Data extractivism and democracy's crisis: rethinking data governance alternatives through a neo-Marxian conception of democracy

Alternative data governance proposals have emerged across policy, civil society, and academic spheres in response to the harms of data extractivism. Yet, many of them either rely on individual decision-making or presume that existing public institutions possess the capacity for deep democratic ordering. Such approaches remain analytically and normatively oblivious to the ongoing crisis of democracy under financialised capitalism and the countervailing dynamics necessary for meaningful political and technological transformation in this context. This article argues for situating alternative data governance proposals within a dynamic account of democracy's crisis. Drawing on Nancy Fraser's neo-Marxian framework, we examine how this crisis is expressed, deepened, and reproduced by data extractivism and assess the capacity of various proposals to countervail these dynamics. On this basis, we argue for governance alternatives that embed countervailing forces to address democracy's crisis dynamics by (1) disrupting the mutually reinforcing relationship between data extractivism and the erosion of public authority, and (2) expanding and reorienting the political sphere. In doing so, we invite a broader inquiry into how democracy's renewal and alternative data governance approaches might reinforce one another.