Sovereignty of what and for whom? The political mobilisation of sovereignty claims by the Italian Lega and Fratelli d’Italia

Abstract

This article looks at the relationship between conflicts of sovereignty and patterns of national party competition, by focusing on the electoral support for two Italian populist radical right parties (PRRPs), the Lega (the League, Lega) and Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy, FdI). Using public opinion data, the study finds that the conflicts of sovereignty represent a distinct and multidimensional set of attitudes related to voting preferences. Overall, these conflicts seem to provide some electoral advantage to the PRRPs over other competing parties in the electoral arena. However, they do not provide the same amount of gains to all PRRPs, since ideologies and party identities are important intervening factors in the relationship between conflicts of sovereignty, party mobilisation, and voting behaviour.