SoLiXG:Digital Sovereignty
(Digital) Sovereignty
The concept of sovereignty was first coined during the epochal changes within Europe in the 16th century. Maybe not it’s first but certainly it’s most famous iteration was developed by Jean Bodin in his Six Books of the Republic (1576). The background of Bodins intervention was the conflict between central monarchies and feudal aristocracies connected to the advent of absolutist states in Europe. The epoch of Feudalism was described by Perry Anderson (1974, p. 19) as an era of „parcellized sovereignties“. Absolutist regimes concentrated political and military power in the hands of one single governmental entity personified by the absolute monarch. But they were never completely successful in replacing feudal power structures. It was only through the combined process of the development of capitalism, colonialism, bourgeois revolutions and nation building that a modern form of sovereign statehood actually superseded the feudal order.
The most simple definition of sovereignty is that it denotes the exclusive power of an authority within a given territory, represented by the state. Wendy Brown has furthermore argued that sovereignty ideal-typically consists of six features: 1) Supremacy: there is no higher authority than the ruling body. 2) Perpetuity: there is no term limit for authority. 3) Decisionism: the ruling body is not bound to law. 4) Absoluteness and completeness: Sovereign power cannot be probable or partial 5) Nontransferability: the sovereign power cannot be conferred without canceling itself. And 6) Territoriality: the sovereign power is delineated to a specified jurisdiction, a territory (Brown, 2010, p. 22).
Modern sovereignty on the other hand is not only connected to the sovereign state, but also to the notion of popular sovereignty. State sovereignty, as Balibar has argued, is founded on a contradictory balance whereby popular sovereignty is at the same time enabled and circumscribed by the polity (Balibar, 2009. p. 134). The concept of sovereignty has therefore a dual and conflictual character: It refers at the same time to the protection of individual rights from and popular participation in the state, while at the same time protecting the freedom of the state from competing power centers and prescribing obedience to its subjects. The contemporary debate around „digital sovereignty“ is characterized by the same dual and conflictual understanding, referring sometimes to the protection of individual user rights and sometimes - or at the same time - advocating for the revitalization of state sovereignty over the new territory of the digital world.
We understand digital sovereignty as a discursive tool, situated between previous conceptualisations of digital sphere and governance, such as data sovereignty and cyber sovereignty. The term refers both to a nation-state perspective of sovereignty and an individual and rights perspective. In European integration policy context, DS works as a catch-all term entailing the entire value-chain of the digital sphere, from cloud infrastructures to cables and data centres, to the production of minerals and semi-conductors, which entails regulations regarding data surveillance, data extraction and privacy, and strategic geopolitical positioning.
Anna: We could add here that in parts this term gets exchanged with "strategic autonomy", "digital strategic autonomy" - at least in our documents and interviews. Lukas, please correct me if I am wrong.