UN Pact for the Future and Global Digital Compact: A Critical Interdisciplinary Analysis of Global Digital Governance, Digital-ID, and Central-Bank Digital Currencies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.65655/8bdt4516Keywords:
Global Digital Governance, Information Integrity, Surveillance Capitalism, Governmentality, Digital ID, Central Bank Digital Currency, TechnocracyAbstract
Purpose – This article interrogates the United Nations’ Pact for the Future and its annexed Global Digital Compact as an emerging blueprint for centralized digital governance, asking how the proposed coordination of data, identity and platform oversight may reshape power, rights and sovereignty. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on Global Governance Theory, Surveillance Capitalism, Foucauldian Governmentality and Agenda-Setting/Framing, the study deploys an advanced secondary-data strategy that integrates qualitative content analysis, NLP-assisted critical discourse analysis and comparative cross-sector review of 25 policy texts, summit speeches and scholarly sources. Findings – Lexical and semantic mapping reveals that key frames such as disinformation, information integrity and resilience legitimise expansive trans-national oversight while obscuring state and corporate propaganda. Cross-referencing with the rapid diffusion of biometric digital-ID programmes and programmable central-bank digital currencies uncovers a convergent, four-step “digital-control stack” (global electrification → universal connectivity → digital public infrastructure → discursive suppression) that could recalibrate civil liberties, market competition and theological conceptions of human dignity. Practical implications – Without robust safeguards—independent oversight bodies, interoperable rights-preserving standards and enforceable data-protection regimes—the Compact risks hard-wiring surveillance-capitalist incentives into international law and accelerating techno-authoritarian norms. Originality/value – The article offers the first holistic synthesis of political-economic, sociotechnical and theological critiques of the Pact, advancing a dynamic governance-loop model that explains how discursive framing, infrastructure roll-out and behavioural compliance mutually reinforce centralised authority. It provides evidence-based recommendations to align digital cooperation with pluralism, national sovereignty and biblical principles of human agency.
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