Title of Dissertation: national renewable energy policy

Table 7. 
Summary of literature and propositions.
 
Theoretical framework 
Proposition 
Analysis 1 
Institutional theory: 
co-evolution of 
multinational 
corporations 
Proposition 1. Multinational renewable energy 
corporation are more likely to engage in 
policymaking for favorable policies under the 
challenges of the global market. 
Analysis 2 
Institutional theory: 
issue fields 
Proposition 2. The central domestic actors of a 
renewable energy field have framed renewable 
energy trade issues with a traditional 
environmental frame.
Analysis 3 
Theory of policy 
convergence 
Proposition 3: The growth of domestic 
renewable energy industries has caused the 
diversification of national renewable energy 
policies as renewable energy industries have 
become globalized. 
 
 

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Chapter 3. Global solar market and multinational corporate actors
 
Introduction 
The global solar PV market has rapidly grown in recent years. Global solar PV 
installation capacity, which was less than 1GW in 1994, reached 177GW in 2014.
95
Although the solar PV installation has continuously grown during this period, the global 
solar market has experienced ups and downs, which have been caused by diverse national 
and international factors. The global financial crisis in late 2000s has negatively affected 
the governmental support for solar power as well as discouraged investors to finance for 
solar projects. Meanwhile, the global oversupply of solar products had led many solar PV 
corporations out of the business in recent years. Despite these challenges, a number of 
solar PV corporations have substantially grown into large multinational corporations 
during this period. 
This chapter explores the dynamics of these recent changes in the global solar PV 
market and the reactions of multinational corporations to the changes. To answer the 
central question of this research, this chapter focuses on the rise of multinational 
corporations, one of the aspects of the globalization of industry. The question of this 
chapter is: 
How have multinational renewable energy corporations affected national 
policies?
95
IEA, 
IEA-PVPS Trends 2015: In Photovoltaic Applications Executive Summary
. IEA-
PVPS T1-27:2015. http://www.iea-pvps.org/fileadmin/dam/public/report/national/IEA-
PVPS_-_Trends_2015_-_Executive_Summary_-_Final.pdf.

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Previous literature suggests that multinational corporations “co-evolve” with their 
external environment, since social environments are “evolving rule systems” for them.
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According to Canwell and colleagues, under uncertain environments, multinational 
corporations are likely to co-evolve with the environment rather than just adapting to the 
environment. The ups and downs of global solar market in recent years infer more 
uncertainty in the market; thus, it is predicted that co-evolution might happen. The effect 
of uncertainty on co-evolution is not the only theoretical prediction. The contradictions 
between institutions have been pointed out as one of the enabling factors for the firms to 
initiate changes of their external environment.
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Based on these theoretical predictions, 
this chapter assesses if co-evolution of multinational corporations with the external 
environment has happened in the global solar market focusing on the effect of them on 
national policies. The proposition is that 
multinational renewable energy corporations