Unthinking Digital Sovereignty: A Critical Reflection on Origins, Objectives, and Practices

“Digital sovereignty” is the political buzzword of the hour. Over the last decade, it has gone from being a vague idea invoked by a few policymakers and activists to a political slogan with global appeal. It was in 2016 that its growing popularity became especially clear. That year, Donald Trump was elected US president for the first time, with a protectionist agenda that included banning selected Chinese tech companies from the US market (Thumfart 2022); the EU adopted its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which imposed rules that applied to actors outside EU territory for the first time (Chen, Frey, and Presidente 2020); and China adopted the Cybersecurity Law, establishing key provisions for data protection and localization and laying the groundwork for broader regulations on data, platforms and infrastructures (Creemers 2020). While the ideas underlying digital sovereignty are much older, the adoption of regulations and stances by these three major powers prompted new political debates on sovereignty (Danet and Deforges 2020; Pohle and Thiel 2020). Over the past decade, a growing number of governments, organizations, and groups have sought to lend this term (or connected terms such as internet sovereignty, technology self-sufficiency, strategic technological autonomy, or data sovereignty) their own meaning, as illustrated throughout this special issue. These actors do not solely include major world powers with strong leverage in shaping digital markets and policies. In fact, emerging powers, private organizations, and groups such as Indigenous populations are also seeking to establish their own views on digital sovereignty and to enforce them through technical arrangements, regulations, or economic practices (Cong and Thumfart 2022; Glasze et al. 2023; Roberts et al. 2021; Walter et al. 2020). As a result, digital sovereignty has now become a much more encompassing concept, addressing issues of digital communication and connection but also the much wider digital transformation of societies. While some still criticize digital sovereignty efforts as disguised protectionism or technological nationalism, the concept is now often used as a shorthand for an ordered, regulated, and secure digital sphere—a digital sphere, in which the multifaceted problems of individual rights and freedoms, collective and infrastructural security, political and legal enforceability and fair economic competition are finally resolved. In addition, in Western democracies' discourses, there is also a growing emphasis on internal sovereignty and democratic sovereignty with regard to the digital sphere. As such, the concept of digital sovereignty is understood as a prerequisite for citizens to be able to shape the process of digital transformation in a self-determined and democratic manner. This understanding is, however, not globally shared and thus gives rise to the ever-growing number of meanings of digital sovereignty. This special issue, titled Unthinking Digital Sovereignty, explores a number of definitions and perspectives on digital sovereignty from Europe, the United States, China, India, South Africa, Uganda, and Indigenous communities, with a case study on Mexico. The articles in it offer a re-examination and critical deconstruction/reconstruction of the digital sovereignty debate through various perspectives and disciplinary approaches. Yet, this special issue is not an exhaustive anthology of critical views on digital sovereignty. Rather, the different contributions aim to offer readers a foundation for reflecting on the discourses, practices, and dynamics shaping current debates on digital sovereignty and evolving relationships within global digital governance. While the term “digital sovereignty” dates back to the 1990s (Cong and Thumfart 2022; Glasze et al. 2023), it has only recently surged in popularity in academic and policy circles with the increasing politicization of technology. Today, it is invoked across various political and economic contexts, from more centralized and authoritarian countries to liberal democracies. Over time and across regions, it has acquired a large range of connotations. Although all understandings and narratives of digital sovereignty consistently share some core elements, they diverge based on the national contexts, the actor configurations and the forms of self-determination they prioritize (Couture and Toupin 2019). We align with Lambach and Oppermann's view that it is precisely the broad, adaptable nature of “digital sovereignty” that makes it appealing to diverse actors: its openness “is not a bug, but a feature. Digital sovereignty has not had a successful career despite its protean nature but because of it” (Lambach and Oppermann 2022). Due to the diversity of narratives attached to digital sovereignty, the majority of the existing research on the concept and its political repercussions has focused on discourses and practices in specific regions and countries. Particular attention has been paid to the European Union and its member states (Adler-Nissen and Eggeling 2024; Carver 2024; Floridi 2020; Lambach and Monsees 2024; Monsees and Lambach 2022; Pizzul and Veneziano 2024), and for good reason: The European debate on digital sovereignty is indeed a prominent example of how the concept has different meanings in different policy realms, even within the same country or block of countries. For example, the French concept of souveraineté numérique, which was introduced in the mid-2000s and first mentioned in a parliamentary debate in 2012, follows a rather classical understanding of sovereignty associated with democracy, the rule of law and territoriality. It was developed primarily in opposition to the perceived hegemony of US digital technology providers and the resulting French dependence on them (Musiani 2013; Thumfart 