Turning towards climate? A qualitative analysis of climate policy preferences of European far-right parties today

Most studies understand the far-right as inherently sceptical of the authority of International Organisations (IOs), given their nativist and authoritarian core ideology. Of those studies at the nexus with climate change, many further conceptualise far-right actors as sceptical, if not denialist, towards the empiric reality of anthropogenic climate change. The far-right thus constitutes a significant challenge to effective global climate governance, where international cooperation is an absolute requirement. While this most often is the case, it clouds the view for instances and ways in which far-right actors do engage with climate policy. In this article, I argue that understanding the far-right as a homogenous bloc fundamentally opposed to global climate governance is overly narrow. Based on a qualitative content analysis of the most recent national election manifesto of thirty-two European far-right parties, I identify considerable heterogeneity of far-right climate policy preferences ranging from denial over scepticism (evidence, process, response) to outspoken endorsement of global climate policy generally, the Paris Agreement or the EU Green Deal concretely. Half of the parties analysed, seventeen of thirty-two, affirm climate science and, in addition, accept international agreements as an apt solution to mitigate the climate crisis. The second part of the paper draws on the literature on far-right environmentalism and populist foreign policy to examine potential explanations for found heterogeneity. Concretely, it will discuss a changed political opportunity structure, ideological shift, and inclusion-moderation as potential explanatory factors and probe them on the four cases of Finns' Party (FI), FPÖ (AT), PiS (PL), and Fratelli d'Italia (IT).  Overall, the article contributes to exploring far-right actors' strategies and preferences on different global issues. Underlining heterogeneity in far-right climate policy preferences, it suggests analysing policy preferences as not only ideological but also strategic choices in the far-right's international politics.