“Data, data, data” – post-Brexit data governance and its relation to the UK’s economic model

This paper studies the UK’s post-Brexit turn toward softening data protection standards. It uses this case to develop a perspective on data governance that is rooted in the growth model framework. With this approach, it illustrates how incentives to ease data-based value creation can be tied to certain macroeconomic conditions. The studied data protection reform serves as a crucial event at which links between macroeconomic conditions and policy action promise to become particularly visible. As the analysis shows, the UK government’s policy discourse and actions reflect various facets of the country’s data economy that have special weight in the UK’s growth model: the importance of data markets and advertising, the role of tech and data in attracting foreign investments, and the general importance of tech and data-intense service industries. The case study therefore points to important analytical dimensions that are relevant more generally for the study of evolving growth regimes.