Technology, power and policy in the digital politics of the Global South

Digital technologies have dramatically reshaped governance, political participation, and state–society interactions in the Global South. Over the past decade, governments across Asia, Africa, and Latin America have increasingly adopted e-government systems, digital public services, and smart city initiatives, digital identity programmes, and data-driven policy tools, often under conditions of infrastructure scarcity, institutional capacity constraints and global technological dependency. As digital tools become deeply embedded in political institutions and policy processes, they generate both opportunities and risks. Scholars have documented the emergence of new participatory tools and online civic movements that expand channels for public engagement, while also identifying the rise of misinformation, digital surveillance, algorithmic bias, and polarization as growing challenges to democratic integrity. Current research highlights uneven trajectories of digital transformation, shaped by broader geopolitical and economic dynamics, including the concentration of data, platforms and technological power among a small number of global actors. Despite the growing attention to digitalization, much of the existing scholarship remains centered on the Global North, leaving critical gaps in understanding how digital futures are being constructed, contested, and governed in the Global South, where constraints of capacity, inequality, and external technological dependence create distinct pathways of digital change. This Research Topic aims to advance political science scholarship on how digital technologies reshape political processes, power relations, and institutional practices across the Global South. It seeks to analyze the tensions between innovation and control, inclusion and exclusion, participation and manipulation, and sovereignty and dependency that accompany digital transformation. The collection invites both theoretical and empirical contributions addressing how governments adopt, regulate and contest technology, how digital infrastructures influence public policy, and service delivery, and how political actors, civil society organizations and citizens use digital tools for participation, mobilization, advocacy or manipulation. Central questions concern the role of digital industrial policy, cybersecurity governance, artificial intelligence, platform regulation, data sovereignty, and digital public infrastructure in development and democracy. The research topic also encourages contributions that examine the political economy of platform governance, and the democratic consequences of emerging technologies in electoral and participatory systems, and the implications of digital dependency for national sovereignty and regional cooperation. By exploring these dynamics, this Research Topic contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the politics of technology in diverse political and socioeconomic contexts, while challenging dominant northern-centric frameworks. Focusing on comparative, empirical and policy-oriented approaches, this Research Topic encompasses studies on digitalization and governance in emerging and developing contexts of the Global South. To gather further insights into the intersection of politics and technology, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes: • e-government, digital public services and digital public infrastructure • digital identity systems, biometric governance and citizen data • digital authoritarianism and state surveillance • platform regulation, data governance and data sovereignty • cybersecurity governance, digital industrial policy and technological dependency • artificial intelligence and algorithmic governance • online political mobilization and civic participation • digital democratic innovations and electronic voting • disinformation ecosystems, hate speech and election interference • algorithmic bias, platform inequality, and digital divides • the geopolitics of digital infrastructure, digital colonialism and South–South cooperation • digital inclusion, gender, youth and marginalized communities • environmental and social implications of digital infrastructure Topic editors: Régis Dandoy, Deodatus Patrick Shayo Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/83826/technology-power-and-policy-in-the-digital-politics-of-the-global-south