Gaia-X and the Twin Transition Infrastructural Field Formation at the Nexus of Technology and Power

This article analyses Gaia-X, a flagship initiative of the European data strategy, as a contested site of infrastructural field formation within the broader context of the European Union’s Twin Transition, the simultaneous digital and ecological transformation of economies. Drawing on Strategic Action Field (SAF) theory and infrastructure sociology, the article develops a combined framework to examine how actor constellations, rule conflicts, and power asymmetries become embedded in socio-technical artefacts such as certification regimes, interoperability standards, and interface protocols. Building on existing scholarship that has acknowledged the material embedding of institutions, the study specifies how technical elements relate to field dynamics through the concept of infrastructural field formation. Using a qualitative, document-based methodology, the analysis reconstructs how Gaia-X evolved as an emergent strategic action field marked by incumbent-challenger dynamics and contested rule interpretations. It demonstrates how incumbent actors translated strategic influence into infrastructural control, shaping access, legitimacy, and participation through technical specifications. The analysis reveals three core lines of conflict: sovereignty versus interoperability, openness versus exclusion, and sustainability versus market logic. These are selectively stabilised through infrastructural codification. The article argues that Gaia-X exemplifies how transformation goals are materialised through governance through design, turning abstract policy ambitions into concrete architectures of inclusion and exclusion. The discussion elaborates specific contributions to SAF theory, infrastructure sociology, and Twin Transition research. It concludes that infrastructural field formation constitutes a central mechanism of socio-technical transformation, warranting greater analytical and political attention in the study of digital-ecological change.