"Cuius Regio, Eius Religio, Omnium Spatium?” State Sovereignty in the Age of the Internet

Abstract

The belief that sovereignty is at the eleventh hour has become more widespread with the progress of the globalization phenomenon. The notion that sovereignty is somehow being transformed by the process of economic globalization and that this is being exacerbated by the Internet—one of the cutting-edge tools of globalization— has become an almost uncritically accepted fact. Large swathes of public opinion in industrialized democracies have been mesmerized by the pervasive equation that more globalization (and more Internet) equals less sovereignty. In this article we attempt to dissect the proposition that more Internet equals a further decrease in state sovereignty. We argue that, while state sovereignty is unmistakably declining, the Internet is, in the best case, one more element contributing to that decline. Indeed, in some instances the Internet can even strengthen sovereignty.