Deadline: January 15, 2026

Guest Editors: Abdelfettah Benchenna and Olivier Koch

Since the 2010s, the notion of digital sovereignty has gained prominence in public discourse and has been established as a new priority on political and institutional agendas. In France, in 2019, the Senate Committee of Inquiry on Digital Sovereignty published a dedicated report that has since become a key reference. A year later, in its report Shaping Europe’s Digital Future, the European Commission articulated its sovereignty-oriented ambitions for a renewed coordination among Member States. The Covid-19 pandemic acted as a catalyst in Europe (Thumfart, 2021), but discussions on the establishment or restoration of state authority in the digital sphere had already begun earlier, as an extension of debates on internet governance. Outside Europe, this notion was taken up by the Chinese government in the 1990s as part of a policy aimed at countering US hegemony, with particular emphasis on the technological dominance of countries of the Global North over those of the Global South. This political concern is not new. It follows on from earlier debates: those on technological sovereignty in the 1960s in Canada and in the 1980s in Australia, which denounced dependence on the United States; and those on information sovereignty in the 1970s in the context of the Nomic World Information and Communication Order, centered on the computerisation of so-called Third World countries and the technological dependence of Southern countries on Northern countries, debates that continued into the early 2000s in the framework of the two World Summits on the Information Society (Benchenna, 2006).

However, this historical overview is not sufficient to grasp the challenges posed today by this sovereignty imperative in the three main domains of digital technology: hardware and software infrastructures, data, and informational and cultural content. It must also be related to the consequences of the state’s “withdrawal” in the second half of the twentieth century (Strange, 1995), to the mobilisation of sovereign powers in the implementation of neoliberal policies since the 1970s and 1980s (Dardot, Laval, 2020), and to shifts in the technological balance of power between countries of the North and South. The complex (inter)dependencies inherited from these historical sequences, together with the deregulation of telecommunications and the globalisation of digital networks and services (Smyrnaios, 2017), call into question the conditions under which sovereignty might be established or restored over.

This question arises because the sovereignty claimed by states remains fragile and characterized by numerous contradictions. Despite investments in national infrastructure, dependence on foreign suppliers (particularly American ones) for internet backbone and cloud services continues to restrict states ability to exercise effective control over digital technologies (Bômont, 2021; Coelho, 2023). Public administrations largely rely on foreign proprietary software (Jeannot, Cottin-Marx, 2022), which complicates any transition towards so-called sovereign solutions. Critical infrastructures frequently depend on foreign digital giants that are difficult to regulate, insofar as they often operate beyond the effective reach of national legislation. In matters of content regulation, states struggle to impose their own norms given the predominance of American platforms, which apply their own regulatory frameworks. The cross-border nature of the internet further facilitates the circumvention of control mechanisms, thereby rendering the exercise of digital sovereignty, in many respects, largely illusory.

Finally, data sovereignty is undermined by the centralization and monetization of data by foreign actors. Despite the GDPR, states remain vulnerable to extraterritorial access by US authorities, as exemplified by the Cloud Act. Digital sovereignty thus appears as a fragile equilibrium between aspirations to autonomy, technological dependencies, and geopolitical constraints. In many respects, the “return” of the sovereign state in this domain remains more a political project than a fait accompli. It entails a repoliticization of relations of dependence and autonomy, within which the redefinition of antagonistic identities and the coordination of strategic actors are at stake. 

Given that “digital sovereignty” entails complex trade-offs between professed independence and industrial, economic, and diplomatic realities, and that it remains largely conditioned by the technological and legal choices of foreign actors, thereby compromising the very objectives of independence (Fisher, 2022), this special issue aims to examine how these contradictions are addressed and negotiated within public policy, international alliances, and sovereignty-oriented rhetoric.

