Future-proofing the people? A comparative analysis of data sovereignty as a discursive practice in Western European right-wing populism’s digital policies

1. Introduction

Sovereignty is a central concept in populist discourse. Populism divides societies into “the people” versus “the elite”, and populist actors claim to be the representative of that people (Mudde, 2007; Brubaker, 2017). Such actors present popular sovereignty, or the idea that the people should be able to “govern itself” without outside interference, as the ultimate source of political legitimacy. This logic gives rise to several prototypical features of populist regimes or parties: strongman politics centered on a single individual, a turn away from diplomacy and international cooperation, and the identification of international or supranational organizations, such as the EU, as enemies (Brubaker, 2017; Cooper, 2019; Weyland, 2017). This formula has been relatively successful in the European Union, marking a “populist wave” in the early 2010s with great electoral success for populist parties that, with the electoral defeat of France’s Marine Le Pen in 2022, has shown signs of ebbing, although Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has solidified his position further in a contentious victory (Csak, 2022; Dettmer, 2021; Dodman, 2022).

At the same time, digital technologies have become essential to entire countries’ economies and political systems, while many national-level governance frameworks, rooted in the geographical boundaries of the state, neglect the partly de-territorialized nature of the Internet and tend to lag behind the development pace of new technologies (World Economic Forum, 2021; Zakhour & Gomes, 2022). The data harvested from consumers and citizens is now a valuable resource as well as a security issue, and the way data is transported and stored across geographical boundaries via the Internet has seen increased attention (Rafik, 2021). Many states and organizations, including the EU, are currently working on reducing their dependence on other states for digital technologies, digital infrastructure and data processing, due to privacy and security concerns for citizens and states (Glasze et al., 2022; Rafik, 2021, pp. 33–34; Zakhour & Gomes, 2022). Many of these actors see international cooperation as the main channel through which they can gain control over the data flows, infrastructures, and technologies that underlie “their” cyberspace, often using terms like “data sovereignty” or “digital sovereignty” to support their arguments (Celeste, 2021; Pohle & Thiel, 2020; Rafik, 2021). This has significant political implications: it can be expected that right-wing populists, in their efforts to draw power back to (their definition of) “the people” want to establish some form of digital or data sovereignty, but their turn away from the international or supranational level may hinder their chances of doing so.

This paper explores that paradox by focusing on how right-wing populist actors conceptualize digital policies and data sovereignty, as well as how they use data sovereignty as a discursive tool to build up a specific image. Since populists often tend to focus on discourse, performance, and image-building while proposing simplistic solutions to complex issues (Brubaker, 2017; Moffitt, 2015; Weyland, 2017), it can be expected that they tend to use data sovereignty as an image-building tool instead of making realistic policy proposals. Answering this question may add to the discussion on whether populism is a political strategy that inevitably implies short-term opportunism (cf. Weyland, 2017) or whether it provides ideas for an effectively viable political practice in the long term. Studies on populist parties have generally not focused on how data sovereignty relates to populist interpretations of sovereignty at the theoretical level, nor on how (if at all) populist regimes and parties implement or conceptualize data sovereignty-oriented digital policies. This paper aims to contribute to the literature by first providing a theoretical analysis of popular sovereignty and data sovereignty and then comparing electoral programs of right-wing populist parties in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and France with specific attention for their approaches to data sovereignty and cyber diplomacy. Finally, the paper draws conclusions and maps avenues for future research.

2. Popular sovereignty, data sovereignty, and cyber diplomacy

Populism is a form of politics that divides society into “us” and “them”: the people, with the populist actor as the ultimate representative of the people, fighting against a corrupt political elite (Mudde, 2004; 2007; Brubaker, 2017; Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017). This ‘ideologically thin’ approach implies that populism can be combined with a wide range of different ideologies, whether left- or right-wing (Mudde, 2004; Stanley, 2008; Brubaker 2017). Considering populism’s “Manichean logic” of dividing society in two unequal parts (Mudde, 2007), ideological frameworks with a tendency towards exclusion mesh particularly well with populism, while nationalism is a particularly useful tool to clearly delineate who is part of the people (and should therefore, according to populists, be represented in government), and who is not (Heiskanen, 2021). Populism also exploits political cynicism among its electorate – or disillusionment with politics in general – by presenting itself as exceptional or unique in the political landscape, as a challenger to the status quo upheld by the so-called “establishment”, and as an underdog fighting for the people against a more powerful group of evil elites (Brubaker, 2017). In doing so, populist parties can attract sizeable numbers of protest votes, or votes that are not necessarily expressing support for the populist party, but rather opposition to the existing political system (cf. Goovaerts et al., 2020). This can be attributed to policy convergence among mainstream parties, or the idea that, at least in the perception of populist voters, mainstream parties are all identical and form a “cartel” that maintains the socio-economic and cultural status quo while conspiring to keep populist actors away from political power (Grant & Tilley, 2022; Katz & Mair, 1995; Van Dyck, 2021).

