processes.
It is a database mapping relationships between: Dimensions, Capabilities, Resources, Goals, Research Questions and Product Gaps.
This map is organized by the high-level dimensions that describe key outcomes of deliberative processes, for example, that participants become informed. Within each dimension is a subset of capabilities that contribute to delivering these outcomes, for example, that one can curate the context needed to sufficiently inform participants. Not all of these capabilities will be relevant to every deliberative process, but this is intended to be a relatively comprehensive set of the capabilities likely to be necessary.
The core part of this resource is a database laying out the gaps and goals for deliberative processes, exploring existing practices and where and how we can grow them so that they are bigger and more impactful. This data was gathered through intensive, interviews, and workshops with deliberative practitioners and tech builders, and builds on the extensive experience of our team in these fields.
The database also includes lists of proposed products and research questions. These ideas have varying levels of impact and resource requirements. We hope they provide a rolling start for anyone looking to participate in this work.
How did we choose this rating system?
We want the ratings to support two uses:
- Roadmapping: Understanding where we are now and what needs to happen to get where we want to be
- Prioritizing: Making decisions about what needs to be done first
To do this we’ve adopted common assessment criteria from other similar endeavors:
- Maturity: How good is current practice compared to what we think is required?
- Importance: How much would the overall quality of deliberative processes suffer if this capability did not mature?
- Neglectedness: To what extent is this capability lacking resources and attention?
- Opportunity: To what extent can additional resourcing (people, attention, funds, etc.) improve maturity?
- Transnational: How well can this currently work for a global/transnational process?
We’ve also rated the Product Gaps:
- Impact: How much would the overall quality of deliberative processes improve if this product was built?
- Scale: The size and amount of resourcing required to build the product.
There are also “Urgent” tags on some capabilities, goals, research questions and product gaps. We’ve allocated these based on our assessment of what needs to happen first, in say the next 6-12 months to ensure that the deliberative democracy ecosystem can move at the rate needed.
How did we decide what to include in the map?
The AI & Democracy Foundation team manually curated the content, and it went through a round of review before publication, including with subject matter experts where needed.
Many contributors across a variety of fields and backgrounds provided suggestions and expertise.
All of the core content was written and curated by subject matter experts. AI has been used for quality control, copy editing, and web development.
How did we make these assessments?
Several key contributors drew on their deep experience with deliberative democratic processes across governments, AI organizations, public utilities, and peacebuilding. We estimated the threshold representing “good enough” across key dimensions and capabilities such that stakeholders would be sufficiently bought-in and that processes could operate smoothly in high-stakes scenarios.
These are subjective assessments — we don’t have consensus on them even within the AI & Democracy Foundation. They are intended as starting points for debate, not definitive judgments. We think making an opinionated call on these ratings is useful for all stakeholders and in the spirit of Cunningham’s Law, we welcome feedback.
What are the recommendations pages?
In these pages, we’ve curated different views of the data with specific audiences in mind. For example, low-hanging fruit for builders, underserved niches for researchers, the big picture critical capabilities gaps for funders. We’ve included explanations for why we think these views are important, making the pages effectively listicles to help you navigate the database in ways we think would be valuable.
Funding opportunities
Please reach out if you are interested in directing significant funding to dramatically accelerate democratic capabilities development. This map was also developed in order to support an ARPA-like coordinated funding program, specifically for that purpose, given the time pressure we are under due to AI advances. We have core operating funding, so we can ensure that all resources go toward ecosystem acceleration, and have potential matches in the seven to eight figure range.
Contact [email protected].
How do I contribute?
This map is intended to be a living document, and we very much encourage contributions, including additions, suggested changes, and higher-level feedback. Our team will review contributions and update the map periodically. Contributors have the option to be included in the contributors list.
We also invite researchers and teams to share their interest in addressing any of these gaps by reaching out to [email protected], so that emerging efforts can be made visible and potential collaborations can take shape.
Want to stay up to date with significant changes?
This work is meant to evolve as a shared resource. We encourage you to stay connected as updates are made by subscribing to the AI & Democracy Foundation Substack and opting in to Gap Map updates.