1. Public Policies, Actors, and Indicators

Drawing on specific case studies, this axis invites analyses of the public policies, programs and industrial partnerships implemented in the name of digital sovereignty, as well as of the controversies they generate or, conversely, leave unaddressed, particularly with regard to data protection, the control of infrastructures and content, and the certification of technologies. Particular attention may be devoted to the procedures used to evaluate these public policies, to the construction and mobilization of indicators of progress or regression in terms of sovereignty (Kaloudis, 2021), and to the functions of labelling (for example, the “cloud confiance” or “Je choisis la French Tech” labels) in the coordination and steering of industrial dynamics.

2. International Alliances, Standards, and Interoperability

This axis welcomes contributions that examine international alliances formed or dissolved in the name of digital sovereignty, the forms of consensus and dissensus that emerge within them, and their implications for international governance (Budnistky, Jia, 2018; Perarnaud et al., 2024). These alliances prompt a critical examination of the concrete conditions under which sovereignty is exercised at national and regional scales, while taking into consideration the specific configurations of national networks, the interdependencies among infrastructures, and the forms of techno-feudalism associated with digital oligopolies.

Within the framework of these alliances, particular attention may be given to the processes through which norms and standards are selected, adopted, and exported, as well as to the legal and technical mechanisms of interoperability that are implemented, with specific consideration of the configurations of public–private partnership chains. In addition to existing work on Russia, China, the United States and Europe, contributions grounded in empirical research, and in particular those focusing on French-speaking African countries, are especially welcome.

3. Rhetoric and Imaginaries of Digital Sovereignty

This axis seeks to analyse the ways in which digital sovereignty is mobilized, narrated, and endowed with meaning by public, private and civil-society actors across diverse geopolitical and cultural contexts (Pohl, Thorsten, 2020; Couture, Toupin, 2019).

It aims to foster critical reflection on the ways in which digital sovereignty is conceptualized, articulated, and projected, as well as on the performative effects of these rhetorics. Contributions may focus on the technological imaginaries that underpin national or regional policies, and on the tensions between aspirations to digital autonomy and the structural logics of global interdependence. 

Contributors are invited to send abstracts (approximately 5 000 characters including spaces) to : etudes.digitales.soumissions@gmx.fr

Key Dates

• Abstract submission deadline: January 15, feedback to authors on January 30, 2025
  
• Submission of full articles: April 15, 2026 
  

Bibliography

Benchenna, A., 2006, « Réduire la fracture numérique Nord-Sud : une croyance récurrente des organisations internationales », Terminal, n°95-96, pp. 33-46.

Budnistky S., Jia L., 2018, « Branding Internet sovereignty: Digital media and the Chinese–Russian cyberalliance », European Journal of Cultural Studies,  21(2), pp. 1-20

Coelho O., 2023, Géopolitique du numérique. Les éditions de l’atelier.

Couture S., Toupin S., 2019, « What does the notion of “sovereignty” mean when referring to the digital », New media and society, 21(10), pp. 1-18.

Dardot P., Laval C., 2020, Dominer. Enquête sur la souveraineté de l’État en Occident. La Découverte.

Fischer D., 2022, « The digital sovereignty trick: why the sovereignty discourse fails to address the structural dependencies of digital capitalism in the global south ».  ZPolitikwiss 32, pp. 383–402. 

Jeannot, Cottin-Marx, 2022, La privatisation numérique. Déstabilisation et réinvention du service public. Raisons d’agir Éditions.

Kaloudis M., 2021,  « Sovereignty in the Digital Age – How Can We Measure Digital Sovereignty and Support the EU’s Action Plan? », New Global Studies ,16(3). 

Perarnaud C., Rossi J., Musiani F., Castex L., 2024, L’avenir d’internet. Unité ou fragmentation ?, Le bord de l’eau.

Pohle, J., Thorsten T.,  2020,  « Digital Sovereignty », Internet Policy Review, 9(4), pp. 1-19.

Smyrnaios N., 2017. Les GAFAM contre l’internet. Une économie politique du numérique. INA. 

Thumfart, J., 2021. « The norm development of digital sovereignty between China, Russia, the EU and the US: From the late 1990s to the Covid-crisis 2020/21 as catalytic event ». SSRN Electronic journal. DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3793530