As global politics is evolving away from the “liberal international order” towards a “new bipolarity” or a multipolar world order, we observe a deepening and intensifying competition for technological leadership among major powers. You know the relevant terms – the „AI (Arms) Race“, „technological sovereignty“, the „Chip War“, etc. To be sure, technological competition has always been an element of great power politics – just remember the Space Race. Nonetheless, this competition for technological capabilities in „emerging technologies“ among major actors (the US and China in particular) has clearly intensified over the past decade or so. In select technological fields,…
Schlagwort: Digital Sovereignty
I am co-organizing two panels on the geopolitics of digital infrastructures at the German Geographical Congress (not sure about that translation, though – it’s the Deutscher Kongress für Geographie). I’m doing this together with Georg Glasze and Finn Dammann – two proper geographers who have kindly taken on this boundary-crossing political scientist. Both panels are scheduled for Friday afternoon (22 September). This is possibly not the most attractive time for conference-goers but it allows me to attend the DKG even though it overlaps with the SPS conference in nearby Darmstadt. Here is the panel abstract: For some years now, questions of…
Last year Kai Oppermann and I published a paper called „Narratives of Digital Sovereignty in Germany“ in the journal Governance. (It’s open access and it’s free – download it here.) The paper is probably the most popular I’ve ever written, at least when it comes to circulation across audiences. I got interviewed in Deutschlandfunk Kultur (23 April 2022), the paper is referenced in Wikipedia Germany and a Tagesspiegel Background article (24 June 2022), and numerous people have reached out and told me that they liked the piece. The paper, which was hitherto only available as Early View, has now been assigned…
Digital sovereignty is the topic that keeps on giving. I’ve just uploaded a preprint of another paper I co-wrote with the wonderful Linda Monsees. After our very successful collaboration on the geopolitical imaginaries behind EU digital sovereignty practices, which was published in European Security last year, we have extended this line of inquiry further. Our new paper, „Beyond Sovereignty as Authority: The Multiplicity of European Approaches to Digital Sovereignty“, identifies four ideas behind European aspirations for digital sovereignty. Here’s the abstract: Digital Sovereignty is core to many contemporary debates on the regulation of digital technology, securing supply chains and strengthening the…
So, apparently Kai Oppermann’s and my paper „Narratives of Digital Sovereignty in German Political Discourse“ is a top-cited paper for the 2021-2022 period in the journal Governance! And I have to be honest – that gave me a little thrill. I’m never too old to enjoy a pat on the head. It is certainly one of my papers that has generated the most responses. At digital policy meetings and conferences, I’ve had repeated cases of people saying that they read and liked it. Which is, of course, enormously gratifying, given how little attention most other academic articles get. It is…
Yesterday’s discussion about internet fragmentation and digital sovereignty was fantastic. Francesca Musiani and Fernanda Rosa brought really interesting perspectives to the table – one from a European STS scholar, the other from a Latin American anthropologist – and Milton Mueller was an incisive and insightful commentator. (Go read some of their writings, they are all very good!) The event was livestreamed on Youtube and a recording will be made available shortly. During my initial comments, I made the point that I’d much rather talk about digital territory than digital sovereignty. When countered that this carries the risk of imposing physical…
I’m pleased to announce the start of a new research project. Following up on our successful project on digital sovereignty narratives in Germany, Kai Oppermann and I want to extend this line of inquiry. Our initial project was mainly concerned with reconstructing how actors speak of digital sovereignty. We now move to a part of the question why they do it, focusing on the idea that there is some kind of international „tech war“ or innovation race going on. We are very grateful to the German Foundation for Peace Research for funding a one-year pilot project which we will use to collect…
I wrote a commentary on one of my favorite subjects over at Theorieblog, the blog of the Political Theory Section of the German Association for Political Science. They are running a series of posts on sovereignty at the moment. This is the English translation of my post. In digital policy debates in Germany, Europe and the world, the term „digital sovereignty“ has become popular since the early to mid-2010s. In German-language discourse, digital sovereignty means – roughly – the ability to act, resilience, self-determination and/or autonomy in digital contexts of the state, society, private companies or citizens. However, in concrete…
This is my introductory statement for tonight’s panel discussion on the „Politics of (Dis)Connection“. [EDIT: The event had to be cancelled. I will let you know once a new date has been scheduled.] [EDIT: The discussion has been rescheduled for 8 February 2023.] In this input I want to talk about digital sovereignty, a very popular term, particularly from a European perspective. I want to make three points in this statement: 1) Digital sovereignty is useful for politics but bad for policy, 2) the EU and member states‘ governments use digital sovereignty to articulate a position vis-à-vis a threatening digitalisation,…