Since populism frames all other politicians or political entities as corrupt and claims to be the only true political representative of the people, it uses popular sovereignty (the idea that state authority emanates from the people) not just as the only source of legitimacy for political practices, but also as its own source of legitimacy (Brubaker, 2017). Populists claim that the power of the people has been hollowed out by representative democracy. In their view, ‘the voice of the people disappears – or at least, is muted – through procedures, representation and institutions such as Parliament and the judiciary’ (Girard, 2021, p. 77). They hence promise to ‘[return] power to the people’ (Brubaker, 2017, p. 380) and present the people as ‘an entity above the law’ (Girard, 2021, p. 88). Populist sovereignty claims tend to exploit ‘sovereignty conflicts’, or situations where ‘multiple and rival understandings of sovereignty’ clash, to mobilize voters (Basile & Borri 2022, p. 366). Due to the ever-increasing complexity of global political systems, such sovereignty conflicts crop up more often and in more complicated forms (Jabko & Luhman, 2019). This has several practical consequences. One recent example is Brexit, which promoters have advertised as “taking back control” and as an ‘assertion of sovereignty’ (Amir, 2022, p. 74), yet which, even before the actual referendum took place, was criticized for eroding parliamentary sovereignty and thereby undermining the workings of representative democracy (Wellings & Vines, 2015). In Italy, the populist radical right parties Lega and Fratelli d’Italia regularly exploit sovereignty conflicts for electoral advantages, with Lega, for instance, supporting greater subnational autonomy for Veneto and Lombardy (Basile & Borri, 2022). The Flemish nationalist-populist party Vlaams Belang uses popular sovereignty to legitimize its calls for secession from Belgium and the creation of an independent Flemish state, but also for its anti-EU and anti-elite arguments, both of which have, the party claims, hollowed out national sovereignty (Vlaams Belang, 2019). Even from these limited examples, it becomes clear that (popular) sovereignty is a contested concept and is, in practice, primarily used as a discursive tool to advance (or even mask) political goals such as Euroscepticism and secession with control over the nation’s own borders and judiciary as an important consequence of “retaking” sovereignty (Basile & Borri, 2022; Vlaams Belang, 2019). Sovereignty is also often deployed as a means of self-fashioning a specific image as a challenger of the political system (Brubaker, 2017), yet it often remains ‘an aspirational ideal’ rather than being a foundational principle that is operationalized in actual policies (Girard, 2021, p. 94). The consequence of the populist use of “sovereignty” for other parties’ legitimacy is that it can frame (whether implicitly or explicitly) any political opponent as illegitimate, simply because that opponent allegedly does not directly represent the people – although by no means all populist actors claim that their opponents are by definition illegitimate. At the same time, populists can present all of their own decisions as legitimate because they allegedly reflect the monolithic “will of the people”. This is where populism overlaps significantly with fascism: a fascist dictator, likewise, claims to have an almost oracular, mystical insight into the minds of the people and pretends to be the incarnation of the people in power, expressing their sovereign will (Finchelstein, 2017). A key difference between populism and fascism, however, is the use of violence and (hence) the validity of elections: while fascists tend to acquire power through violence, populists see elections as valid and use electoral results as validation and legitimization of their power (Finchelstein, 2017, p. 99). In this sense, while ‘social democracy represents socialism’s electoral road to power, (…) populism represents fascism’s electoral path’ (Popp-Madsen, 2020, p. 163). Populism, and especially its far-right version, can be seen as a form of authoritarian democracy or ‘postfascism for democratic times’ (Finchelstein, 2017, p. 251), but, of course, not all right-wing populist actors can realistically be called fascist.

