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This Cyber Defense Trend Analysis argues that while cyber sovereignty is regularly referenced in political, economic and legal discussions, the concept has no fixed definition. In response to this, as well as to highlight why using the term in the same way as strategic autonomy is a misnomer, our authors analyze references to cyber sovereignty in national cybersecurity strategies, current academic discussion and debates on sovereignty in other domains. Baezner and Robin also explore the similarly ill-defined concept of data sovereignty, outlining why control over data depends more on how it is stored than where.

Over the last decade, digital sovereignty has become a central element in policy discourses on digital issues. Although it has become popular in both centralised/authoritarian and democratic countries alike, the concept remains highly contested. After investigating the challenges to sovereignty apparently posed by the digital transformation, this essay retraces how sovereignty has re-emerged as a key category with regard to the digital. By systematising the various normative claims to digital sovereignty, it then goes on to show how, today, the concept is understood more as a discursive practice in politics and policy than as a legal or organisational concept. ; This article has been first published in Internet Policy Review: Julia Pohle and Thorsten Thiel. 2020. "Digital sovereignty." Internet Policy Review 9 (4). https://doi.org/10.14763/2020.4.1532

Over the last decade, digital sovereignty has become a central element in policy discourses on digital issues. Although it has become popular in both centralised/authoritarian and democratic countries alike, the concept remains highly contested. After investigating the challenges to sovereignty apparently posed by the digital transformation, this essay retraces how sovereignty has re-emerged as a key category with regard to the digital. By systematising the various normative claims to digital sovereignty, it then goes on to show how, today, the concept is understood more as a discursive practice in politics and policy than as a legal or organisational concept.

International audience ; Never has sovereignty been as fashionable as since its explanatory and normative force first came into doubt and its knell was tolled in the European Union. With the shift in authority away from the state to new sub-state, supra-state, post-state and non-state entities, an important question is whether the concept of ultimate authority or sovereignty is to be abandoned or, on the contrary, retained and, if so, in which form. This paper aims at exploring a third way that would allow us to escape from the two types of dualism that contrast state and sovereignty, first, and rejecting and saving sovereignty, second. This paper's argument is that sovereignty is neither the simple reflection of the new European and international reality nor the application of a pre-established concept whose criteria are immutable and risk corseting the post-national order. As an essentially contestable concept, sovereignty is at once a state of affairs, a question pertaining to the nature and justification of that state of affairs and a justification of the latter. The correct use of the concept of sovereignty consists therefore in constantly contesting one's conceptions of the concept and hence one's exercize of sovereignty. As such, the reflexive concept of sovereignty can be described as cooperative in the post-national constellation where sovereign entities overlap in their claims to sovereignty over the same territory and population. Read together with the principle of subsidiarity, cooperative sovereignty implies allocating competences to those authorities that are best placed to ensure the protection of shared sovereign values and principles, such as the values of democracy and fundamental rights. In the European context, cooperative sovereignty provides the normative framework for the development of a dynamic and reflexive form of constitutionalism. Through its duties of cooperation and coherence, cooperative sovereignty countervails the risks of erosion implied by constitutional pluralism, while also ...

International audience ; Never has sovereignty been as fashionable as since its explanatory and normative force first came into doubt and its knell was tolled in the European Union. With the shift in authority away from the state to new sub-state, supra-state, post-state and non-state entities, an important question is whether the concept of ultimate authority or sovereignty is to be abandoned or, on the contrary, retained and, if so, in which form. This paper aims at exploring a third way that would allow us to escape from the two types of dualism that contrast state and sovereignty, first, and rejecting and saving sovereignty, second. This paper's argument is that sovereignty is neither the simple reflection of the new European and international reality nor the application of a pre-established concept whose criteria are immutable and risk corseting the post-national order. As an essentially contestable concept, sovereignty is at once a state of affairs, a question pertaining to the nature and justification of that state of affairs and a justification of the latter. The correct use of the concept of sovereignty consists therefore in constantly contesting one's conceptions of the concept and hence one's exercize of sovereignty. As such, the reflexive concept of sovereignty can be described as cooperative in the post-national constellation where sovereign entities overlap in their claims to sovereignty over the same territory and population. Read together with the principle of subsidiarity, cooperative sovereignty implies allocating competences to those authorities that are best placed to ensure the protection of shared sovereign values and principles, such as the values of democracy and fundamental rights. In the European context, cooperative sovereignty provides the normative framework for the development of a dynamic and reflexive form of constitutionalism. Through its duties of cooperation and coherence, cooperative sovereignty countervails the risks of erosion implied by constitutional pluralism, while also ...

