About

Kenneth F. Greene is a Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin, a position he has held since Fall 2026. His research primarily focuses on authoritarian regimes and partisan competition in new democracies, with a particular emphasis on Mexico. Greene's work explores various dimensions of political behavior and governance, including the effectiveness of vote-buying attempts, affective polarization, governance in rural areas, and the power of interpersonal contact to reduce prejudice. Through his research, he investigates how political dynamics operate in emerging democratic contexts and the mechanisms that influence voter behavior and political tolerance.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• Economics
• Computer Science
• Political economy
• Sociology
• Social Science
• Psychology
• Law and economics
• Social psychology
• Development economics
• Telecommunications
• Public economics
• Public relations
• Meteorology
• Geography
• Psychiatry
• Microeconomics

Selected publications

• The Machine Works: Why Turnout Buying is More Effective Than it Appears

  British Journal of Political Science · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Turnout buying is a mainstay of machine politics. Despite strong theory that selective incentives should spur turnout, meta-analyses of empirical studies show no effect, thus making machine politics seem irrational and unsustainable. I argue that the apparent failure of turnout buying is an artefact of common measurement decisions in experimental and observational research that lump together turnout buying, abstention buying, and vote-choice buying. Data generated using these compound measures include countervailing and null effects that drive estimates of the effects of each strategy toward zero. I show that machines have incentives to diversify their strategies enough to make compound measures substantially underestimate the impact of turnout buying. I propose simple alternative measurement approaches and show how they perform using new survey data and a constituency-level analysis of machine strategy in Mexico. Findings close the gap between theory and facts and reaffirm the rationality of machine politics.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Interacting as equals reduces partisan polarization in Mexico

  Nature Human Behaviour · 2024-11-11 · 6 citations

  article1st author
  PublisherDOI

• Creating Competition: Patronage Politics and the PRI’s Demise

  2024-01-01 · 4 citations

  other1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Why do dominant parties persist in power for decades and under what conditions do challengers expand enough to beat them at the polls, thus transforming these systems into fully competitive democracies with turnover? Unlike in one-party regimes, the world’s sixteen dominant party systems feature meaningful electoral competition; however, dominant parties have persisted despite enough social cleavages, permissive electoral institutions, negative retrospective evaluations of the incumbent’s performance, and sufficient ideological space for challengers to occupy. I craft a resource theory of single-dominance that focuses on the incumbent’s ability to divert public resources for partisan use. Using formal theory, I show how asymmetric resources and costs of participation force challengers to form as non-centrist and under-competitive parties. Only when these asymmetries decline do opposition parties expand. I test the theory’s predictions using survey data of party elites in Mexico. I also extend the argument to Malaysia and Italy using aggregate data. Resumen ¿Por qué los partidos dominantes se mantienen en el poder durante décadas y bajo qué condiciones los retadores se expanden lo suficiente como para derrotarlos en las urnas, transformando así estos sistemas en democracias completamente competitivas con recambio? A diferencia de los sistemas de un solo partido, los dieciséis sistemas de partido dominante del mundo muestran una competencia electoral significativa; sin embargo, los partidos dominantes han persistido a pesar de la existencia de suficientes clivajes sociales, instituciones electorales permisivas, evaluaciones retrospectivas negativas del desempeño del oficialismo y suficiente espacio ideológico para ser ocupado por los retadores. Elaboro una teoría del dominio singular basada en los recursos que se concentra en la capacidad del gobierno en funciones de desviar recursos públicos para el uso partidario. Usando teoría formal, muestro cómo los recursos asimétricos y los costos de participación fuerzan a los retadores a formar partidos no-centristas y sub-competitivos. Los partidos de oposición se expanden solamente cuando estas asimetrías declinan. Pongo a prueba las predicciones de la teoría usando datos de encuestas a elites partidarias en México. Asimismo, extiendo el argumento a Malasia e Italia usando datos agregados.

  PublisherDOI

• Interacting as Equals: How Contact Can Promote Tolerance Among Opposing Partisans

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Money Can't Buy You Love: Partisan Responses to Vote‐Buying Offers

  American Journal of Political Science · 2022 · 13 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Economics
  • Law and economics

  Abstract Current theory on vote‐buying treats benefits instrumentally as income replacement that always increase utility for the machine. But many recipients react negatively. I argue that responses to selective benefits spring from partisan bias, with opponents motivated to reject a machine that attempts to buy their vote. This new partisan response model helps explain why machines target many supporters, why many opponents remain unpersuaded by selective benefits, and why the electoral return from vote‐buying is often lower than assumed. Tests using conjoint survey experiments in Mexico show that initial supporters are 14.5 percentage points more likely to vote for the machine, whereas initial opponents are 8.5 percentage points less likely to vote for it, holding benefits constant. Mediation analysis reveals that initial supporters demonstrate gratitude for selective benefits and view the machine's actions as legitimate, whereas initial opponents take offense and see machine politics as illegitimate.

