International Best Practices of Digital-Green Integration: Lessons for Developing Countries

Governments are beginning to connect digital transformation and green transition policies, although the two agendas were long managed through separate reform tracks. This article examines that shift through three advanced policy systems: the European Union, South Korea, and China. The analysis uses a Most Similar Systems Design (MSSD) and draws on official strategies, policy packages, implementation materials, and peer-reviewed literature. Three models are identified: the European Union's regulatory-market model, South Korea's state-coordinated innovation model, and China's infrastructure-planning model. Their institutions, instruments, and financing scales differ substantially. Across the cases, however, three lessons recur: ministries need a working coordination mechanism, shared digital-environmental infrastructure requires patient investment, and complex green conditionalities work better after basic digital capacity has been built. For developing countries, the issue is not how to copy these models wholesale. A more defensible strategy is component matching: selecting institutional and sequencing elements that fit domestic administrative capacity, fiscal space, and digital readiness.