AbstractsPolitical Science

This thesis explores state death and the possibilities to escape death that comes with the digitalising of the state. The analysis, built on earlier theorising of how we could understand what the state is, explicate the connection between the narrative of the identity, or “collective self”, and the survival of the state through a repository of its key information, which in turn could be viewed as an asset in terms of recognition. Hence we could envision the possibility for the state to possess identity repositories where certain information becomes the bearer of identity, which ensures the survival of the narrative of the collective self, after invasion and territorial conquest. This is also put in relation to statehood and its intimate connection to the contemporary notion of spatial domain and how it might be affected by digitalisation.