Even though the Italian political class has been incapable of reforming the Presidency and the form of government and has simply kept on debating about institutional reforms without any result from the 80s on, the role of the president of the Republic has changed during the so-called Second Republic. From Scalfaro to Napolitano all the presidents have had a great impact on the political scene, becoming a sort of "temporary first in command" in contrast with their traditional more limited role, especially when governments and parties seemed to be particularly weak. The role of the president in Italy has become a casus sui generi among the other parliamentary systems due to the weakness both of the representative institutions (the Parliament and the Government) and of the more and more delegitimized political parties.
The literature on Italian presidents focuses mainly on systemic features having caused an increase in their power (Pasquino 2003, Tebaldi 2005, Grimaldi 2012), with apparently no room for analysis regarding their personal capacities and their reputation. Indeed, presidents have not yet been studied as real leaders, first of all because they are not elected directly by the people and secondly, because they are considered a sort of neutral power. But can they really be simply considered as Constitutional guardians when even foreign journalists recognize how deeply their actions affect government direction?
The aim of this paper is to explore how presidents have gained power to intervene effectively in the political scene, disentangling one feature mainly ignored by scholars: their leadership capital (Strangio etal. 2013).
Our hypothesis is that the presidents of the Republic in Italy has become more active not only because of exogenous factors such as the party system dissolution and the weakness of government coalitions, but also for endogenous ones: their personal, relational and reputational skills.
