Zac Greene

Research


Follow me on Academia.edu, Research Gate, or Twitter. Email me at zacgreene[@]gmail.com for replication materials or any other inquiries.


Publications


Greene, Zachary D., and Amanda A. Licht. 2024. "Donor political preferences and the allocation of aid: Patterns in recipient type." Conflict Management and Peace Science  41 (2): 155-176.


Greene, Zachary D., and Despina Alexiadou. 2023. "Parties in Governments and Coalitions." in the ​Routledge Handbook of Political Partiesby  Neil Carter, Daniel Keith, Gyda M. Sindre, Sofia Vasilopoulou, eds. Routledge.

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Greene, Zachary, Jan M. Jasinski, Graeme Roy, Thomas Schober, and Thomas J. Scotto. 2023. "`Plundering the liberal philosophical tradition'? The use or abuse of Adam Smith in Parliament, 1919-2023" National Institute Economic Review 265: 144-156.


Gallop, Max and Zachary Greene. 2021. "Polarization, Accountability, and Interstate Conflict." British Journal of Politics and International Relations 23 (1), 121-138 .

  • Key Words: ​​Interstate Conflict, Democratic Accountability, Polarization, Party Politics, Preferences


Greene, Zachary, Nathan Henceroth, and Christian Jensen. 2020. "The Cost of Coalition Compromise: the electoral effects of holding salient portfolios." Party Politics (Forthcoming).

  • Key words: Coalition governance, issue salience, elections, policy responsiveness, policy accountability, portfolio allocation


Greene, Zachary and Fraser McMillan. 2019. "The independence echo : the rise of the constitutional question in Scottish election manifestos and voter behaviour." Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties (Forthcoming).


Ceron, Andrea and Zachary Greene. 2019. "Verba Volant, Scripta Manent? Intra-party Politics, Party Conferences and Issue Salience in France." Party Politics (Forthcoming).

  • Key words: Intra-party politics, party congresses, Structural Topic Model, Agenda Setting, Issue Competition


Greene, Zachary. 2020. "Being Heard Above the Noise - The Role of Incumbent Issue Diversity in Election Campaigns." Political Behavior 42(2): 487-507.


Bevan, Shaun and Zachary Greene. 2018. "Cross-National Partisan Effects on Agenda Stability." The Journal of European Public Policy 25(4): 586-605.


Greene, Zachary, Jae-Jae Spoon, and Christopher J. Williams. 2017. "Reading Between the Lines: Party Cues and SNP support for Scottish Independence and Brexit." The Journal of Elections, Public Opinion, and Parties (forthcoming).


Greene, Zachary and Amanda Licht. 2017.  "Domestic Politics and Changes in Foreign Aid Allocation:  the role of party preferences." Political Research Quarterly (Forthcoming).


Greene, Zachary and Maarja Lühiste. 2017.  "Symbols of Priority? How the Media Selectively Report on Parties' Election Campaigns." European Journal of Political Research​ DOI: 10.1111/1475-6765.12247.


Greene, Zachary and Christian Jensen. 2017. "Ruling Divided: Disagreement, Issue Salience and Portfolio Allocation." Party Politics 24 (6): 640-651.


Greene, Zachary and Matthias Haber. 2017. "Maintaining Partisan Ties: Preference Divergence and Partisan Collaboration in Western Europe." Party Politics 23 (1): 30-42 .​


Greene, Zachary. 2017. “Working through the Issues: How Issue Diversity Conditions the Impact of Ideological Disagreement on Coalition Duration.” European Political Science Review  9 (4): 561-585.

​Greene, Zachary and Matthias Haber. 2016. "Leadership Competition and Disagreement at  Party National Congresses." British Journal of Political Science 46 (3): 611-632.

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Greene, Zachary and Diana Z. O'Brien. 2016. "Diverse Parties, Diverse Agendas?  Female Politicians and the Parliamentary Party’s Role in Platform Formation." European Journal of Political Research 55 (3): 435-453.


Bevan, Shaun and Zachary Greene. 2016. “Looking for the Party?  The Effects of Partisan Change on Issue Attention in UK Acts of Parliament” European Political Science Review 8(1): 47-72.

Greene, Zachary and Christian Jensen. 2016. “Manifestos, Salience and Junior Ministerial Appointments.” Party Politics 22 (3): 382-392. 


Greene, Zachary. 2015 "Competing on the Issues: How experience in government and economic conditions influence the scope of parties’ policy message." Party Politics 22 (6): 809-822.


Greene, Zachary and Matthias Haber. 2015. "The Consequences of Appearing Divided: An analysis of party evaluations and vote choice." Electoral Studies 37: 15-27.

