No dia 27 de março, João Carvalho (Cies-Iscte) será o orador do Seminário do Grupo de Investigação SPARC sobre o tema Intraparty cohesion within a new populist radical right party: the case of Chega. A partir das 14h30, na Sala 2 do ICS-ULisboa e online [ID: 975 6636 2593, pass: 124396]

Portugal’s immunity to the far right collapsed at the 2019 general elections, when Chega obtained 1.29 per cent of the vote and elected one single member of parliament. Remarkably, Chega’s electoral share climbed to 18.06 per cent of the vote in the 2024 general elections. Within this context, this article explores the levels of intra-party cohesion within Chega through the analysis of an in-depth survey with the members of this PRRP, which was conducted in 2021. Far right parties hold greater chances to experience electoral success when a strong level of party organization is observed, which prevents internal factionalism and potential internal conflicts. To examine the levels of IPC, this study employs the theory of PRRPs that conceives this party family as distinctive from its counterparts due to their intense nativism, authoritarianism and populism. This analysis suggests that Chega’s members exhibit high levels of IPC regarding anti-elitism, followed by nativism but not regarding authoritarianism. Considering that Chega is a PRRP that lacks roots in the Portuguese society and had been recently created, these intense levels of ideological cohesion cannot be considered an outcome of this PRRP’s agency.

João Carvalho is a PhD in Politics, working as an Invited Principal Investigator and an Invited Assistant Professor at the Escola de Tecnologias Digitais Aplicadas, where he teaches Contemporary Political Philosophy. His research interests encompass the politics of international migration and the far-right. His authored and co-authored research has been published in journals such as: European Journal of Political Research, Journal of Common Market Studies, Party Politics, Government and Opposition, Parliamentary Affairs, Citizenship Studies, etc.  He is currently the local coordinator of a European research project entitled MIrreM funded by the programme Horizon 2020 of the European Union.