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Short abstract

Exploring the political rationality of digital sovereignty, we argue that its (geo)politics are animated by a technopolitical rationality distinct from previous forms of power. By theorizing this rationality, we propose a new conceptual framework for thinking the politics of digital sovereignty.

Long abstract

As digital sovereignty discourse gains prominence in international geopolitics, scholars struggle with its significant ambiguity. To aid theorization and policy, this paper aims to clarify the political rationality of digital sovereignty. At first, a Foucauldian perspective seems to confirm the political ambiguity of digital sovereignty, as policy in this domain tends to mobilize techniques attributable not merely to political sovereignty but also to discipline and biopolitical security. However, as we show, a unifying tendency can be identified across discourses of digital sovereignty whereby technology consistently replaces the human as the primary object of politics. Based on this observation and drawing on examples from US, Chinese, and European policy, we trace the particular technopolitical rationality underlying the international digital sovereignty agenda. This emergent rationality, we argue, signals an under-researched international political convergence towards a techno-centric form of politics distinct from traditional forms of sovereignty, discipline, and biopolitical security (even if selectively drawing on their techniques). As for its object, this kind of technopolitics focuses on so-called “general-purpose technologies” viewed as simultaneously foundational, enabling, and constraining devices. Its rationality, then, focuses on strategically enabling and controlling widespread techno-social transformation(s) while avoiding undesirable technical constraints. Finally, its distinctive techniques center on forms of interventionist planning aimed at cultivating techno-centric “ecosystems” through which materials and socioeconomic activities can be extracted and directed towards governments’ strategic technological goals. This theory of technopolitics, we argue, equips us with a novel conceptual vocabulary to think through the politics of digital sovereignty across both research and policy.