---
title: "Political Solutionism"
description: "Bratton's mirror term for techno-solutionism, from After Alignment: the worry that \"exhaustion with tech solutionism gives way to self-congratulatory parades of political solutionism, that is now…"
type: "glossary-term"
canonical_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/terms/political-solutionism"
md_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/md/terms/political-solutionism"
last_updated: "2026-09-06"
site: "Antikythera Wiki"
---

# Political Solutionism

> A working definition written for this wiki from the reading notes; not Antikythera's own wording. From Antikythera Wiki (https://antikythera.wiki/terms/political-solutionism), an independent guide to Antikythera's published work.

Bratton's mirror term for techno-solutionism, from *After Alignment*: the worry that "exhaustion with tech solutionism gives way to self-congratulatory parades of political solutionism, that is now overflowing op-ed columns, trade books and yes, schools and universities" — the presumption that anything can be "politicized," forced into the cycle of current events and subordinated to available or imaginary political decisions, even when it is not amenable to that cycle. On the Continent it becomes *regulatory solutionism*: "AI Laws that address yesterday's problems, the EU forever running to where the ball no longer is, trying to shoehorn planetary dynamics into citizen scale policies." The Noema grief essay files it under *Bargaining*: governing AI through rights, liabilities and "alignment" as if it were a tool whose bad outcomes stem from identifiable actors' intentions. *Recursive Governance* is the same critique with a constructive answer.

## Appears in

- [After Alignment](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/afteralignment) (2025-05-10)
- [The Five Stages Of AI Grief](https://antikythera.wiki/work/media/noema-the-five-stages-of-ai-grief) (2024-06-20)

_Glossary generated 2026-09-06._