Popular sovereignty and autonomy

Different meanings and consequences for digital policies

Abstract

This article explores the conceptual and political distinctions between popular digital sovereignty and autonomy, examining their implications for internet studies. As digital sovereignty becomes increasingly central to debates around digital policies, popular frameworks have emerged, particularly in Latin America, that reframe sovereignty from a working-class and community-based perspective. In parallel, autonomy has resurfaced as a key concept in articulating grassroots, feminist, and indigenous engagements with digital technologies. While both concepts seek to reclaim control over digital technologies from below, they differ in their theoretical foundations and political consequences. Drawing on conceptual analysis, the article traces how these terms have circulated in scholarly discourses. The first section maps diverse meanings of digital sovereignty, emphasizing bottom-up frameworks. The second historicizes the notion of popular sovereignty in Latin America and its role in confronting technological dependency. The third analyzes three key traditions of autonomy: autonomist Marxism, feminism and anarchism, and Latin American collective autonomy, particularly Zapatism. The final section compares these concepts, highlighting their overlapping goals but divergent relations to the state, and their consequences for debates on digital sovereignty and autonomy. The article offers theoretical foundations for understanding both the commonalities and the specificities of these concepts, with implications for internet policy.