The Leadership Capital of Italian Presidents

Recently, Italian presidents have become pivotal figures, deeply affecting the direction of the Italian political system, exercising influence far beyond their previous role as constitutional guardians. The aim of this chapter is to understand how Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, and Giorgio Napolitano have gained and spent ever greater amounts of power. The analysis is based on the LCI approach; however, the indicators used by Bennister et al. (2015) have been adapted both to the Italian context and to ‘institutionally’ constrained leaders. The LCI allows the traceability of power over time, revealing how each president has built on others’ strengths but all have encountered similar limits: while Italian presidents can spend their capital in focused areas, too overt attempts to act politically can erode their capital by damaging their perceived neutrality and moral probity.