Digital sovereignty

Abstract

Over the last decade, digital sovereignty has become a central element in policy discourses on digital issues. Although it has become popular in both centralised/authoritarian and democratic countries alike, the concept remains highly contested. After investigating the challenges to sovereignty apparently posed by the digital transformation, this essay retraces how sovereignty has re-emerged as a key category with regard to the digital. By systematising the various normative claims to digital sovereignty, it then goes on to show how, today, the concept is understood more as a discursive practice in politics and policy than as a legal or organisational concept.

Keywords: Digital sovereignty, Internet governance, Internet exceptionalism, Digital economy, State authority