From Courts to Campaigns: AI, Accountability, and Digital Sovereignty in Indonesia and the Philippines

This article examines how artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping democratic governance in Southeast Asia through a comparative study of Indonesia and the Philippines. Rather than treating “AI in courts,” “AI in public administration,” and “AI in elections” as separate debates, the study integrates these domains and argues that democracy-related outcomes emerge from their interaction across the governance cycle—from rights-sensitive adjudication and service delivery to the formation of electoral preferences. The analysis is guided by two complementary lenses: democratic accountability (traceability, contestability, liability/answerability, auditability) and digital and platform sovereignty (control over data and public infrastructures versus dependence on transnational platform ecosystems). Methodologically, the article employs a qualitative comparative case-study design based on documentary analysis of legal instruments, policy strategies, regulator and electoral-body guidance, institutional reports, and peer-reviewed scholarship within a 2020–2025 timeframe. The findings indicate that the most immediate democratic risks arise not from fully autonomous “AI government,” but from the institutional embedding of AI-capable infrastructures that become decision-relevant in practice. In the justice sector, procedural digitisation creates pathways toward Machine-Involved Judgment (MIJ) when decision-support outputs shape discretion without robust disclosure, auditable trails, or meaningful review routes. In public administration, integrated GovTech architectures intensify Automated Policymaking (APM) dynamics, where eligibility and access rules are executed through platforms, amplifying demands for contestability and independent oversight. In elections, Algorithmic Political Persuasion (APP)—microtargeting, synthetic media, and platform optimisation—poses the most time-sensitive threats to voter autonomy and electoral integrity, prompting uneven but increasingly explicit platform-facing interventions. The article contributes an integrated analytical toolkit for democratic AI governance and derives risk-based recommendations prioritising enforceable transparency, independent auditing, and effective remedies aligned with citizen sovereignty.