The Climate Cleavage and Protest Politics in Europe: Far-Right Party Responses to Climate Mobilization

This paper examines how far-right parties in Europe respond to climate-related protests and how these protests shape their strategic behaviour. Pro-climate mobilization in recent years has increased the visibility and urgency of climate politics. Far-right parties have become more engaged in this context, often opposing environmental regulation or portraying climate action as costly or imposed by elites. I argue that protest waves provide key opportunities for far-right actors to adjust their rhetoric and decide when and how to engage with climate debates. The theoretical approach to this climate cleavage draws on issue yield theory, niche party theory, and research on party–movement interactions. Rather than treating climate protest as a backdrop, the paper conceptualizes it as a strategic setting that can pull far-right parties into climate politics. Large or disruptive protests can provoke backlash and encourage far-right actors to stress law-and-order themes, question the legitimacy of activists, or highlight the economic burdens of climate measures. At the same time, protest creates openings for reframing. Far-right parties can use distributional concerns, rural–urban tensions, or scepticism toward ambitious climate targets to link climate issues to their core agenda. Empirically, the paper compares five European countries – Germany, France, Sweden, Italy, and Austria – where both climate protest and far-right party activity have been prominent between 2019 and 2022. These cases differ in party-system fragmentation, far-right institutional strength, and Green party influence, which allows for a comparative perspective on how context shapes far-right reactions. The analysis links protest event data with parliamentary speeches and applies text-as-data methods to identify and track far-right reactions to climate protest. Using a dictionary, structural topic modelling, and sentiment analysis, the paper examines how often far-right parties speak about protest, which frames they employ, and whether these patterns shift during periods of heightened mobilization. The paper aims to identify which types of protest matter for different far-right strategies. The findings indicate that far-right parties use climate protest in ways that reinforce their broader agenda, but that the choice of frame (economic, cultural, sovereignty-based, or law-and-order) depends on both the protest context and the national political environment. By treating protest as a trigger for far-right engagement, the paper contributes to research on climate politicisation, party responsiveness, and the role of social movements in shaping political conflict in Europe.