Borders in Cyberspace: Digital Sovereignty Through a Bordering Lens

Abstracts Globalization has consistently challenged the authority of territorial states, with the internet serving as a prominent site of this disruption. We use a bordering lens to understand how states have attempted to manage global information interdependence. States have used cyberborders—content removal, website blocking, and routing infrastructure—to create distinctions between foreign and domestic information environments. We show that efforts to control digital information are robustly correlated with the concept of “border orientation”—or the degree of a state’s efforts to filter the movement of people and goods into and out of their jurisdiction. Cyberborders are correlated with terrestrial, suggesting a common underlying preference for assertively managing globalization more generally. This research supplements existing analyses of digital censorship that highlight vertical state–society relationships with a focus on horizontal inside–outside bordering relationships. The evidence suggests that digital policies are deeply tied to broader preferences for managing globalization that do not correspond exclusively with regime type.