Jul 2026· WIREs Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery· Vol 16· 0 citations· 94 references
TL;DR
This study analyzes the integration of human‐centric concepts into legislative and technological frameworks to promote digital sovereignty and demonstrates a global transition from state‐centric to individual‐centric sovereignty.
Abstract
With the growing mediation of personal data and identity by digital technologies—driven not only by the significant growth of these technologies, but also by the widespread processing of personal data—digital sovereignty has emerged as a significant issue. Conventional methodologies prioritize national governance, geopolitical considerations, and centralized management of data infrastructures. Conversely, human‐centric digital sovereignty emphasizes individual rights, data agency, privacy protection, and community autonomy. Frameworks like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) illustrate this transition by providing individuals substantial authority over personal data and enhancing digital trust and security. This study analyzes the integration of human‐centric concepts into legislative and technological frameworks to promote digital sovereignty. The focus encompasses: (1) distinctions between human‐centric and conventional sovereignty models; (2) the empowerment of individuals and communities via data ownership, privacy, and autonomy; (3) mechanisms facilitating implementation; (4) obstacles across technical, regulatory, and societal dimensions; and (5) opportunities and risks associated with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and the Internet of Things. A systematic review was performed using PRISMA principles across seven prominent academic databases: ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, Wiley Online Library, Springer Link, Taylor & Francis, and Google Scholar. Out of 5684 initial articles (2020–2025), a multi‐stage screening process discovered 70 peer‐reviewed research articles in English pertaining to digital sovereignty and human‐centric methodologies. Findings demonstrate a global transition from state‐centric to individual‐centric sovereignty. Decentralized technologies, especially Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT), present significant opportunities for personal data governance, secure identity management, and international compliance; nonetheless, challenges such as scalability constraints, regulatory fragmentation, interoperability issues, and opposition from centralized organizations persist as substantial obstacles. Artificial intelligence, DLT technologies, and the Internet of Things offer privacy‐enhancing computation and decentralized identities; yet they also introduce concerns such as algorithmic bias, security vulnerabilities, and governance ambiguities. The future of digital sovereignty hinges on the prioritization of human agency, privacy, and community empowerment. Attaining holistic human‐centric sovereignty necessitates synchronized global regulation, ethical and security benchmarks, interoperable frameworks, and collaborative engagement across governments, industry, academia, and civil society.
This article is categorized under:
Application Areas > Science and Technology
Commercial, Legal, and Ethical Issues > Security and Privacy
Fundamental Concepts of Data and Knowledge > Human Centricity and User Interaction
The pursuit of digital sovereignty is often presented as a way to reclaim control from powerful technology companies. This blog argues that, in India, this pursuit makes accountability more difficult. India's approach to digital sovereignty is not solely concerned with reasserting state authority over technology companies, but also with reconfiguring the relationship between the state and private actors. In this emerging model, the state plays an enabling role by providing funding, digital infrastructure, and access to scale, while indigenous private technology companies often retain significant operational autonomy and capture much of the resulting value. The blog explores this dynamic across two domains: the increasing reliance on voluntary, industry-led AI governance frameworks in place of binding regulation, and the expanding role of private actors in functions traditionally associated with the state through the Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) model. It argues that these developments may blur lines of regulatory responsibility and diffuse accountability across public and private actors, raising questions about how digital sovereignty is being operationalised in practice.
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Gayatri Kapur, Sulbha Goyal, Ishita Khetarpal et al.· International Journal of Eco...· 0 citations
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Sarah Bensaoula, Mohammed Soufyane Bezzar· Romanian Economic Journal· 0 citations
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Divya Sharma· International Journal of Inn...· 0 citations
As private technology firms expand their control over critical infrastructures, questions of sovereignty and governance are increasingly displaced from states to corporate actors. Existing scholarship on sovereignty assumes that authority is either monopolized by states or shared through institutionalized public–private arrangements. Yet, recent events, including SpaceX's control of wartime communications in Ukraine, Meta's confrontation with the Australian government, and OpenAI's attempts to shape global AI regulation, demonstrate that firms can exercise discretionary authority without formal delegation, legal accountability, or democratic oversight. This study introduces the concept of Corporate Quasi‐Sovereignty (CQS) to theorize how certain technology firms function as de facto sovereign actors. CQS is defined by the convergence of three enabling dimensions: infrastructural command, executive autonomy, and normative or geopolitical assertion. Drawing on Kingdon's Multiple Streams Framework (MSF), this paper theorizes ‘sovereignty windows’ as the mechanism through which firms internally collapse the problem, policy, and politics streams, enabling unilateral interventions with geopolitical consequences. ‘Stream collapse,’ the internalization of all three MSF streams within a single corporate hierarchy, is operationalized as a boundary condition of MSF, distinct from conventional stream coupling. The ‘conditional policy entrepreneur’ is introduced as the corporate analogue to Kingdon's entrepreneur: a founder‐CEO who exercises this role only when all three CQS enabling conditions simultaneously converge. Drawing on comparative case analyses of Meta, SpaceX, and OpenAI, the article shows how CQS captures both reactive and anticipatory modes of corporate authority, showing that firms now operate as both market actors and quasi‐sovereign agents capable of substituting, bypassing, or preempting state power.
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