Keywords
global data governance
middle powers
Abstract
Despite the recent rapid increase in data flows across borders, the world has not reached a consensus on how to regulate this issue. Different approaches adopted by governments across the world have made a lot of analysts imagine the future of global data governance pessimistically. Two dominant approaches, data openness and data protectionism, show how different interests of great powers affect the way in which they regulate data flows. The previous literature suggests that during the rising tension between great powers, middle powers may have an opportunity to bridge differences so that the world may reach a consensus upon a specific issue. This paper, in turn, analyses the role of middle powers in advancing the agenda to establish global data governance. Using the framework of pattern of middle powers’ behaviour from Cooper, Higgot, and Nossal (1993), this paper scrutinizes Australia’s role in JSI on E-commerce and Indonesia’s role in G20 to further the process of establishing global data governance. This paper finds that Indonesia shows a more limited role than Australia in spearheading governance of data flows across the globe.
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