We see a disposition in some quarters of the Democratic party to discuss the question of Squatter Sovereignty as applied to the Nebraska Bill.

In an era of greater awareness of Canada's history of colonization, the notion of sovereignty still seems unattainable for many First Nations. Is it possible for both Canada and First Nations to simultaneously have sovereignty? This paper explores the various concepts of sovereignty and examines the limitations and barriers for First Nations to achieve autonomy and self-governance. The starting point considers the various manifestations of sovereignty and identifying which version of sovereignty is most realistic for co-existing nations. The Indian Act has played a critical role in hampering self-governance negotiations between First Nations and the Government of Canada. Looking further at the factors that hinder First Nations sovereignty, including the federal government's historic, political, and systemic obstacles, this paper seeks to answer the question of whether or not First Nations sovereignty can coexist with Canadian sovereignty. ; Peer reviewed

In the mid-2000s, Indonesia became 'ground zero' for an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza, the H5N1 strain, which global health experts feared would cause a devastating pandemic. When asked to participate in global health measures, Indonesia's minister of health argued that the country had 'viral sovereignty' and refused to share samples with the World Health Organization's Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System. The global health community claimed, in response, that such refusal put all humanity at risk. Both sides of the debate expressed paranoia, resentment, and mistrust as their different ideas of security came into play. In the midst of these accusations and counteraccusations, little attention was paid to the larger social and ecological context in which the virus had emerged and flourished. I argue that when vital matter gets taken up within frameworks of security, human and animal bodies, narratives, and politics get scripted through concerns for biological and political vulnerability. Paranoia, resentment, and mistrust resonate as the multiple vulnerabilities of bodies and their social positioning frame uncertain futures.

Sovereignty has become such a key concept in critical thought that it can hardly be avoided by any critique of control. Reviewing the genealogy of sovereignty established in the work of Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben, this article discusses paradoxes and political implications that emerge from what should be called the "critical sovereignty discourse." A close reading of Kant shows that a crucial stage of the genealogy of this discourse is Kant's attempt to subtract the element of personal force, traditionally the hallmark of sovereignty, in favor of the law. I do not argue for a dismissal of the concept of sovereignty from critical thought, but for its modification. The point of departure for any critical analysis should be the ontological impossibility of sovereign power; sovereignty needs to be theorized as inherently divisible. Drawing on Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault's later lectures and seminars, I employ this premise for the analysis of two prominent features of the US criminal justice system: prosecutorial discretion and mandatory sentencing.

Sometimes acts of the federal government cause harm; sometimes acts of contractors hired by the federal government cause harm. In cases involving the latter, federal contractors often invoke the sovereign's constitutionally granted and doctrinally expanded supremacy to restrict avenues for the injured to recover even from private actors. In prior work, we analyzed how federal contractors exploit three "sovereign shield" defenses—preemption, derivative sovereign immunity, and derivative intergovernmental immunity—to evade liability, accountability, and oversight. This Article considers whether, when, and how private federal contractors should be held accountable in a court of law. We argue that a contractor should be required to qualify before it can derive the immunity enjoyed by its sovereign partner. This Article proposes that a private contractor be entitled to such "qualified sovereignty" contingent on satisfying three conditions: (1) it was acting as the government's agent, (2) it complied with any guidelines established by the government, and (3) it was reasonable for the contractor to believe that its conduct would not violate rights protected by law. Adopting scaffolding from two embattled doctrinal constructs—derivative sovereign immunity and qualified immunity—qualified sovereignty balances the rights of victims to recover for harms with protection for private entities

The concept of "European digital sovereignty" does not seem to fit well with the global nature of digitalisation, but a closer look at the phenomenon reveals why this term makes sense. First of all, digitalisation is not a process antithetical to territorialisation, contrary to the logic of states or incompatible with the defence of the interests of the European Union, especially at a time when the digital space has become a geostrategic battlefield between countries and, above all, different models. The proposal advocated here consists of understanding this term not only as an ad intra protection but also as a capacity to assert the European model of digitisation on a global scale.

