Sovereignist claims are on the risein Europe, the USA, and beyond. In dealing with processes such as globalization and supranational integration, which have progressively shifted powers and competencies away from nation states, these transformations have created a fertile terrain for reactions against the sources of such insecurity, which find full expression in the sovereignist claims to 'take back control', that is to say to return to the traditional understanding of sovereignty being based upon mutually exclusive territories. These sources of insecurity and social unrest have also provided structures of political opportunity for the electoral success of populist parties. Despite its relevance for the understanding of the populist discourse, however, sovereignty has been largely under-theorised by scholars dealing with populism. Accordingly, we propose a new research agenda to study populist mobilization that focuses on the linkage between populism and sovereignism, while also encouraging further theoretical and empirical studies, focusing on both the demand side and the supply side. In particular, we suggest some crucial aspects with which the Special Issue seeks to engage, before pointing to some substantial implications that are likely to emerge from the findings of this research agenda.

Scholars of party politics have recently examined the influence of niche parties on the dynamics of party competition. In particular, drawing on the ‘Position, Salience and Ownership’ (PSO) model, it has been argued that when a new niche actor enters the political arena, it seeks to introduce a new policy dimension into political debate and simultaneously affects the competitive strategies of mainstream actors. By using manifesto data, this article analyses the impact of the Lega Nord on political discourse in Italy relating to the territorial dimension. Its findings challenge the assumptions of the PSO theory on niche-mainstream dynamics of competition. The article argues that, firstly, niche parties can mobilise on a policy dimension that has long been present on the political agenda; secondly, that niche party influence on mainstream party strategies is limited, at least when compared with the influence of other systemic variables. Nevertheless, the role of niche parties can be re-evaluated by considering a further strategic tool that parties can use to define their strategies, namely framing. In particular, the article argues that the Lega Nord has introduced a new language into political debate on the territorial dimension, which has required rival parties to react by reframing and redefining these issues differently from the past. Using an original coding scheme for the measurement of party attitudes in party manifestos, the article provides empirical grounds for arguing that a consideration of rhetoric should be included in any analysis of the competitive strategies of political parties in a two-dimensional space.

New divisions have emerged within the European Union over the handling of the recent migration crisis. While both frontline and favoured destination countries are called upon to deal with the number of migrants looking for international protection and better living conditions, no consensus has been reached yet on the quota-based mechanisms for the relocation of refugees and financial help to exposed countries proposed by the EU. Such mechanisms pose a trade-off for member states: the EU's response to the crisis offers help to countries under pressure, but it inevitably requires burden-sharing among all EU members and a limitation of their national sovereignty. Within this scenario, the article compares how public opinion and political elites in ten different EU countries view a common EU migration policy grounded on solidarity and burden-sharing. By tracing both within-and cross-national patterns of convergence (and divergence), the article shows that contextual factors influence policy preferences, with support for solidarity measures being stronger in countries with higher shares of illegal migrants and asylum seekers. While individuals' predispositions, identity and ideological orientations account for both masses' and elites' attitudes towards burden-sharing measures, subjective evaluations and beliefs concerning the severity of the crisis provide additional and alternative explanations when looking at the public's preferences. In particular, it is found that concern about the flow of migrants to Europe consolidates the impact of contextual factors, whereas the overestimation of the immigrant population fosters hostility against solidarity measures, with both effects more pronounced as the country's exposure to the crisis increases. In the light of these results, the main implication of this study is that EU institutions have to primarily address entrenched beliefs and misperceptions about immigrants to enhance public support for a joint approach to migration.

This article introduces a new dataset on regionalist actors' territorial demands and frames in Europe. The FraTerr dataset advances on existing datasets by proposing a more fine-grained understanding of regionalist actors' territorial demands, and is the first to provide comparative data on how these are framed. Methodologically, it develops an original coding scheme for the qualitative content analysis of political documents. Empirically, this approach is applied to a comparative study of regionalist parties and civil society actors in twelve European regions. A preliminary analysis of the data provides new evidence of the complexity of regionalist actors' territorial demands and the multi-dimensional nature of their framing strategies. The dataset has implications for the study of regionalist actors and issues, and for broader scholarly efforts at estimating political actors' territorial issue positions and framing strategies.

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