2022). At the same time, in Germany, demands for “digital sovereignty” only emerged after the Snowden revelations in 2013 and the comprehensive surveillance, not only of ordinary users but also of top German politicians, became public knowledge (Glasze et al. 2023). While the German debate thus also focuses on independent digital infrastructures and the protection of data flows, it is less state-centered than the one in France. Instead, it also emphasizes the need for user sovereignty, that is, the capacity of each individual to be in control in the digital sphere (Pohle 2020). Both the French and the German debates thus also differ from those at EU level. For instance, Charles Michel, serving as president of the European Council at the time of writing, has described digital sovereignty as a tool for strategic autonomy, with the latter being “about being able to make choices […] this means reducing our dependencies, to better defend our interests and our values” (European Council 2021). Similarly, the European Parliament's own think tank, the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS), has defined digital sovereignty as “Europe's ability to act independently in the digital world” (Madiega 2020). Both definitions address the EU's willingness to build, retain, and protect its own decision-making autonomy in the digital field. However, they fall short of defining what the field includes and what autonomy entails: while the often-cited objective is reducing the EU's dependence on US and Chinese technology (Dixon 2022), the establishment of an “EU stack,” in the sense of a value chain of digital technologies fully produced in Europe from semiconductors to infrastructure and the platforms that run on top of it, is an unrealistic one. Nonetheless, initiatives such as DNS4EU can be seen as part of an attempt to make the intra-EU digital infrastructure less prone to negative external influences (Kulikova 2021). Demanding digital sovereignty to express a desire for more autonomy in times of digital interconnectedness is most certainly not a unique European feature. China began deploying its concepts of internet sovereignty and information sovereignty in the 1990s. The country's policies have thus been a focus of much academic scrutiny (Creemers 2020; Hong and Goodnight 2019; Nanni 2022; Zeng, Stevens, and Chen 2017). Information sovereignty refers to the Chinese government's attempts to control information flows within the country amid the rise of digitalization and the increasing ubiquity of internet connectivity—a major target of Chinese investment from the late 1980s onward (Cong and Thumfart 2022; Gong 2005). The 2010 White Paper on (the Status of) the Internet in China is credited in the literature as China's first attempt to formalize internet sovereignty in a policy paper (Creemers 2020). In the Chinese debate, concepts such as internet sovereignty and information sovereignty have different origins than in the European debate. While the EU is concerned by the fact that it lacks major tech companies capable of competing with the United States and Chinese giants in device production, network manufacturing, and the platform economy (Roberts et al. 2021), in China, the debate is driven by a fear of foreign interference. This fear can be subdivided into a fear that countries will interfere through foreign propaganda, the definition of which often entails dissenting, politically sensitive opinions from Communist Party dictates, and a fear of (cultural) imperialism based on China's past as a country that underwent colonialism (Cong and Thumfart 2022). Besides addressing the popular topics of China and the EU, a growing number of studies have analyzed how the concept of digital sovereignty is applied in other authoritarian countries, most prominently Russia (Budnitsky and Jia 2018; Daucé and Musiani 2021; Litvinenko 2021), and in the countries of the so-called “Global South” (Basu 2023; Gehl Sampath and Tregenna 2022). Findings indicate that BRICS countries are increasingly prioritizing the development of cybersecurity frameworks, with a particular focus on data privacy regulations and digital policies designed to reaffirm national sovereignty and reduce the influence of foreign technology companies and governments (Belli 2021; Ifeanyi-Ajufo 2023). A similar securitarian discourse on digital sovereignty, emphasizing the need to protect the state from digital threats, can also be observed in the Euro-Mediterranean region, particularly in North Africa and West Asia (Santaniello, forthcoming). However, the actions undertaken under the auspices of digital sovereignty extend beyond mere security concerns. In Africa, for instance, the emphasis on digital sovereignty can be seen as both a form of resistance to foreign digital dominance and a tool for reinforcing and justifying authoritarian governance practices (Shaheed and Greenacre 2021). Claims of digital sovereignty extend beyond governments and states, yet research on how nonstate actors engage with this concept—and how their claims manifest in concrete practices—remains scarce. Some existing studies focus on how Indigenous communities worldwide are interacting with digital technologies, using them to revitalize and promote cultures and educational practices that were once suppressed by colonial powers. Others examine the physical internet infrastructure and hardware production, especially when they impact ancestral lands, thus bringing into sharp focus the debate around digital colonialism as a new dimension of the pursuit of digital sovereignty by global powers (Caranto Morford and Ansloos 2021; Couture and Toupin 2019; Young 2019). Almost all of these understandings of digital sovereignty share a common feature: digital sovereignty is framed primarily as a process rather than a status. Actors invoke digital sovereignty to articulate the objective of strengthening self-determination and the capacity