Mind Your Manners! Populism and Incivility in the Portuguese Parliament

Abstract This article examines parliamentary incivility in Portugal in light of Chega’s parliamentary breakthrough in 2019. While “bad manners” have been theorised as central to the populist style, their empirical operation within institutional settings remains underexplored, particularly in the Portuguese context. Drawing on a mixed-methods design combining quantitative content analysis of 2,021 coded interactions, correspondence analysis, and qualitative discourse interpretation of plenary transcripts (2015–2025), the study compares incivility before and after Chega’s entry into parliament. Results show that instances of bad manners more than doubled following Chega’s arrival, with the party emerging as the principal driver of this change. Its communicative style, however, relied less on direct insult than on disruption and performative visibility. The findings advance the literature by reassessing bad manners within representative institutions and by highlighting how performative incivility reshapes democratic communication and the symbolic norms of parliamentary debate in Portugal.