Regulatory Agencies Under Mutating Populism in Office: Insights From Italy (1990–2025)

ABSTRACT Our paper builds a bridge between the emerging strand of research on public administration under populist rule and the established literature on delegation to independent regulatory authorities (IRAs). We focus on Italy, a critical case in Western Europe, which between 2001 and 2025 experienced six coalition governments dominated or strongly influenced by populist parties of different ideological orientations. Findings highlight that delegation to IRAs is remarkably resilient once institutionalized, even under sustained political contestation. Despite repeated populist participation in government since the early 2000s, Italian IRAs have not been subject to systematic de‐delegation or statutory retrenchment. However, the preservation of formal independence has not implied the absence of means for political control. Our analysis shows that populist governments have systematically relied on political appointments. Interestingly, political appointments have not been driven by partisan loyalty or overt politicization. Instead, the intervention of populist parties has operated along a different dimension of political control that has received less attention in delegation theory: the specialization of appointees. Populist governments have displayed a preference for appointing IRAs' board members with lower levels of domain‐specific specialization, privileging generalist profiles over specialists.