Human Dignity and the Legitimacy of Public Authority in the Digital Transformation of the State: A Two-Axis Governance Test for Automated Administration

Abstract

The digital transformation of the state increasingly places public authority behind digital interfaces, data infrastructures, automated administrative procedures and artificial-intelligence-assisted decision systems. This article develops a theoretical-legal framework for assessing whether such transformation remains compatible with human dignity and with the legitimacy of public authority. It treats dignity as the substantive limit that prevents the individual from being reduced to a data object or passive object of administration, and legitimacy as the public-law condition that requires authority to remain intelligible, contestable, accessible and accountable when exercised through digital systems. Using doctrinal and comparative normative analysis, the article reads these concepts alongside European legal benchmarks, including the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation, the EU Artificial Intelligence Act and Council of Europe instruments on algorithmic systems and artificial intelligence. The principal contribution is a two-axis governance test that translates dignity and legitimacy into operational questions for the design and review of digital public procedures. The test examines preservation of the person’s legal subjecthood and individual circumstances, intelligibility of reasons, effective human review and remedy, equal accessibility, and identifiable institutional responsibility. The article argues that digitalisation strengthens public authority only when efficiency gains are accompanied by procedural safeguards, data protection, non-exclusion and meaningful avenues of challenge. The framework is conceptual rather than empirical and is offered as a normative assessment tool for sustainable digital governance.