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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how infrastructural projects materialize populist governance by constituting political relationships between residents, local officials, and national government in rural Poland.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how infrastructural projects materialized political relations in rural Poland under right-wing nationalist Law and Justice government. Drawing on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a north-central town and its surrounding areas (August 2022-September 2023) in the run-up to Poland’s 2023 parliamentary elections, I examine how roads, bike lanes and other infrastructure projects become sites where populist governance is materialized and where political effectiveness is measured and performed. In rural Poland, infrastructure is a medium through which politics become tangible: local officials measure their own success through completed projects; governments’ performance is assessed by counting kilometres of asphalt; and MPs and ministers project their presence into localities through ribbon-cutting ceremonies. Informational signage on EU and National funding schemes placed next to infrastructural developments translates abstract supranational and national political entities into concrete impacts on local material reality. The Law and Justice government (2015-2023), in particular, has positioned itself as responsive to long-neglected rural infrastructural needs. By focusing on these material dimensions, the paper considers how populist appeal operates through the delivery of desired “goods”, showing how concrete, asphalt, and paving stones constitute political alignments, partisan loyalty, and perceptions of governmental effectiveness.