Models of State Digital Sovereignty From the Global South: Diverging Experiences From China, India and South Africa

ABSTRACT Digital sovereignty unfolds differently and unevenly across geographies. The paper describes and theorizes three models of state digital sovereignty from the Global South—China, India and South Africa—three BRICS member countries that are home to over 1/3 of the world's population. Their digital policies and practices form an interesting and diverging array of efforts to pursue digital sovereignty in contrast to the U.S. and EU approaches, ranging from a digital powerhouse like China, a middle power country like India, and a regional power like South Africa. The paper argues for the need to reconceptualize “digital sovereignty”: not only in such normative terms as territorial integrity, legal equality, and noninterference, but also in terms of digital capacity, self‐sufficiency and autonomy that emphasize the constitutive power of digital technologies in structuring social, economic and political relations. In addition, state‐centric analysis of digital sovereignty practices and policies can coincide and overlap with other analytical perspectives (such as postcolonialism in this analysis) to render the phenomenon and understanding of digital sovereignty complex and multidimensional. This paper highlights the choices and constraints of the three Global South countries' digital nation‐state building efforts while also raising concerns over state instrumental use of digital sovereignty for censorship and surveillance in authoritarian and democratic countries alike.