Digital Sovereignty, Data Protection, and Transnational Regulatory Authority in Fragmented Governance

Abstract

The expansion of digital governance has intensified the legal and political importance of data protection in transnational regulatory settings. As regulatory environments become more fragmented, data protection can no longer be understood only as a privacy safeguard, because it is increasingly tied to jurisdiction, infrastructure, and competing claims of authority. This article examines how digital sovereignty reshapes the legal meaning of data protection within an evolving transnational regulatory order. It adopts a qualitative research design based on conceptual and regulatory analysis. The analysis draws on academic arguments, legal-regulatory texts, and policy materials concerning data protection, cross-border data flows, and digital sovereignty. An analytical framework is used to connect jurisdiction, infrastructure, normative authority, legal interoperability, and the tension between national autonomy and transnational digital integration. This approach is suitable because the research focuses on legal meaning, regulatory transformation, and authority formation rather than statistical measurement. Data protection emerges as a broader legal architecture through which strategic control, regulatory coordination, and normative contestation are organized. The article argues that digital sovereignty is transforming data protection from a privacy-centered doctrine into a structural mechanism in the reordering of transnational regulatory authority. Its contribution lies in integrating privacy, sovereignty, cross-border data governance, and regulatory power within one coherent conceptual framework.