How green was my government? Investigating the policy impact of the green party family

Green parties have been an important force in European politics since the 1980s. Yet they have received comparably little scholarly attention, especially in comparison to the radical right parties which rose to prominence at a similar time. In recent years scholars have begun to map out the causes of green party electoral success (Grant and Tilley, 2020), and how their agendas influence other parties (Spoon et al. 2014). This article, conversely, attempts to explore the policy impact of green parties on their core issue of environmental protection. It asks whether the presence of green parties and their electoral strength impacts how well governments in Europe perform on environmental issues, and- given there are now an increasing number of empirical cases of green participation in government- whether the inclusion of greens in governing coalitions substantively ‘greens’ government policy. The paper therefore undertakes a large-n statistical study of European states from 1990 to the present, as well as an illustrative comparative case study of the German Länder. In doing so, the paper attempts to answer questions of relevance to voters and green parties in the face of increasing impacts of climate breakdown. For voters, is a vote for a Green Party of greater utility than one cast for another party if they are aiming to substantively alter climate policy in their state? And for green parties, is participation in government ‘worth it’ given the potential electoral costs of such participation?