Digital Globalization: Politics, Policy, and a Governance Paradox

Digital technologies are reshaping the global economy and complicating cooperation over its governance. Novel business models profit from international transfers of data, services, and knowledge. Transfers of European citizens' personal data to third countries are restricted under Europe's landmark 2018 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a comprehensive data governance act billed by Brussels as 'the toughest privacy and security law in the world.' Even though the US has no national privacy law, a workaround agreement enabled businesses to transfer customer data from servers in Europe to those in the US. This Element argues that distinctive features of data-driven business models complicate international economic relations. A politically sustainable digital globalization requires agreements on rules governing the novel forms of economic exchange that digital technologies enable. A central theme of this Element is that digital globalization represents a paradigm shift in international economic governance.