  PublisherDOI

• Replication Data for: Money Can’t Buy You Love: Partisan Responses to Vote-Buying Offers in Modern Democracy

  Harvard Dataverse · 2022-04-05

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Current theory on vote buying treats benefits instrumentally as income replacements that always increase utility for the machine. But many recipients react negatively. I argue that responses to selective benefits spring from partisan bias, with opponents motivated to reject a machine that attempts to buy their vote. This new partisan response model helps explain why machines target many supporters, why many opponents remain unpersuaded by selective benefits, and why the electoral return from vote buying is often lower than assumed. Tests using conjoint survey experiments in Mexico shows that initial opponents are nearly 9 percentage points less likely to vote for the machine, whereas initial supporters are almost 15 percentage points more likely to vote for it, holding benefits constant. Mediation analysis reveals that initial supporters demonstrate gratitude for selective benefits and view the machine’s actions as legitimate whereas initial opponents take offense and see machine politics as illegitimate.

  PublisherDOI

• Is Mexico Falling into the Authoritarian Trap?

  Journal of democracy · 2021 · 37 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Development economics

  Mexico’s 2021 midterm elections occurred amid concerns about the erosion of democratic institutions. Supporters of President López Obrador (AMLO) view his centralization of power in the executive as necessary to make government work for a marginalized majority. But the same state weaknesses that helped to propel AMLO to power constrain his responses to complex governance problems, including poverty and violent crime. This limits AMLO’s ability to consolidate a populist supermajority that can overwhelm constitutional checks and balances. State weakness and his increased reliance on the military thus pose a greater threat to Mexico’s democracy than a new electoral hegemon.

  PublisherDOI

• Dádivas durante las elecciones mexicanas de 2018

  Redalyc (Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México) · 2020-12-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  La entrega de bienes y servicios por partidos políticos en campaña electoral es endémica en la nueva democracia mexicana y esta práctica parece estar aumentando desde 2000. A partir de información recopilada en una base de datos tipo panel de ciudadanos durante la campaña electoral de 2018, ofrecemos el estudio más detallado hasta ahora disponible sobre los intentos de compra de voto en México. Tales esfuerzos fueron practicados por casi todos los partidos, involucraron a millones de ciudadanos, incluyeron una variedad de ofertas materiales e intentaron inducir a los votantes a alterar su comportamiento electoral de innumerables maneras. No obstante, la evidencia descriptiva sugiere que el cumplimiento de las metas de las maquinarias partidistas puede haber sido bajo porque muchos beneficiarios tenían una comprensión limitada de lo que se les pedía que hicieran y no temían las represalias del partido comprador de votos. Además, la evidencia circunstancial sugiere que los esfuerzos de compra de votos fueron insuficientes para anular la ventaja del candidato ganador en las elecciones presidenciales.

  Publisher

• Campaign Effects and the Elusive Swing Voter in Modern Machine Politics

  Comparative Political Studies · 2020 · 31 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  Are vote-choice buying attempts successful? Much research across the social sciences argues that political machines expertly turn citizens into clients, undermining core aspects of democracy. Using insights from behavioral theories of vote choice, I argue that standard partisan campaigns can diminish vote-choice buying’s efficiency. Machines face a targeting problem: Local brokers identify good clients using long-term markers but then campaigns shift many citizens’ vote-relevant attitudes in ways that brokers cannot detect, leading to targeting errors. Vote-choice buying remains effective on recipients who are unmoved by the campaigns, but this group is small where campaigns are influential. Tests using panel surveys from Mexico’s 2000 and 2012 elections measure vote-buying attempts with direct questions and list experiments, employ various measures of campaign influence, and rely on new and existing estimation techniques. The findings yield a more optimistic view of the quality of elections in new democracies than current literature implies.

  PublisherDOI

• Ed board

  The Journal of Arthroplasty · 2019-11-15

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Carsten Jensen

  Aarhus University

  9 shared

• Jennifer Wolak

  Michigan State University

  9 shared

• Frank J. Goodnow

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  9 shared

• Richard Boiardo

  3 shared

• Thomas J. Blumenfeld

  Stanford University

  3 shared

• Lucas Burton

  3 shared

• Richard H. Rothman

  3 shared

• John Callaghan

  3 shared