Democratisation, the Rule of Law, and Renewable Energy Consumption in Emerging Markets: A Panel Granger-Predictive Analysis

The conventional view of the renewable energy transition treats democratic governance and the rule of law as upstream drivers, yet across emerging markets, the empirical direction of these relationships is contested. Drawing on 19 emerging economies over 2010–2021, this paper documents an unexpected directional ordering, with renewable energy adoption Granger-preceding democratic and legal consolidation rather than the reverse. The empirical strategy combines bootstrap panel Granger-causality testing (Emirmahmutoğlu–Köse), Westerlund cointegration testing, and a system GMM identification check (Blundell–Bond). Renewable energy consumption Granger-predicts both democratisation and the rule of law, with reverse panel directions showing no predictive content; predictive spillovers extend further to industrial composition and trade openness. The predictive pattern is consistent with integrated rather than sequenced policy framings in emerging markets, in which renewable energy promotion and rule of law and anti-corruption efforts may operate as complementary rather than substitute channels.