Recent claims that Europe or even the world is in a ‘populist moment’ (Mouffe, 2016) or that it has entered an ‘era of populism’ (Diamanti & Lazar, 2019; Mouffe, 2018; Rosanvallon, 2020; Zacharie, 2019, as cited in Cervera-Marzal, 2020, p. 1) seem to be slightly overblown, considering the growing popular opposition to (or relatively recent electoral defeats of) populist leaders in Brazil, the Czech Republic, France, Poland, and Slovakia, which invited political commentators to suggest that ‘the populist wave in Eastern and Central Europe is receding’ (Higgins, 2021). In early 2022, the number of populist leaders in power was the lowest it had been since 2004 (Meyer, 2022) – though the future of populism is as unpredictable as ever. The diminishing returns of populist political strategies – based on exclusion, cynicism, and short-term gains – seem to have met the ‘limits of enchantment’, or the boundaries of what people can believe without seeing real results (Brubaker, 2017 p. 380). Nonetheless, populism is unlikely to disappear entirely anytime soon. For instance, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán won another term in 2022, albeit in an electoral landscape that has been tilted in his government’s favor (Csak, 2022). Populism has proven to be an appealing formula (at least in the short term), as it seems to be ‘an almost automatic counter-response to the growing global interdependence, ethnic plurality, and border-transgressing nature of contemporary political phenomena, such as climate change, the flow of refugees, and global trade’ (Popp-Madsen, 2020, p. 167). This loss of control is compounded by a perceived disintermediation at the international level, or the idea that the interests of international elites have drifted away from the interests of the people (Cooper, 2017; 2019) which leads populists to, for instance, the nativist claim that mainstream political actors have “betrayed” the people by promoting migration (Brubaker, 2017; Kelly, 2017; Van Dyck, 2021). The exaltation of popular sovereignty as the ultimate source of legitimacy and its illiberal, nativist extremes can therefore not be separated from a perceived loss of political control in globalized illiberal democracies.

Populism and its invocation of popular sovereignty to discredit “the elite” poses a substantial challenge to international cooperation, especially since it usually advocates for withdrawal from the international political arena (opting out of climate agreements, for instance) and delegitimizes existing international institutions and practices. Right-wing populism, being a form of ‘postfascism’ (Finchelstein, 2017), aims to centralize power as much as possible, which leads to democratic backsliding in populist regimes, typically characterized by reducing the powers of Parliaments and courts, installing regime loyalists in key positions, and capturing the media (Bauer & Becker, 2020). The centralization of power also has consequences for international cooperation, as populists also aim to shift power away from the international level and back to the national level. One notable example is Donald Trump in the US, who, between 2016 and 2020, ‘has openly challenged norms and conventions considered unshakable pillars of the Western liberal consensus and transatlantic relations’ and whose ‘administration has shown little sympathy for the institutions of global governance and the international rule of law’ (Larik, 2018, pp. 360–361). In addition to this withdrawal, populism’s success has also marked the rise of diplomats as “suspects” (Cooper, 2019). Populists present diplomats as elites, and all elites as corrupt, implying that diplomats, by their very nature, do not represent the interests of the people, which then serves as a legitimization for cutting funding for diplomatic services, diminishing the power of professional diplomats, and appointing loyalists as international representatives (Huju, 2022; Lequesne, 2021). At the same time, many countries who have staved off populism, such as France (where Le Pen was defeated in 2022), rely on elected leaders rather than professional diplomats to build an international image and represent their country on the global stage (Cooper, 2019).

One particularly important aspect of diplomacy is cyber diplomacy, or the practice of negotiating and establishing international agreements on digital technologies such as the Internet. Digital technologies have, due to their extremely fast-paced development, created a gap between governance frameworks and the affordances of the actual technology (Rafik, 2021; Verhelst & Wouters, 2020). The international arena is essential to reduce that gap through rule-setting and negotiating on digital topics. However, if populists are concerned with drawing power back to the national level, they may try to push popular or national sovereignty higher onto the international agenda, which may hinder progress on digital policies. Many actors, such as politicians, governments, and activists, regularly use the concept of sovereignty in the context of digital policies, to the extent that some researchers argue that “digital sovereignty” has become a buzzword (Glasze et al., 2022). However, the definitions and assumptions under which they operate, as well as actors’ conceptualization and views on implementation, differ starkly – this is not too surprising, since sovereignty is a hotly debated and often contradictorily understood concept in its own right Most commonly, digital sovereignty is used as a term for ‘collective control on digital content and/or infrastructures’ (Couture & Toupin, 2019, p. 2305), which can be broken down further into data sovereignty (degree of control over data storage, access and use, as well as laws and regulations applying to the data) and technological sovereignty (degree of control over technology deployment, design, operation, and regulation) as its central pillars (Zakhour & Gomes, 2022).

