Sarah Jenkins

Governing the Digital Frontier: A Strategic Framework for Global South Leadership in AI and Digital Governance

The adoption of the Global Digital Compact (GDC) at the Summit of the Future on 22 September 2024 creates a comprehensive multilateral framework for digital cooperation and mandates two new institutional mechanisms — the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI and the Global Dialogue on AI Governance — whose design and operating norms remain to be elaborated by the General Assembly. For states of the Global South, the Compact's adoption is therefore an opening rather than an endpoint: a narrow but consequential window in which the norms, standards, and institutional modalities governing artificial intelligence, data, cybersecurity, and digital public infrastructure may yet be shaped rather than merely received. This article asks how Global South states can strengthen domestic, regional, and multilateral institutional capacities to move from primarily rule-taking positions toward greater rule-shaping influence in global AI and digital governance. We propose a multi-stage explanatory framework linking domestic capacity, regional coordination, technical and negotiating capability, effective multilateral participation, coalition and agenda-setting capacity, and norm and standard influence to the outcome of rule-shaping, and we identify analytically inferred breakdown points in this framework. The framework is presented as a proposed analytical model, not as an empirically validated causal law; the comparative evidence from three cases (India, Brazil, African Union) is consistent with the model but does not constitute causal validation, which would require a larger-N study with process-tracing evidence. The article introduces an AUN Digital Governance Strategic Diagnostic Framework — honestly characterised as a diagnostic framework rather than a statistical index, with no invented numerical scores — that maps country positioning across five AUN analytical imperatives, clearly distinguished from the GDC's five official objectives. Drawing on country evidence frozen at 18 October 2024 (India's IndiaAI Mission and UPI/DPI; Brazil's Pix and pending AI Bill 2338/2023; the African Union's Continental AI Strategy), and distinguishing five levels of international influence (domestic innovation, international diffusion, norm entrepreneurship, standard-setting influence, and demonstrated rule-shaping), the article advances a strategic framework for Global South rule-shaping, identifies six counterarguments that qualify the analysis, and concludes with policy implications tied to the admissible evidence base.