Janji yang Ingkar, Kuasa yang Sewenang-wenang: Menimbang Nondominasi, Rekayasa Sosial, dan Arah Teknologi dalam Karya Daron Acemoglu

Abstract

This review does not summarize Daron Acemoglu’s What Happened to Liberal Democracy? Remaking a Politics of Shared Prosperity (2026) chapter by chapter. It first reconstructs the book’s architecture, in which four premises, beginning with fallibility, yield four pillars of liberalism, and then tests five core ideas against the book’s own standards: the three promises of democracy, nondomination as the measure of freedom, social engineering as a disease of educated elites, technology as a direction that can be chosen, and deliberation as a source of legitimacy. The review argues that the book’s main contribution lies in shifting the measure of freedom from the absence of interference to the absence of arbitrary power. Its weaknesses lie in two connected points. Nondomination is justified mainly on epistemic grounds, which leaves it exposed to calculations of usefulness, and the lines that govern its application are delegated to judges, whether regulators or deliberative forums, who are not themselves tested against nondomination. The book offers these judges deliberative virtues but no mechanism through which they can be contested. Its remedies, particularly deliberation and pro-worker AI, are more persuasive as directions than as tested programs.