The Implications of the Estonian E - Residency Project on Statehood and Territoriality.

• Název práce v češtině: The Implications of the Estonian E - Residency Project on Statehood and Territoriality.
• Název v anglickém jazyce: The Implications of the Estonian E - Residency Project on Statehood and Territoriality.
• Klíčová slova: E-residency, sovereignty, territoriality, statehood, borders.
• Klíčová slova anglicky: E-residency, sovereignty, territoriality, statehood, borders.
• Akademický rok vypsání: 2015/2016
• Typ práce: diplomová práce
• Jazyk práce: angličtina
• Ústav: Katedra politologie (23-KP)
• Vedoucí / školitel: doc. Martin Riegl, Ph.D.
• Řešitel: skrytý - zadáno vedoucím/školitelem
• Datum přihlášení: 13.06.2016
• Datum zadání: 13.06.2016
• Datum a čas obhajoby: 22.06.2017 00:00
• Místo konání obhajoby: Jinonice, U Kříže 8
• Datum odevzdání elektronické podoby: 19.05.2017
• Datum proběhlé obhajoby: 22.06.2017
• Oponenti: Mgr. Bohumil Doboš, Ph.D.

Zásady pro vypracování

Since the year 2000 the Estonian government has been providing its citizens an ID card in addition to a passport. It is a valid form of identification and can even be used as a travel document within the EU. It has a built in chip that when inserted into an ID card reader will give the user access to the government‘s many e- services ranging from digital signing, encrypting and time-stamping of documents to voting. From the 1st of December 2014 one no longer has to be an Estonian citizen to receive a similar card. It will not be a valid identification document, but it will provide the holder a verified virtual identity and grant access to the applicable online services (since it is not an actual citizenship the holder of the card will not be able to vote for example). The concept is called e-residency. The main appeal of this project at the moment is that not only can someone participate in the running of an Estonian company remotely and it is all paperwork free, but one could even start a company in Estonia and open a bank account for it with trusted payment systems without ever setting foot in the country. The government is hoping to benefit from increased interest in doing business in Estonia thanks to this digital infrastructure.
Since the concept is new and the project itself in so called beta-phase, it is hard to evaluate the programs full potential, but the general attitude towards it seems to be extremely positive. E-residency has received a lot of coverage in the international media like the BBC, The Economist , Vice, Forbes etc and in many articles it is believed to be something revolutionary. For example Friedrich Paul from Network World wrote in one of his articles „it could seriously disrupt the concepts of citizenship and residency or even what it means to be a nation/state“. Many hope this will be a step toward a borderless state and a borderless world.
The significance of borders and territorial integrity came to be with the Peace of Westphalia and has stood strong for centuries, but for quite some time now there has been debate if perhaps the end of Westphalian world order is near. This has been mostly in the context of general globalization, supranational organizations and the increasing power that big international companies hold, but will e-residency bring us closer to some new era or is it something that will end up finding little use? What new does e-residency exactly bring to the table? One could say that an entrepreneur can now choose a government who‘s services and infrastructure it wants to use and in some cases who it wants to pay taxes to (depending on the tax regulations of the country the entrepreneur is from or currently located in), but obtaining a second citizenship is not impossible now either. For example Cyprus has provided many Russian businessmen with an easy access to the EU for a payment.
In my thesis I would like to start by analyzing what is citizenship, residency, sovereignty, political territoriality and borders in the first place and how the meaning of these concepts has changed in time. I can name 2 authors whose ideas on the topic I would like to analyze: R. Sack and R. Cooper, but I intend to find some more. I think an important question is: what is the relationship between a state and its citizen? How does it compare to the relationship between a state and an e-resident? Finding an answer to this will help determine if e-residency will add to or extract from one state’s sovereignty at the expense of another. What does the complete independence of the citizen’s location in the case of e-residency mean?
Hypotheses:

1. Estonian E-residency project is a (small) step towards the end of the current Westphalian international order
2. Estonian E-residency program will reduce the importance of borders

Methodology:

The thesis will be most likely fully qualitative. I will first analyze the most important concepts that the thesis is going to address. The theoretical framework will be the works of Cooper and Sack and most likely one-2 other authors which I am yet to determine. I will do a literature review of their publishings on the topic. I intend to analyze existing theories by them in the field of sovereignty and political territoriality and find out if e-residency fits in this framework or will it change the current understanding of these concepts completely.

Seznam odborné literatury

Cooper, R. (1996). The Post Modern State and the World Order. Demos Medical Publishing.

E-Residency’s Official Website. https://e-estonia.com/e-residents/about/

Sack, R. (1986). Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History. Cambridge Studies in Historical Geography

Okhonmina, S. (2010). States without Borders: Westphalia Territoriality under Threat. Kre Publishing.
Elden, S. (2010). Thinking Territory Historically. In Geopolitics. p 757-761.
Gartzke, E. (2006). Globalization, Economic Development and Territorial Conflict.” In Territoriality and Conflict in an Era of Globalization. Cambridge University Press
Gottmann, J. (1973). The Significance of Territory. In The University Press of Virginia.
Johnston, R. (2001). Out of the "moribund water": territory and territoriality in political geography. In Political Geography, p 677-693.
MacKay, J. et col. (2014). Before and after borders: The nomadic challenge to sovereign territoriality. In International Politics. p101-23.
Miller, D. (2012). Territorial Rights: Concept and Justification. In Political Studies. p 252-268.
Moore, M. (2015). A Political Theory of Territory. Oxford University Press.
Vollaard, H. (2009). The Logic of Political Territoriality. In Geopolitics. p 687-706.

Předběžná náplň práce

1. Introduction
2. Conceptualizing the key elements
a. E-residency
b. Residency
c. Citizenship
d. Sovereignty of a state
e. Political territoriality
f. Borders and a borderless state
3. Analysis of the history state-territory-citizen relationship
4. Analysis of the current state-territory-citizen relationship
5. What new does E-residency claim bring to the table and is it that new?
a. Paper free, fast and location independent interaction with a government
b. Ability to choose a government
c. A state marketing itself to attract business and gain tax-payers
d. Estonia providing identification to citizens of a different state, albeit virtual
e. The State gains taxes, but what doest the tax payer get in return if it is not on the territory of that state? State-citizen relationship
6. Conclusions
7. References / Bibliografy
8. Annexes