New Nationalisms and Digital Sovereignty: Political Disputes in a Context of Multiple Crises

• Grant number: 24/22703-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: October 01, 2025
• End date: September 30, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - Political Theory
• Principal Investigator: Marcos Severino Nobre
• Grantee: Felipe Chieregato Gretschischkin
• Host Institution: Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento (CEBRAP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 19/22387-0 - Crises of democracy: critical theory and the diagnosis of present time, AP.TEM

Abstract

This postdoctoral research project, affiliated with the FAPESP Thematic Project "Crises of Democracy: Critical Theory and the Diagnosis of the Present Time" (Grant No. 19/22387-0), aims to investigate the resurgence of political discourses advocating for digital sovereignty by political actors across different national contexts. The project seeks to test the hypothesis that the defense of digital sovereignty may be interpreted as part of a broader phenomenon reflecting a transformation in the role of nation-states within the economy-particularly in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the emergence and consolidation of authoritarian governments in various countries, and the COVID-19 pandemic. This scenario stands in tension with political theory debates of the past two decades, which largely anticipated the weakening and eventual dissolution of the notion of sovereignty due to the political, social, and economic changes associated with globalization. In light of a renewed mode of state intervention in the economic sphere in recent years, the idea of sovereignty has regained prominence within a context marked by competing nationalisms. Simultaneously, the regulation of the digital realm poses significant challenges to this new nationalist logic, owing both to the technological architecture of the digital domain and the social construction of its development.There are thus indications that the advocacy for digital sovereignty reveals a tension between the broader rise of new political-economic nationalisms and the inherently transnational nature of the digital sphere in its various dimensions. To examine this tension-between the national character of sovereignty and the fundamentally international dynamics of the digital political economy-this project proposes a comparative study of regulatory and political disputes in two cases: the European Union and Brazil.