Populism, Conspiracy, and Environmental Issue: Examining Radical Right National and European Union Electoral Discourses

Confronted with the rise of the global mobilization against climate change alongside the increasing frequency of ecological catastrophes, the salience of the environmental issue has increased, pressing Radical Right Parties (RRPs) to adapt to this new challenge. The ongoing debate on the relationship between RRPs and the environment recognizes RRPs’ shift from anti-environmentalism toward positions integrating the topic into their political discourse. However, scholars highlight their climate skepticism tendency alongside their general anti-establishment and anti-elite stance heightened by the intrinsic global response required to fight Climate Change, which has become an ideal topic for conspiracy theories. This study aims to answer the questions of whether and how RRPs conflate populism with conspiratorial appeals in their discourses tackling the environmental issue. Using a mixed-method approach and an original codebook, we analyze the Electoral Manifestos of four European RRPs in two countries (Italy and France) produced for the 2022 national elections and the 2024 European Union (EU) elections. In this way, we examine if the RRPs under scrutiny, which allow for both cross-country and within-country comparison, adapt their discourses according to the national or EU context and assess possible discursive shifts over time and in different national and electoral settings. This study contributes to the debate discussing the relationship between European RRPs and their framing of the environmental issue, stressing the discursive interconnection between populism and conspiracy theories.