Abstract

In recent years, political theory seems to have rediscovered the concept of sovereignty. In the wake of internet policy discussions terms like »digital sovereignty,« »data sovereignty,« and »platform sovereignty,« have boomed. Associated with this is an idiosyncratic reception of the conceptual history of sovereignty and also a striking re-accentuation of the term itself. This contribution reconstructs the discourse by presenting two exemplary positions in the current debate, that of the digital ethicist Luciano Floridi and that of the political (internet-)theorists Christiane Pohle and Thorsten Thiel. In both cases, the assessment cannot be positive: the rediscovery of sovereignty driven by digital debates is neither conceptually nor politically convincing.