Digital Sovereignty: Conceptual and Empirical Findings on its Rhetoric and Reality

Digitization has become a “make-or-break issue” for Europe (von der Leyen, 2021). It not only requires EU political decision-makers to walk a tightrope between market making and market correction, between promoting digital markets and regulating them (Newman, 2020). The increasing emphasis on geo-economic and geopolitical dimensions of digital policymaking has exacerbated this challenge as states increasingly seek to protect and promote their model of digital governance (Haggart et al., 2021). Between the laissez-faire approach established by the USA and the strictly state-controlled model in China, the EU is increasingly trying to find a clearly “European approach” (Radu & Chenou, 2015) for Internet regulation. Digital sovereignty seems to be emerging as the model for this “new path” (Macron, 2018). The term is used by senior officials, think tanks (Hobbs, 2020) and leading academics (Floridi, 2020) and has certainly become a buzzword among EU politicians (Obendiek, 2021). Surprisingly little research deals explicitly with the question of whether and to what extent the discourse about digital sovereignty is accompanied by an actual change in policy. In order to determine whether and to what extent the discourse on digital sovereignty is accompanied by an actual change in policy, the paper first outlines a concise definition of digital sovereignty. Second, to assess the importance of digital sovereignty for digital policy making as a whole, the contribution presents a theoretical approach that categorises both discursive and policy change by referring to the work of Vivien Schmidt (2003) and Peter Hall (1993). In a third step, the paper discusses possible and maps actual combinations of discourse and policy change. Empirically, the paper is based on findings from various sub-areas of digital politics, including data governance, cybersecurity, digital infrastructure, semiconductor industry and personal digital identities.