Compound path dependence in green transitions: a comparative analysis of EV policy coordination in Indonesia and Thailand

Why do countries facing similar pressures for electric vehicle (EV) transitions adopt different policy coordination arrangements? Existing scholarship pays less attention to how historically rooted institutional configurations shape the emergence and persistence of coordination modes. This article addresses this gap through a comparative study of Indonesia and Thailand, two Southeast Asian middle-income economies that adopted national EV strategies in the late 2010s but developed divergent coordination trajectories. Drawing on historical institutionalism, it develops a framework of compound path dependence, arguing that coordination arrangements are shaped by the interaction of technical lock-in, relational networks, and organizational learning. Using comparative process tracing from the 1960s–2024, the analysis identifies two distinct governance modes: in Thailand, consensus-based incrementalism built on strong industrial capacity, institutionalized consultation, and committee-based routines; while in Indonesia, directive-driven ad-hocism rooted in a resource-centered development path and weaker industrial coordination legacies. Through this, this study advances the literature on public policy and sustainability transitions. It reveals a critical trade-off between institutional coherence and policy agility in sustainability transition, and argues that policy coordination choice is a product of structure-induced agency constrained by historical legacies.