Rally Around the Regulatory Polity? External Threats Public Support for EU Digital Sovereignty Policies

Amidst the decline of the rules-based international order and the increasing weaponization of technology and supply chains by China and the United States, ‘digital sovereignty’ has become the declared goal of the European Union’s (EU) digital agenda. However, political actors disagree about what digital sovereignty entails and how it could be achieved. Whereas previous research has focused primarily on the preferences of national governments and special interest groups, we know little about what European citizens think about digital sovereignty. How do external economic threats affect public support for digital policies? We argue that threat perceptions and concerns about digital dependencies increase support for more sovereignist policy packages, while worries about economic retaliation from China or the US can have a countervailing effect. We present results from novel survey experiments conducted in five EU member states (Germany, France, Poland, Spain, and Sweden; fieldwork in December 2025 & January 2026). First, we investigate how information about the Trump administrations demands to abandon digital regulation impact citizens’ preferences of regulatory and industrial policies: Do US threats create a rally-around-the-flag effect or are citizens willing to trade-off regulation during tariff negotiations? Second, we combine a framing and a conjoint experiment to examine what kind of digital agenda citizens want. Do they consistently favour more or less sovereignist policy packages or do their preferences vary according to policy issues and policy instruments. Do these preferences vary if citizens are primed about European dependencies from China or the US? Our paper contributes to the literature on digital sovereignty and EU digital policy-making by bringing in a previously neglected public opinion perspective. Moreover, it speaks to topical debates about the decline of the liberal international order and the weaponization of the global economy and their effects on European integration.