1-Day Seminar on

TITLE OF THE CHAPTER

Global Governance, Trade, and Competition in the Digital Age:

Rethinking Regulatory Power, Market Control and Sovereignty in

Data-Driven Economies.

Final Chapter Submitted for

1-Day Seminar on

Digital Sovereignty and Global Equity

by

Mumbai University & IFIM College

Final Chapter Submitted by

Ananya Chauhan Dr. Amit Dhall

BA.LLB. (Final Year Student) Associate Professor

Amity Law School, Noida, U.P. Amity Law School, Noida, U.P.

Contact no. – 9643675445 Contact no. – 9457997457

Email Id – ananyachauhan1525@gmail.com Email Id – adhall@amity.edu

April 11, 2026

“Markets are not self-regulating. They require rules, and those rules are shaped by power.” ~ Joseph Stiglitz

Abstract

The digital economy has transformed the structure of global markets, shifting the locus of economic power from territorial production to data extraction, algorithmic processing, and platform intermediation. Dominant digital platforms operate across borders while remaining largely insulated from territorially bounded regulatory regimes in trade law, competition law, and public governance. This structural misalignment has produced regulatory fragmentation, trade tensions over data localization, and doctrinal inadequacies in addressing data-driven market power. Traditional frameworks of international economic law, particularly under the World Trade Organization and the General Agreement on Trade in Services, were designed for goods and services, not for markets where data functions simultaneously as infrastructure, commodity, and instrument of competitive dominance.

This paper argues that existing legal regimes fail because they conceptualize digital trade as a question of market access rather than market control. It introduces an original analytical framework termed Digital Market Constitutionalism, which reconceptualizes global regulatory power over data-driven platforms through the lens of constitutional allocation of authority across trade law, competition law, and sovereign governance. The framework explains how states can reclaim regulatory competence over platforms without undermining cross-border digital trade, and how competition law must evolve to address data accumulation, network effects, and algorithmic self-preferencing as structural, not behavioural, harms.

By engaging with regulatory developments such as the Digital Markets Act, the Digital Services Act, and enforcement trends in the United States and India, the paper demonstrates that the emerging fragmentation in digital regulation reflects a deeper constitutional crisis in international economic law. It proposes doctrinal tests and policy tools under Digital Market Constitutionalism to harmonize trade obligations, competition enforcement, and sovereign digital governance in data-driven economies.

Keywords: Digital Trade, Data Sovereignty, Platform Competition, Global Governance, Digital Market Constitutionalism