In academic research, digital sovereignty has developed into a fruitful topic of study in the past few years (cf. Couture & Toupin, 2019; Glasze et al., 2022; Hummel et al., 2021; Litvinenko, 2021; Pohle & Tiehl, 2020; Pohle & Voelsen, 2022). Many authors have approached digital sovereignty as a discursive concept, such as a strategic narrative (e.g. Litvinenko, 2021) or as a locus of tension within network theory (e.g. Pohle & Voelsen, 2022). Likewise, this paper builds upon the notion that ‘the concept [of digital sovereignty] is understood more as a discursive practice in politics and policy than as a legal or organisational concept’ (Pohle & Thiel, 2020, p. 1). It approaches data sovereignty, a component of digital sovereignty, as a discursive practice, hence following the claim that ‘traditional coupling of concepts of sovereignty, territoriality and the state, of jurisdiction and borders, must be rethought’ and that ‘digital transformation … should be understood and analysed as (geo)political discourses and practices.’ (Glasze et al., 2022, p. 1). In other words, the paper studies how ‘collective control’ (Couture & Toupin, 2019, p. 2305) over data flows, storage, transmission, and processing infrastructures is conceptualized by (specifically right-wing populist) political actors, whether they see international cooperation (or cyber diplomacy) as a method to work towards that control, and what this says about sovereignty and digital technology. The notions of digital, data, and technological sovereignty have gained political traction in part by reintroducing the nation-state into cyberspace (Pohle & Thiel 2020). The Internet was long thought to elude the fixed territoriality of states and borders, yet the vast amounts of data produced today are ‘processed and stored across geographical borders, often using foreign technologies’ (Zakhour & Gomes, 2022) while political actors such as the EU hold high hopes for ‘taking back control’ over “their” cyberspace through projects such as Gaia-X, a European data cloud (Farrand & Carrapico, 2022, p. 435; Celeste, 2021). Digital sovereignty, by at least discursively linking geographically bound national interests to the Internet, thus offers opportunities to challenge the ‘traditional coupling’ of sovereignty and territory (Glasze et al., 2022, p. 1). This paper hence embeds itself into the growing body of literature on digital and data sovereignty as discursive concepts by studying how political actors can use data sovereignty as a discursive image-building strategy. In taking right-wing populist actors as a case study, it also indirectly engages with research on cyber governance models, which has shown that exclusionary, sovereigntist approaches to Internet policy glean their legitimacy from claims of national sovereignty (Santaniello, 2021). This implies that authoritarian actors such as Russia and China approach cyberspace as a matter of national security, aiming to control information flows and critical Internet infrastructure and generally seeking to ‘align the internet with [their] national borders’ (Stadnik, 2021, p. 162; Creemers, 2020). However, interpretations of sovereignty in cyberspace tend to diverge significantly, limiting the efficacy of cyber governance models based on national sovereignty (Zeng et al., 2017). In this sense, populist actors’ sovereignty claims in cyberspace may at first glance seem to lead to exclusionary, sovereigntist cyber governance, but, in practice, they are unlikely to develop effective strategies for nationalizing and re-territorializing the Internet.

In the context of this paper, it seems productive to make a clear distinction between data sovereignty as a policy objective, i.e. as put into practice by certain political actors and data sovereignty as a discursive tool, i.e. used as an argument to advance other goals, in particular image-building. This paper firmly focuses on data sovereignty as a discursive practice – since sovereignty itself is often used as a discursive tool instead of a practical concept, it stands to reason that data sovereignty may be used in that manner as well. To that end, it should be useful to make a further distinction between different interpretations of data sovereignty as it is deployed in discourse. Based on the extensive literature review of Hummel, Braun, Tretter, and Dabrock (2021), the use of the term data sovereignty ‘typically relates in some way to meaningful control, ownership, and other claims to data or data infrastructures’ (p. 12). Through their analysis, an agent-based typology of data sovereignty can be developed: data sovereignty is commonly used as relating to the data of (a) individual consumers, (b) (indigenous) groups and (c) countries (p. 12). Since populist discourse is often focused on building up a specific image for electoral gains among their main voter base, it stands to reason that populist actors are most concerned with data sovereignty as it relates to individual citizens, i.e. the control that individual consumers have over their data. The second type of data sovereignty concerns indigenous or minority groups and tends to be concerned with the rights of minority groups over their data when collected by public and private actors. The third type can be understood as the “geopolitical” form of data sovereignty, in which states (or international organizations such as the EU) negotiate to gain control over or otherwise regulate their own data flows vis-à-vis other states or companies in other states, including control over the frameworks within which the nation’s data storage and transmission processes take place. A workable typology of different interpretations of data sovereignty as a discursive concept is presented in Table 1.

