EU Policy‐Making in the Digital Age: Major Trends and Insights From Public Policy Research

Has digitalization changed policy-making dynamics at the European Union (EU) level? To investigate this issue, this article presents a scoping review of the literature on EU digital policy-making. While much scholarship adopts a ‘Governance’ approach, two conceptually rich strands emerge: critical approaches, and digital sovereignty. Although these frameworks provide valuable insights, they do not fully capture the specific dynamics that digitalization introduces to the policy-making process. To bridge this gap, the article suggests two analytical directions rooted in public policy theory. The first focuses on issues related to control through the digital by emphasizing digital instrumentality, exploring how digitalization reshapes traditional boundaries between the political and technical spheres of policy-making. The second concentrates on the issue of control over the digital, where digital ‘ubiquity’ emerges as a major challenge, calling for analytical frameworks that reflect the cross-sectoral and hybrid nature of the EU’s digital transition.