Digital sovereignty: Universities as deliberative actors

Universities are largely absent as autonomous actors from digital sovereignty discourse. This article addresses this gap conceptually by transferring the Capability Approach to the meso-level of higher education institutions, combining it with an infrastructural analysis of academic freedom, and grounding it in Klafki's educational triad of self-determination, co-determination, and solidarity. The result is a proposed definition: digital sovereignty as an organizational capability to make decisions about digital infrastructures in a values-based, reasoned, and revisable manner. Deliberative procedures — understanding, scrutiny, and co-design — prove not only organizationally warranted but educationally necessary.