Since the table presents an agent-based typology of data sovereignty as a discursive practice, it is by no means an illustration of the full complexity of data sovereignty as a concept, as its definition is still contested and it is often used in contradictory ways – the table offers a picture of how the concept is used, not what it is. For instance, one can argue that international data sovereignty is a prerequisite for personal data sovereignty, as the interests of individual citizens in a particular state can be expected to be legally protected at the national level more so than by profit-driven internet companies or by other states. In other words, to ascertain that citizens control their own personal data flows (not just with regards to personal privacy, but also to how that data is used and stored), that control should ideally first be achieved at a higher level. In a more practical sense, this means that data sovereignty is ‘about ensuring that the digital data of companies or individuals are hosted by their country of origin and are subject to the laws of that country’ (Rafik, 2021 p. 39). At any rate, the Internet is fundamentally global, and almost all of its governance aspects affect multiple states at once, leading to the question of how to regulate local effects such as the use and storage of data with respect for other states’ sovereignty (Woods, 2018). This implies that diplomacy is essential to govern the Internet and its data flows, and hence also to achieve and regulate data sovereignty. The EU, in particular, has struggled with data sovereignty, and especially with control over its data storage, due to there being no European-based firms providing the cloud services needed to transmit and store the enormous amounts of data produced in the EU. While a number of initiatives such as Gaia-X have been taken to amend that issue, these projects will take time to come to fruition, and international cooperation remains essential to keep up with the legislative gap (Madiega, 2020). However, with international cooperation being questioned by populists across the world, and the Trump administration having shaken transatlantic confidence (Larik, 2018) and hence also in the safety of EU data being hosted in the US, it is unsurprising that data sovereignty is moving up on the EU’s political agenda (Celeste, 2021; Farrand & Carrapico, 2022; Madiega, 2020). Since data sovereignty hence requires diplomacy (the use of a tool discredited by populists), any populist calls for international data sovereignty are paradoxical: populist actors push for national control and de-internationalization, but this clashes with the necessarily international nature of digital agreements required to achieve data sovereignty. Moreover, if international data sovereignty can be considered a prerequisite for personal data sovereignty, then any populist calls for individual privacy should also be considered opportunistic discursive invocations of data sovereignty without a substantial long-term vision for effectively achieving that type of personal data sovereignty. The next section of this paper uses comparative policy analysis to examine the negotiation of that paradox in the digital policies of European right-wing populism.

In what follows, the paper will use comparative policy analysis to examine how right-wing populist actors in Europe conceptualize digital policy and data sovereignty. It will devote specific attention to the exact type of data sovereignty they primarily advocate for: personal, group, or international data sovereignty. It also considers whether WEPs conflate different types of sovereignty, if they present governments and private companies as hostile entities, and whether they see diplomacy as a tool to achieve data sovereignty. Furthermore, it observes whether the notion of popular sovereignty translates into personal data sovereignty and whether WEPs propose national legislation overruling international agreements, further fragmenting digital legislation and complicating policy-making. The paper focuses particularly on Western-European populism, since digital policies and investments in Western Europe have seen a more accelerated and intensified implementation than in Eastern Europe, with Western European nations having stronger digital economies on average (Anderton et al., 2020), potentially creating a ‘digital gap’ (PwC, 2022). Western European populist parties, then, are more likely to have to grapple with the data sovereignty paradox, since their economies are more dependent on digital technologies and voters’ lives are more intertwined with such technologies. Moreover, considering that populist parties aim to take extreme anti-establishment positions, but also hope to appeal to a broad electorate, and that Western European voters’ attitudes towards digital policies and privacy are, on average, more positive and trusting (Eurobarometer, 2020), it can be assumed that the data sovereignty paradox is more central to Western European populist parties’ electoral program. Within Western Europe, the paper selects six right-wing populist parties: Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) in Germany, Forum voor Democratie (Forum for Democracy) and Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom) in the Netherlands, Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) in Belgium, UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) in the UK, and Rassemblement National (National Rally) in France. The paper analyzes the official electoral programs of each party, and compares the cases along the data points of (1) types of data sovereignty (personal, group, or international), (2) conflation of DS types, (3) the party’s view on the role of governments in digital policy, (4) the party’s view on the role of private companies in digital policy, and (5) the envisioned role of diplomacy and international cooperation in digital policy.

