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Restoration Doctrine Rebooted: Codifying Continuity in the Estonian Data Embassy Initiative
Author(s) -
Kaljund A. Lorraine
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
polar: political and legal anthropology review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.529
H-Index - 27
eISSN - 1555-2934
pISSN - 1081-6976
DOI - 10.1111/plar.12240
Subject(s) - doctrine , estonian , independence (probability theory) , political science , geopolitics , state (computer science) , law , public administration , computer science , politics , philosophy , statistics , linguistics , mathematics , algorithm
Abstract In the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, the semantic and legal terms of Estonia's emergence as an independent state were dictated by what scholars have called the “restoration doctrine.” This doctrine held that Estonia was not a newly independent state, but a restored version of the same republic that was founded in 1918. The highly politicized “restorationist geopolitics” that followed had profound effects on Estonian statecraft and policy in the early 1990s. Recently, Estonia announced plans to store backups of key information systems in “data embassies,” or computer servers, outside of Estonian territory; one goal of the initiative is to ensure that in the event Estonia is reoccupied and then later liberated, it will be possible to easily retrieve and restore the state's legitimate “unoccupied” data and information systems. In this article, I draw on participant‐observation and interviews with the team that is building Estonia's data embassies. I argue that this initiative is an attempt to codify and materialize the restoration doctrine in software, code, and policy planning, thereby ensuring that the termination of any future occupation brings not independence but (re‐)independence, and not only liberation but also restoration.