Populism and Foreign Policy Revisionism: The Foreign Policy Perspectives of the Portuguese Populist Radical Right Party Chega

The article discusses the foreign policy perspectives of the Portuguese far-right party Chega. The article establishes a relationship between comparative populism studies, foreign policy analysis, and Critical Discourse Analysis. The article will specifically address how Chega has so far avoided eurosceptic viewpoints while retaining a populist attitude on immigration. The party's position on the Russia's invasion of Ukraine will also merit attention. Since 2022, Chega is the third most important political party in Portugal. In 2024, the party elected fifty deputies to the Portuguese national parliament, quadrupling its parliamentary representation. Despite its growing relevance in the Portuguese political system, the foreign policy perspectives of Chega have not been sufficiently explored by specialized literature. Building on the concept of intermestic politics, comparative populism studies, and on Critical Discourse Analysis, namely Wodak’s (2011) concept of discursive recontextualization, the article explores the contradictions and conundrums of Chega’s perspectives on foreign policy issues. The paper addresses the following research question: what are the discursive strategies employed by Chega to frame Portuguese foreign policy? The article discusses how the analysis of the international politics of far-right parties should consider the intermestic nature of foreign policy. The article argues that the rhetorical strategies employed by Chega to frame Portuguese foreign policy illustrate the domestication of traditional thick far-right perspectives on foreign policy. The result of such a process of domestication is the adoption of a thin foreign policy ideology, which, in the Portuguese case study, originates from the existence of a contradiction between Chega’s international audiences, namely the Patriots for Europe Group at the European Parliament, and the party’s domestic audiences. Such a contradiction became visible in the recent election for the European Parliament. Faced with a traditional pro-European Union Portuguese audience, Chega had to develop a discursive approach based on the association between domestic agenda concerns and a thin approach to far-right ideology. The article explores the consequences of the domestication of far-right ideological perspectives on the development of a mainstream far-right approach to international politics.