The Politics of Artificial Intelligence (MSc)
About the programme
You will learn to analyse AI as a political phenomenon—mapping who designs it, who governs it, and who gains or loses when it is deployed.
This programme starts in September 2026.
We build practical AI literacy (how systems work, fail, and scale) and apply core Political Science tools to regulation, security, labour markets, and public opinion. Ethics is not a side note: every topic forces you to confront bias, accountability, rights, and safety as empirical and normative trade-offs—then defend your judgments. Cases like the EU AI Act, platform governance, borders and policing, and automated decision-making anchor the theory to real institutions.
Methodologically, you’ll learn research with AI (e.g., text analysis for policy, auditing model outputs) and research of AI (ethnographies of AI systems, field analysis and social network analysis, institutional analysis, comparative governance, stakeholder and incentive mapping). You’ll practice concrete tools—risk/impact assessments, audit design, transparency and reporting standards—alongside a dedicated course on ethics and politics that ties these pieces together. The programme culminates in an a thesis and analyses that demonstrate you can assess, design, and critique AI governance in the wild.
All Political Science master’s specialisations
› International Organisation
› International Politics
› Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict and Development
› Dutch Politics
› Democracy and Representation
› Political Theory: Political Legitimacy and Justice
› The Politics of Artificial Intelligence