Call for Papers: The Cross-Border Nature of Digital Technologies: Rethinking Political Borders and Sovereignty in the Digital Age, Submission deadline: 30 December 2026
This special issue addresses the high-stakes intersection between big data, digital infrastructures, and the reconfiguration of legal and political authority across physical and digital borders.
Guest editors:
1) Imad Antoine Ibrahim – Section of Governance and Technology for Sustainability, University of Twente, The Netherlands (i.ibrahim@utwente.nl)
2) Jon Truby – Centre for International Law, National University of Singapore, Singapore ( truby@nus.edu.sg)
3) Davide Giacomo Zoppolato – West Virginia University, Morgantown, USA (dgz00003@mix.wvu.edu)
Special issue information:
As digital technologies increasingly mediate everything from communication and trade to public service delivery and surveillance, the traditional legal foundations of territorial sovereignty are being contested. Cloud platforms, blockchain systems, satellite, and algorithms challenge the applicability of domestic legal frameworks, raise questions about extraterritoriality, and expose critical gaps in international law. Whether it is the inability of international space law to regulate satellite-based internet, the challenges of enforcing water rights in smart governance contexts, or the normative ambiguity of digital constitutionalism in the European Union, recent developments in digital technologies illustrate a broader legal disjuncture between spatially bounded jurisdictions and borderless digital systems.
Legal instruments designed for the analog era, such as the Westphalian model of state sovereignty or classical administrative law, are increasingly strained by the fluidity of data flows, platform governance, and infrastructural entanglements. This legal displacement has sparked new assertions of control: from data localization laws that spatially anchor data within specific sovereign jurisdictions, to regional trade agreements that embed digital sovereignty clauses, to local authorities experimenting with decentralized governance. At the same time, these legal-political strategies risk creating new asymmetries, in which powerful states or corporations monopolize digital infrastructures and standards, leaving others to adapt to externally defined legal regimes.
The special issue responds to the following question: “How do cross-border digital infrastructures reshape, challenge, and potentially reconstitute the legal and political architectures of sovereignty in an era of intensifying globalization? The contributions must examine the following thematic areas, among others:
1. International and Comparative Law: Analyses of how domestic and international legal frameworks respond to cross-border digital infrastructures, including extraterritoriality, jurisdictional disputes, and evolving regimes of international law.
2. Digital Governance and Policy: Studies of state, regional, and local strategies to assert digital sovereignty, such as data localization, platform regulation, and digital trade provisions.
3. Geopolitics of Infrastructure: Investigations into how satellite networks, undersea cables, or cloud infrastructures reconfigure spatial power relations and generate new forms of dependency or inequality.
4. Critical Perspectives on Data and Algorithms: Contributions that interrogate the normative, constitutional, and ethical implications of algorithmic governance, digital constitutionalism, and critical data studies.
5. Case-Based Contexts: Empirical analyses of specific sites where sovereignty is contested by digital systems, such as smart cities, cross-border resource governance, or emerging blockchain applications.
Manuscript submission information:
All submissions must be original and may not be under review elsewhere. All manuscripts will be submitted via Research in Globalization (RESGLO) online submission system. Authors should indicate that the paper is submitted for consideration for publication in this special issue. When choosing Manuscript “Article Type” during the submission procedure, click “VSI: Cross-Border of Digital Technologies”, otherwise your submission will be handled as a regular manuscript.
All submitted papers should address significant issues pertinent to the theme of this issue and fall within the scope of RESGLO. Criteria for acceptance include originality, contribution and scientific merit. All manuscripts must be written in English with high scientific writing standards. Acceptance for publication will be based on referees’ and editors’ recommendations, following a detailed peer review process.
Keywords:
Digital Technologies; Political borders; Law; Sovereignty; Digital Age
Why publish in this Special Issue?
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- All articles in this special issue will be reviewed by no fewer than two independent experts to ensure the quality, originality and novelty of the work published.
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