Technology as Statecraft: Remaking Sovereignty, Security, and Leadership in a Multipolar Age

Zichen Hu, Chang Zhang and Denis Galligan
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Zichen Hu: Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Chang Zhang: School of Government and Public Affairs, Communication University of China, China
Denis Galligan: Department of Law, University of Oxford, UK

Politics and Governance, 2025, vol. 13

Abstract: This thematic issue examines how artificial intelligence, metaverse imaginaries, and decentralized Web3 systems have become arenas for states to build infrastructures, set technical standards, and project geopolitical power. It reconceptualizes technology not merely as an object of regulation but as a medium of statecraft through which sovereignty, security, and leadership are contested and remade in a multipolar digital order. This issue analyzes three interconnected dimensions: (a) the impact of global AI competition on state-making processes, enhancing coercive, extractive, delivery, and informational capacities similar to earlier state formation phases; (b) the nature of technological leadership as a relational and dynamic process influenced by interactions between leading and following states; and (c) the role of security logics in transforming external rivalry and internal governance through securitization. Through comparative analysis of the US, China, the EU, and emerging economies, this issue explores how diverse political systems encode openness, sovereignty, and accountability into their technological regimes, demonstrating that technological governance is inseparable from state-making. The contributions map competing logics—sovereign, liberal, entrepreneurial—showing that digital governance emerges not as convergence toward a singular model but as recursive entanglements of imagination and infrastructure.

Keywords: China; digital sovereignty; EU; generative AI; infrastructural power; metaverse policy; technological governance; United States; Web3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:poango:v13:y:2025:a:11743

DOI: 10.17645/pag.11743

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