Asia’s “Other” Giant: The Political Economy of India’s Clean Energy Transition

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🔬研究者:Political economy scholars can adopt the extended embedded autonomy framework for comparative studies of green industrial policy in developing countries.

🏢実務担当者:Policymakers in emerging economies can draw lessons on the role of domestic coalitions and geopolitics in shaping renewable energy deployment.

🏛政策担当者:Relevant for understanding how state-business relations and international dynamics influence the success of green industrial strategies.

Over the past two decades, India has launched a series of initiatives to expand renewable energy and cultivate domestic green manufacturing. From its modest beginnings under the 2008 National Action Plan on Climate Change, India is now the world’s third largest producer of renewable energy. For a state that is often cast as weak and predatory, these achievements present an understudied area of analysis.There are two extreme viewpoints that research has posited to explain these significant developments. In one camp, India is frequently portrayed as an enormous success story and a favourable investment destination in emerging industries such as solar, attracting the world’s largest institutional investors. In the other camp, scholars are preoccupied with highlighting the institutionally weak character of the state which has slowed down growth in green industries.This study charts a different, more nuanced, course from these reductive binaries. My core aim is to probe the Indian state’s role in driving three key technological industries widely seen as critical to transitioning to a green economy: solar, wind, and green hydrogen. The central research question I seek to answer is: <i>What institutional and political factors have enabled (or constrained) the Indian state’s capacity to execute a green industrial transformation?</i>To address this question, I develop a differentiated framework that builds on Peter Evans’ concept of <i>embedded autonomy </i>but expands it in two critical ways. First, it integrates the role of domestic political coalitions as essential to shaping policy continuity, industrial alliances, and implementation capacity. These factors are often amiss in the literature on late, late industrialising nations. For emerging economies, informal ties between private capital and the state; and coalitions of domestic actors are critical to understanding policy stasis or implementation. In the case of India, the ‘re-development’ of a national psyche that gives primacy to development and economic growth to project international leadership, and popular political support for big business led growth has meant these networks are working towards green industrialisation in mutually beneficial ways.Second, my approach foregrounds the evolving geopolitical terrain within which latecomer states now operate. In the context of the Indian state, a study of institutions which does not factor in geopolitical contestations and threats is insufficient in explaining the state’s efforts to promote clean energy. The state has nurtured ties with regional neighbours and uses political activism to ensure access to green energy for its ally states. In doing so, the state expands into newer export markets for its homegrown industries; and maintains regional leadership.This study will show that green industrialisation for late, late industrialising nations, in this view, is no longer limited to high levels of embedded autonomy in the institutional make-up of a state. Domestic politics have a strong bearing on facilitating or obstructing the formulation and implementation of policies as does a global system of rules, rivalries, and rents. My findings suggest a need to move beyond an unfruitful pre-occupation with ideal types such as the ‘developmental state’ concept in debates over advancing green growth in today’s industrialising countries.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.25949/32060589first seen 2026-06-16 04:42:08