Transition imaginaries: Expectations of the state project of an electric vehicle in Poland

Abstract

We present the concept of “transition imaginary”, defined as a discursive effect of the relational work of the state to strategically select and reconfigure landscape pressures through national sociotechnical imaginaries for the sake of legitimizing particular transition projects. Using the case study of the Polish project of an electric vehicle (EV) IZERA, we illustrate a model that helps understand how landscape pressures are reinterpreted in relation to national sociotechnical imaginaries with the active role of state actors in this process. State actors use various forms of representation to publicly express expectations about its benefits and meanings to consolidate the social base for it and propose concrete forms of intervention to bring them into existence. By applying the strategic-relational approach to state power developed by Bob Jessop, we unpack sustainable transitions as state projects of political power and a geographically specific modality of state capitalism.