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Bowen, Daniel and Zachary Greene. 2014. "Should We Measure Professionalism with and Index? A Note on Theory and Practice in State Legislative Professionalism Research." State Politics and Policy Quarterly 14(3): 277-296.


Party Congress Research Group


Greene, Zachary, Andrea Ceron, Gijs Schumacher and Zoltan Fazekas. 2016. "​The Nuts and Bolts of Automated Text Analysis. Comparing Different Document Pre-Processing Techniques in Four Countries." Open Science Framework (November 1).

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Invited Blog Posts and Conference Proceedings

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"How Electoral Competition Explains Preference Convergence and Divergence in Pre-Electoral Coalitions" with Matthias Haber. LSE Europpblog April 6, 2017).


"How Intra-Party Disagreement Determines Issue Salience in Election Manifestos." Published in the Conference Proceedings of PolText 2016 The International COnference on the Advances in Computational Analysis of Political Texts.

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"New Women MPs shift their party leftwards - but female leaders don't" with Diana Z. O'Brien. Democratic Audit UK (November 16, 2016).


"Setting the policy agenda: the role of economic context, parliamentary majority and party membership" with Shaun Bevan. LSE British Politics and Policy Blog (April 5, 2016).


"​An enduring legacy? The independence referendum may not herald the beginning of a new era of political engagement" with Heinz Brandenburg, Neil McGarvey and Stephen Campbell. Democratic Audit Scotland (December 4, 2015).


"UK voters see divided political parties as less able to make sensible or coherent policies." Democratic Audit UK (November 21, 2014).


Working Papers


"How Incumbency Structures the Electoral Impact of Issue Diversity in Parties' Campaign Messages."(links to pdf on Academia.edu).


Parties craft their campaign messages to mobilize diverse constituencies.  Theories of election strategy find that parties choose their tactics dependent on their electoral context.  However, analyses on the electoral consequences of party competition have only begun to explore the dependency between context and tactic. Building on theories of party competition, I predict that the broad electoral context, such as incumbent status or the state of the economy, decides the effect of electoral tactics on the votes parties receive. Parties benefit from branching out to a wider range of issues when they are in the opposition.  Instead, government parties have less control of their reputation. Economic conditions limit the incumbent’s ability to selectively construct its policy message. However, these parties profit from pairing down their policy appeals when the economy grows. Using evidence from the Comparative Manifestos Project for 24 OECD countries over a 60 year period, I find that conditioning party campaign messages on their economic environment demonstrates a clear and strong electoral impact. Individual level evidence from 12 OECD countries in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems adds evidence consistent with the underlying mechanism. Governing parties earn a reward for focusing their platforms when the economy grows more than the economy alone would predict. The results from this analysis complement a growing literature on the effect of parties’ election tactics and help explain evidence that voters only respond to parties’ election strategies.


Additional Working Papers on Academia.edu. 


“How Many Parties? A More Sensitive Approach to Measuring the Effective Number of Parties” with Shaun Bevan.  (links to pdf on Academia.edu).

“Motivating Parliamentary Procedure: An Analysis of Party Policy Change and Legislative Behavior in France, 1978-2007.”

“Motivating Parliamentary Policy: An Analysis of Party Electoral Strategy and Policy Outcomes in France, 1978-2007.”

 “Selective Issue Emphasis and Intra-Party Division in the UK” with Matthias Haber.

 “Shifting Policy or a Shuffled Administration: The Effect of Partisan Transition on UK Statutory Instruments” with Shaun Bevan. 

“The Electoral Consequences of Government Accountability: Evidence from the United Kingdom” with Caterina Froio and Shaun Bevan.

“With Friends Like These: Party Organization and Intra-Party Watchdogs in Parliamentary Governments” with Christian Jensen. (links to pdf on SSRN)


Dissertation:  "Motivating Parliament: The Policy Consequences of Party Strategy"


Scholars rarely consider the broader policy implications of party strategies. In my dissertation, I develop a theory linking party electoral strategy to government behavior and policy. In particular, I argue that parties strategically address issues to attract previously unmotivated voters and to maintain activist support. In government, parties then construct an image of accountability on these issues with each group by using legislative procedures as policy signals. This image of accountability with voters allows the government to focus on the goals of party activists because of the activists' proximity to the party organization and leadership. I empirically test propositions on party electoral strategy using data on electoral conditions and party platforms from the CMP in 24 OECD countries 1969-2008. I focus the analysis on the French Assemblée Nationale from 1978-2007, a most difficult case, to empirically test predictions for policy signals and the government's overall policy agenda using evidence from qualitative and quantitative sources.  The empirical evidence indicates government policy tends to favor activist over voter policy goals.

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