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Polarization by Design: How Elites Could Shape Mass Preferences as AI Reduces Persuasion Costs

Nadav Kunievsky

TL;DR

The paper investigates how cheaper AI-enabled persuasion reshapes the distribution of mass opinions under majority-rule constraints, treating polarization as an endogenous strategic instrument. It develops a dynamic game with a single elite and then with two competing elites, analyzing how persuasion costs, state uncertainty, and timing shape the evolution of public opinion. In a single-elite setting, it finds a robust polarization pull toward the median (p = 1/2), intensified as persuasion costs fall; with two competing elites, strategic interaction can produce semi-lock regions that either dampen or amplify polarization depending on costs and payoff structure. The results highlight how transformative AI could fundamentally alter democratic stability by reframing polarization from a social byproduct into a deliberate governance instrument, underscoring the need for policy design to manage these effects and externalities.

Abstract

In democracies, major policy decisions typically require some form of majority or consensus, so elites must secure mass support to govern. Historically, elites could shape support only through limited instruments like schooling and mass media; advances in AI-driven persuasion sharply reduce the cost and increase the precision of shaping public opinion, making the distribution of preferences itself an object of deliberate design. We develop a dynamic model in which elites choose how much to reshape the distribution of policy preferences, subject to persuasion costs and a majority rule constraint. With a single elite, any optimal intervention tends to push society toward more polarized opinion profiles - a ``polarization pull'' - and improvements in persuasion technology accelerate this drift. When two opposed elites alternate in power, the same technology also creates incentives to park society in ``semi-lock'' regions where opinions are more cohesive and harder for a rival to overturn, so advances in persuasion can either heighten or dampen polarization depending on the environment. Taken together, cheaper persuasion technologies recast polarization as a strategic instrument of governance rather than a purely emergent social byproduct, with important implications for democratic stability as AI capabilities advance.

Polarization by Design: How Elites Could Shape Mass Preferences as AI Reduces Persuasion Costs

TL;DR

The paper investigates how cheaper AI-enabled persuasion reshapes the distribution of mass opinions under majority-rule constraints, treating polarization as an endogenous strategic instrument. It develops a dynamic game with a single elite and then with two competing elites, analyzing how persuasion costs, state uncertainty, and timing shape the evolution of public opinion. In a single-elite setting, it finds a robust polarization pull toward the median (p = 1/2), intensified as persuasion costs fall; with two competing elites, strategic interaction can produce semi-lock regions that either dampen or amplify polarization depending on costs and payoff structure. The results highlight how transformative AI could fundamentally alter democratic stability by reframing polarization from a social byproduct into a deliberate governance instrument, underscoring the need for policy design to manage these effects and externalities.

Abstract

In democracies, major policy decisions typically require some form of majority or consensus, so elites must secure mass support to govern. Historically, elites could shape support only through limited instruments like schooling and mass media; advances in AI-driven persuasion sharply reduce the cost and increase the precision of shaping public opinion, making the distribution of preferences itself an object of deliberate design. We develop a dynamic model in which elites choose how much to reshape the distribution of policy preferences, subject to persuasion costs and a majority rule constraint. With a single elite, any optimal intervention tends to push society toward more polarized opinion profiles - a ``polarization pull'' - and improvements in persuasion technology accelerate this drift. When two opposed elites alternate in power, the same technology also creates incentives to park society in ``semi-lock'' regions where opinions are more cohesive and harder for a rival to overturn, so advances in persuasion can either heighten or dampen polarization depending on the environment. Taken together, cheaper persuasion technologies recast polarization as a strategic instrument of governance rather than a purely emergent social byproduct, with important implications for democratic stability as AI capabilities advance.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 24 sections, 2 theorems, 38 equations, 10 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Single Elite
  3. Simple Two-Period Model
  4. One Elite with Infinite Horizon
  5. Two Competing Elites
  6. Two-Period Stackelberg Equilibrium
  7. Two competing Elites with a Long Horizon
  8. Conclusions
  9. Appendix
  10. Figures
  11. Proofs
  12. Proof of Claim \ref{['claim:oneElite_period2']}
  13. Proof of Claim \ref{['claim:single_elite_two_period']}
  14. Step 1 (Regional Maximiers).
  15. Step 2 (Cutoffs $p_0^*,p_1^*$ are not optimal).
  16. ...and 9 more sections

Key Result

Proposition 1

The value function $V_s(p)$ and the optimal policy $\sigma(s,p)$ satisfy:

Figures (10)

  • Figure 1: Value Function Benefits and Costs
  • Figure 2: Single Elite - Policy Function
  • Figure 3: Benefits and Costs in the two elites Stackelberg Game
  • Figure 4: Two Competing Elites - Policy Function
  • Figure 5: Single Elite - Value Function
  • ...and 5 more figures

Theorems & Definitions (16)

  • Remark
  • Remark
  • Remark
  • Claim 1: Period-2 policy and value
  • Claim 2: Single Elite optimal Strategy
  • Proposition 1: Single Elite with Infinite Horizon
  • Definition 2.1: Cost dominance
  • Claim 3: One-step move shrinks under costlier technology
  • Claim 4: Two-Period Stackelberg equilibrium
  • proof
  • ...and 6 more