Historical analysis of changes in the public sector of the European Union countries in the context of digital transformation. Institutional challenges and tools of Smart Specialization (S3) over the last decade (2014-2024)

The digitization of the public sector in Europe represents one of the most significant processes of institutional reconfiguration of the 21st century, whose development between 2014 and 2024 has changed the material and symbolic forms of service delivery and governance structures at multiple levels of public administration. Against this backdrop, the objective of this research is to analyze, historically, the transformations of the public sector in some European Union countries during 2014-2024, identifying how the adoption of digital technologies interacted with the implementation of the S3 Smart Specialization Strategy to reconfigure institutional capacities and differentiated regional development trajectories. To achieve this objective, a hybrid methodology was used based on the comparative historical method and the triangulation of documentary sources of proven academic value. The findings allow us to conclude that the European Union (EU) faces a historic dilemma: either consolidate itself as a regulatory power that exports digital rights standards, building alternatives to US surveillance capitalism and Chinese authoritarianism, or fragment into subordinate peripheries incapable of defending the values that identify this geopolitical bloc.