Beyond Euroscepticism: Italian ‘Polypopulism' and the Selective renationalization of policy competence

How do populist ideology and hybrid (national and European) identities influence the preferences of Italians regarding the distribution of competencies between the State and the EU in specific policy areas? This work seeks to answer the research question by examining Italian politics, which serves as a critical case and a crucial laboratory for understanding the evolution of challenges to the European Union's (EU) legitimacy. In Italy, following the period of post-crisis hard Euroscepticism, the current political class and public opinion have shifted towards a rhetoric of soft sovereignty defence, demanding greater national autonomy without explicitly calling for an exit from the Union. This paper conceptualises this dynamic as "Antagonistic Polypopulism," a phenomenon in which adherence to distinct types of populist attitudes (empirically derived into Anti-establishment and Rousseau Populism factors from the Akkerman scale) translates into a demand for the selective renationalisation of European policymaking. Utilising ad hoc survey data collected in Italy following the 2024 European elections, the paper analyses how identification with the EU and individual populism orient preferences on the distribution of powers (policy competence) across ten key areas, including economic policies, immigration, welfare, and foreign policy. The results, obtained through multivariate models, map the friction points in European policymaking, demonstrating that "Polypopulism" acts as a catalyst for the erosion of legitimacy in specific domains, rather than as a generalised rejection of the EU. The paper offers a theoretical and empirical contribution, showing that the challenge to European governance manifests not only through institutional channels but also at the micro-level, as a conflictual and ambivalent renegotiation of political competencies, with direct implications for the EU's problem-solving capacity and democratic resilience in the face of internal challenges.