Andrii Paziuk (National Aviation University) has posted Sovereignty as Retained Capability: Digital Dependency, Retained Operational Control and Due Diligence in International Law on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Digital sovereignty has proved difficult to translate into legal doctrine, and the obstacle is no longer only its original territorial vocabulary. Contemporary accounts describe the concept through autonomy, resilience, institutional capacity, and control over technological dependencies, yet the legal significance of that capacity remains unspecified at the level at which public authority is exercised: the digitally mediated public function. This article develops retained operational control to supply that specification. A state may remain formally competent to perform a public function while being unable to understand the systems through which it acts, govern material changes, reconstruct decisions, intervene when operation becomes unlawful, correct errors, preserve evidence, maintain continuity or replace a dependency. Protective obligations assessed through due diligence presuppose capacities sufficient to make the required knowledge and action possible. Where the relevant function depends materially on digital infrastructure, those capacities may include retained operational control over it and its critical dependencies. Ten retained capabilities supply an analytical taxonomy through which that control can be specified and evidenced; the applicable primary obligation determines which are legally relevant and at what intensity. Digital sovereignty thus becomes a way of identifying when formal competence is unsupported by the control existing obligations presuppose.
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