Against Sovereignty in Cyberspace

In discussing the historical origins of sovereignty, Jens Bartelson (2018, 510) wrote, “Making sense of sovereignty . . . entails making sense of its component terms—supreme authority and territory—and how these terms were forged together into a concept.” The question of sovereignty in cyberspace, however, inverts this historical “forging together,” as territoriality and authority are sundered in cyberspace. This paper argues that attempts to apply sovereignty to cyberspace governance are inappropriate to the domain. It develops a technically grounded definition of “cyberspace” and examines its characteristics as a distinct domain for action, conflict, and governance, while clarifying its relationship to territoriality. It reviews the literature on cyberspace and sovereignty since the early 1990s, showing the emergence of explicitly pro-sovereigntist ideas and practices in the last ten years. The cyber-sovereignty debate is linked to IR research on the historical emergence of sovereignty, demonstrating how technologies routinely change the basis of international order and challenging the presumption that territorial sovereignty is a stable and uniform principle of international organization that can be presumptively applied to the internet. The paper also links the conceptual debate over cyber-sovereignty to the real-world geopolitical struggle over the governance of the internet, showing how different conceptions of sovereignty serve the interests of different powers, notably the United States, Russia, and China. The paper explores the relevance of an alternative governance model for cyberspace based on the global commons concept. It refutes the arguments made against that model and then explains what difference it might make to governance if we conceive of cyberspace in that way.