This paper has shown that Western European populist parties primarily see data sovereignty as an individual matter. Some WEPs acknowledge the importance of international data sovereignty, but do not want to use cyber diplomacy to achieve it, preferring cooperation between companies or supporting national technology companies. Moreover, the WEPs’ “paranoid approach” to digital policy is a self-fulfilling prophecy: they warn voters of the dangers of the loss of privacy, while proposing to scrap international agreements that effectively protect that privacy, which allows the WEPs to further exploit fears of privacy loss by promising to reinstate that privacy (while not having a plan to do so). It can therefore be argued that WEPs are using digital policy as short-term opportunism to attract voters who feel that their personal data is being abused and their privacy is being invaded by governments and technology companies, but also voters who feel that their opinions and ideas are “being censored” on certain digital platforms. While further research would be needed to support this claim, the psychology of populism, and particularly its penchant for conspiracy theories (see e.g. Bergmann, 2018), could be correlated with this policy position, as populists may hope to make electoral gains off of their voters’ fears (whether unfounded or not) of online surveillance. The comparative analysis has shown that WEPs’ policy programs are not prepared for further digitalization, and that they conceive of digital policy primarily as a means for self-profiling, i.e. reinforcing their image of being a protector of the people (against governments or technology companies), rather than an actually important policy area. The paradox of cyber diplomacy and data sovereignty in populism is not resolved but rather reduced to the issue of individual privacy, which obfuscates the paradox for the general public. This strategy also speaks to the complexity of data sovereignty as a concept: the ways it can be deployed as a discursive tool (as in Table 1) are far simpler than the concept itself.

The paper’s contribution to the literature is that it explores the notion of data sovereignty from the perspective of populism studies. Furthermore, it discusses the connection between data sovereignty and established notions of popular sovereignty used to legitimize political power, while positing cyber diplomacy as a link between those concepts. It also theorizes an agent-based typology of data sovereignty as a discursive tool. Its empirical implications lie primarily in the area of political science, analyzing whether WEPs’ digital policies can be seen as image-building tools focused on short-term electoral gains, instead of policy plans that are intended to work in the long term if the party comes to power. The paper’s findings provide initial empirical evidence for the former. Key weaknesses of the study are, firstly, that its narrow scope makes it difficult to extrapolate its empirical findings beyond Western European right-wing populist parties, and, secondly, that WEPs seemingly do not often talk about data sovereignty directly. A possible explanation for this lack of engagement is that digital policy, and especially policies on cutting-edge technologies and novel concepts in digital governance, is still a niche subject for the general public that populist parties aim to appeal to. Age differences may also play a role, as, for instance, the Dutch PVV’s lack of digital policies may be linked to its older voting demographic.

The lack of substantial digital policies among WEPs also has broader implications for democracy and invites further research. For instance, populists typically claim they embody the voice of the people and that they function as a direct conduit for channeling the needs of “the people” into politics (Brubaker, 2017; Mudde, 2007). To that end, populist actors use the Internet and social media to amplify their messages and talk to “the people” directly (Schroeder, 2019) – implying that a populist actor with power over the nation’s digital infrastructures and technologies could significantly reinforce its position. Alternatively, populists may promise to establish forms of direct, digital democracy in which voters can use digital technologies to be (or at least feel) more directly represented in the political sphere (De Blasio & Sorice, 2018; Kim, 2008). This is particularly relevant for Western Europe, as its technological infrastructure and citizens’ digital literacy is relatively well-developed. However, the paper shows that WEPs do not wish to do so, and that they are ill-equipped to develop workable plans for further digitalization – implying that they will likely not focus on using digital technologies to connect with the people and improve democratic participation. In fact, the analysis also shows that, at least in Western Europe, if populists would advocate for direct digital democracy, their claims are not supported by policy proposals that provide the underlying frameworks necessary to execute these plans for digital representation in a safe and trustworthy manner. WEPs using digital direct democracy as a means to present themselves as a more direct representative of citizens hence may not have a sustained vision for actually implementing these promises, yet more research is needed to support that claim. Further research could also take the analysis in a different direction by expanding the agent-based typology of data sovereignty as a discursive concept, focusing on other geographic areas, or fleshing out the notion of cyber diplomacy as a bridge between national and data sovereignty.