Market Constitution Analysis: A New Framework Applied to Solar Power Technology Markets

Abstract

This paper outlines an integrative framework for the analysis of market constitution and explores its application to solar power technology markets. These markets are currently still in the making and, therefore, particularly suited to studying constitutive processes and the elements that play a role in them. In applying the framework to the constitution of solar power technology markets in Germany from the mid-1990s, the paper focuses on three examples of how constitutive mechanisms that trigger and drive market constitution processes and shape the constitutive elements of markets operate in distinct but interrelated ways: exploitation of technical inventions, business diversification, and political entrepreneurship. The analysis shows the role of market actors in 'making' a market at the same time as these actors evidently become 'marketized' by adopting market logic. Markets cannot be taken for granted in the field of solar power technologies or, rather, their actual taken-for-grantedness is one measure of the degree to which their constitution has been achieved.