OSLO — Injecting rare drama into a process that is supposed to be shielded from politics, members of the Norwegian Parliament have blocked the appointment of a right-leaning populist politician to the committee that awards the Nobel Peace Prize.

For nearly three decades, from 1978 to 2006, the politician, Carl I. Hagen, led the Progress Party, transforming it from a small right-wing fringe party into a significant anti-tax, anti-immigration bloc that entered the ranks of government for the first time in 2013, in a coalition with the center-right Conservative Party.

Mr. Hagen, 73, is an outlier in the consensus-based political world of Norway, an oil-rich nation that prides itself on its humanitarian record and its outsize role in international diplomacy. He has been a critic of immigration since the 1980s, long before the issue dominated the political agenda as it does now. He once argued that, like Hitler, fundamentalist Muslims planned world domination — a claim that drew formal protests from Arab diplomats. He denies climate change. And he supports President Trump, having likened him to Ronald Reagan.

But even those controversies paled in comparison to the one set off last month when the Progress Party put forward Mr. Hagen as its nominee for one of three seats on the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the prize.