“Your green vote matters!” …Doesn’t it?

In the world where international organizations and players increasingly find themselves limited in the policy responses to global problems, local governments rise to the challenge. Despite obvious financial constraints municipalities have shown to be capable of innovative solutions to global problems such as environmental pollution and climate change. Yet, while faced with similar regulatory pressure not all municipalities are equally comprehensive or ambitious in the implementation of environmental and climate adaptation policies. While previous studies have focused on the impact of vertical and horizontal coordination on local policy delivery, very little attention has been paid to the role of partisan dynamic at local level and how it impacts differences in policy implementation. This is surprising given the fact that local governments are considered to be political arenas were political parties strive for re-election and thus could tailor policy delivery to the constituency demands. This paper examines what role do green parties play in the environmental policy implementation in 12 Dutch municipalities over 2 election terms. In order to determine which political parties can be coined as green, their electoral pamphlets (N=220) are coded on five sustainability dimensions. This allows drawing conclusions on the level of ‘greenness’ in the council and the coalition. In order to determine what impact this ‘greenness’ has on policy implementation, the local government coalition agreements are coded on the level of green ambition for the policy delivery. Finally, this policy output is mirrored to the policy outcome on energy policy, circularity policy, green mobility and biodiversity indicators. This final step allows examining to what extent local party politics impact policy delivery on the ground. The findings illustrate only partial consistency with earlier political science literature. At the national level, partisanship is an important determinant in both political behaviour and policy output. At the local level, however, the partisan influence appears to be less strong.