Digital Governance Assemblages: Reconfiguring Territory, Authority, and Rights in Comparative Perspective

บทคัดย่อ

This article examines key problems and paradoxes of contemporary digital governance by moving beyond static, dichotomous models. It introduces and applies assemblage theory as a novel analytical framework to interpret digital governance not as a set of fixed regimes, but as dynamic, contingent, and contested socio-technical formations. Through a comparative analysis of three distinct governance assemblages—India's Aadhaar (the Biometric State Assemblage), Brazil's Marco Civil da Internet (the Multi-Stakeholder Rights Assemblage), and Australia's eSafety Commissioner (the Co-Regulatory Safety Assemblage), this paper demonstrates how heterogeneous elements of technology, law, discourse, and actors combine to produce unique governance realities. The analysis identifies recurring paradoxes, most notably the tension between the deterritorializing properties of digital technologies and persistent state efforts to reassert territorial control. The study concludes that understanding these emergent assemblages is vital for developing adaptive, legitimate governance frameworks, offering specific operational strategies for public administrators to navigate the frictional inclusion, normative fragility, and sovereign overreach that define the current digital age.