to act in globally networked societies. However, while the aspiration of digital sovereignty thus indicates the path towards a brighter future, actors rarely present it as an objective that can ever be a final, attainable endpoint. And the anticipated journey varies depending on the specific context in which the concept is applied. This special issue is based on a recognition that digital sovereignty is a social construct. As such, it is conveyed through a series of narratives and pursued through policies, technological practices and legislation that invoke it and, in return, derive legitimacy from this reference. Hence, when we speak of “unthinking” digital sovereignty, we draw on Wallerstein's (1991) idea of “unthinking” as the process of reversing, dismissing, and unlearning previously established concepts. The goal is not to replace the concept or its meanings with new ones but rather to critically address them from nonconventional perspectives. Consequently, “unthinking” digital sovereignty first and foremost involves disconnecting the concept of digital sovereignty from the notion of Westphalian sovereignty. As we have argued, the discourse on digital sovereignty does not solely originate from nation states, nor is it tied to them. Additionally, “unthinking” digital sovereignty suggests that scholars studying sovereignty in the digital space do not occupy a neutral position; instead, their work plays a constitutive role in those policies and practices that invoke the concept as a source of legitimacy. Hence, “unthinking” digital sovereignty places epistemology at the core of the discussion on digital governance, inviting a critical examination of the frameworks, agendas, and academic debates that shape our understanding of sovereignty in the digital realm. Another implication of the “unthinking” approach is that the rise of digital sovereignty as a set of discourses and practices cannot be understood in isolation. Instead, it is part of a broader power struggle over digital governance, which itself is woven into fiercely contested and at times violent battles for global hegemony. This implies that a critical perspective on digital sovereignty needs to be both relational and historical. It must consider relations between world regions rather than between individual nation-states, and it must consider the dynamics between individuals, groups, and institutions rather than solely between governments. In addition, it should investigate long-term historical processes rather than isolated events, bringing path dependencies and structural relationships to the fore. As Bannerman (2022) has observed “sovereignty comes from relations,” meaning that neither individuals nor states nor platforms can be conceived of as self-contained and autonomous entities. Rather, they are the product of a network of historical and social relations that determine their sovereignty. Understanding digital sovereignty thus requires the acknowledgment of class, gender, race, and socioeconomic, colonial, material, and spatial relationships as they have evolved over centuries. Moreover, when “unthinking” digital sovereignty, scholars must also address the much-neglected question of how digitally sovereign powers can be controlled. In many instances, the idea of strengthening digital sovereignty does not just mean actively managing dependencies but also creating central control points for digital infrastructures and applications. Therefore, much more reflection is needed on how sovereign powers can be held accountable. It is not sufficient to propose that private actors' power could be tamed by public institutions to protect user rights, as many democratic governments across the world have done. Likewise, it is too simplistic to equate sovereignty with the ability to defend liberal and democratic values, as is often the case for discourses on digital sovereignty in Europe. For centuries, there has been an ongoing struggle to organize sovereign powers in a way that allows for liberal and pluralistic societies to flourish. Thus, the “unthinking” of digital sovereignty must also include debating the procedural frameworks that structure sovereign capabilities and how they can be opened up to public reflection and control. In other words, invoking digital sovereignty also entails advocating for its constitutionalization, implying a collective effort to set limits on the exercise of digitally sovereign powers and to establish new checks and balances. Finally, “unthinking” digital sovereignty must resist the temptation to consider the related objectives and practices in political, economic, or juridical terms alone. Understanding digital sovereignty requires a holistic approach that escapes the artificial separation between social spheres—a separation that is constitutive of the dominant paradigm of digital governance, the multistakeholder governance approach, against which the digital sovereignty discourse is often formulated. This special issue features six articles that seek to “unthink” digital sovereignty by deconstructing and (re)conceiving it from different viewpoints. While some of the issue's contributions provide much-needed conceptual and theoretical foundations for analyzing, contextualizing, and interpreting the discourses and practices of digital sovereignty, others reexamine various concepts linked to digital sovereignty by critically assessing how policy actors have envisioned and narratively shaped it through selected case studies. Finally, this special issue also foregrounds postcolonial perspectives, exploring digital sovereignty through the lenses of emerging powers, Indigenous communities, and developing countries. new research or a critical perspective to the concept of digital sovereignty, readers new for The first by Pohle and the by critically the from multistakeholder internet governance to digital sovereignty. 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