Publics [RE/MIS/NOT] Presented: The role of imagined publics in legitimation of transition expectations: Lessons from governance of gas and gas infrastructure in the Dutch energy transition

Transition governance is driven by diverse and often competing expectations. In this dissertation, I develop an informed argument for increased attention to the legitimacy of such expectations. This is needed, rstly, because transition expectations emerge and compete with each other in oftentimes politicised yet rarely democratised processes, in which ultimately some (actors’) expectations become shared and performed while others are not. Secondly, because transition expectations generally promise a signicant but unequal impact on societal groups, or publics in transitions. Consequently, expectations oftentimes touch upon matters of in- and exclusion, justice and injustice, power and disempowerment in transitions. For these reasons, both transition expectations and the governance processes in which they emerge and do their work can lead to (perceptions of) illegitimacy.