This policy brief analyses China's ambitions for imposing and strengthening the concept of cyber sovereignty in international negotiations on topics related to cybersecurity and Internet governance (IG). The presentation proceeds through four interconnected steps: 1. brief introduction and background to the Chinese 'cyber sovereignty' concept. 2. China's role in defining, developing, and promoting this concept in international politics. 3. international responses to the Chinese use of the concept of cyber sovereignty, and how this should be seen in conjunction with current trends in Chinese foreign-policy strategies. 4. the use of cyber sovereignty in diplomacy, and how China uses this concept to counter Western dominance in cyberspace. Thus, the policy brief offers a brief examination of how the Chinese idea of state sovereignty in cyberspace influences how China positions itself in international negotiations with regard to issues such as security, economy and trade, and soft power (diplomacy/governance).

Using the Western tradition of metaphysical and political thought as a backdrop, Critique of Sovereignty (a work in 4 volumes) re-examines the concept of sovereignty in order to better understand why our ethical values and technical capacities often seem so divorced from our lived realities. On the one hand, ostensibly self-enclosed entities like the nation-state and the person are rhetorically bolstered as sites of technical agency and/or moral responsibility. On the other hand, these same entities appear fragile — if not purely fictional — in relation to ever ongoing tidal processes such as the migration, diffusion, and conglomeration of bodies, capital, ideas, etc. While some of our institutions might work some of the time, they always seem to work differently than we like to think they do. Accordingly, the forging of more humane institutions might very well entail if not require ways of thinking that strive to undo the self-imagined binds, exceptions, and sureties of thought for the sake of embracing a continuity with all that withers, decays, and falls away. Book I, "Contemporary Theories of Sovereignty," compares the varied interpretations of sovereignty given by a range of 20th-century political theorists (Maritain, Foucault, Derrida, Schmitt, Agamben, Hardt, and Negri) with Jean Bodin's initial outline of the concept, rendered at the outset of modern political thought in the 16th century. The analytic framework of sovereignty encountered in these comparative readings provides an initial point of departure for unfolding a method of critique appropriate to the concept of sovereignty. Sovereignty is an ideal starting point for a critique of the deadlocks between thought and reality for a simple reason: it doesn't actually exist. When it serves as a guide to action, sovereignty may be regarded as a particularly captivating fantasy. The closer it appears, the further it recedes, and, too often, the more vigorously it is pursued.

Popular sovereignty requires that citizens perceive themselves as being able to act and implement decisions and be causally connected to mechanisms of decision-making. I argue that the two most common understandings of the exercise of popular sovereignty — which centre on direct decision making by the people as a whole and the indirect exercise of democratic agency by elected representatives, respectively — are inadequate in this respect, and go on to suggest a complementary account that stresses the central role of internally democratic and participatory political parties in actualising popular sovereignty. The argument defended contends that popular sovereignty ceases to be a mere fiction only when the people are active makers of decisions and not just passive recipients of the decisions of others; and they can only be active decision-makers when they engage in internally democratic parties that render them a viable political force.

This paper discusses the basic constitutional problem of modern international law since the UN Charter: How can the power-oriented international legal system based on "sovereign equality of states" be reconciled with the universal recognition of "inalienable" human rights deriving from respect for human dignity and popular sovereignty? State representatives, intergovernmental organizations, international judges and non-governmental organizations often express different views on how far the universal recognition of human rights has changed the subjects, structures, general principles, interpretative methods and "object and purpose" of international law (e.g. by the emergence of erga omnes obligations and jus cogens limiting state sovereignty to renounce human rights treaties, to refuse diplomatic protection of individuals abroad, or domestic implementation of international obligations for the benefit of domestic citizens). The paper explains why effective protection of human rights at home and abroad requires multilevel constitutional protection of individual rights as well as multilevel constitutional restraints of national, regional and worldwide governance powers and procedures. While all European states have accepted that the European Convention on Human Rights and EC law have evolved into international constitutional law, the prevailing paradigm for most states outside Europe remains "constitutional nationalism" rather than "multilevel constitutional pluralism." Consequently, European proposals for reforms of international economic law often aim at "constitutional reforms" (e.g. of worldwide governance institutions) rather than only "administrative reforms", as they are frequently favoured by non-European governments defending state sovereignty and popular sovereignty within a more power-oriented "international law among states."