In recent decades historiography has moved decisively away from the highly personalized treatments of past events which were once favoured. Not ‘great men’ but ‘labouring men’, collective movements, political forces, social and economic development, women's and local history have been the focus of attention. Nowadays, the problem of political leadership is considered primarily in institutional terms, and the emphasis given to personality has correspondingly diminished. With very few exceptions, biography has been relegated to the level of popular narrative. To raise the question of charisma in these circumstances is almost to violate a taboo, to address an embarrassing topic unworthy of scholarly attention. With the exception of the mainly theoretical work of Luciano Cavalli on the origins and permutations of charisma, there have been no sustained attempts to examine comparatively the various cases of charismatic leadership that Italian political life has produced. Thus, partly because charisma has been abandoned as a scholarly topic, it can appear inexplicable, inaccessible to the historical methods used for the study of social and political structures.

This article seeks to clarify some issues in the study of charisma. Personal charisma is seen mainly as deriving from a relationship of trust born in a situation of crisis in which particularly forceful individuals can shape myths and values. It is not necessarily the case that such leaders are psychologically abnormal, although the masses supporting them may have regressed to a primitive psychic state. Cults may be structured or spontaneous or both; in any event, in the Italian case, the experience of Catholic domination and cultural influence has been an important factor in conditioning perceptions of extraordinary leaders. Mussolini was the only national charismatic leader; others including De Gasperi and Togliatti, were mere factional leaders. Although Craxi, Pannella, Berlusconi and Bossi stood out in a time of crisis, they only offered slightly stronger forms of leadership. Finally, Di Pietro is considered as a possible national charismatic leader of the future.

In the twentieth century Italy has witnessed an unusual variety of charismatic political figures. Given the tradition of the Risorgimento and in particular the influence of Garibaldi, several of these donned the mantle of heroism. However, in modern conditions this heroism was largely a matter of showmanship. With the rise of mass communications, political leaders were compelled to reinvent the nature and forms of their appeal to the people and also to engage with the languages of popular entertainment. It is argued that cinema heralded a profound change in the nature of charisma and that television subsequently undermined it by rendering political leaders familiar and reducing the distance necessary for stage management.

Giuseppe Garibaldi was the most enduring political hero of nineteenth-century Italy. His political image was inspired by both the romantic movement and religion and, in turn, inspired a new kind of charismatic popular politics. The first part of this article explores the sources and assesses the impact of the cult of Garibaldi during the Risorgimento. The second part examines the use made of Garibaldi's image after Italian unification and, especially, after his death. It finds that government attempts to glorify Garibaldi were relatively unsuccessful while the parallel, republican cult of Garibaldi had a considerable impact. Thus, Garibaldi's extraordinary popularity highlighted the failed official ‘nationalization’ of Italians. At the same time, support for Garibaldi points to the emergence of an alternative sense of Italian national identity

This article examines the role of charismatic leadership in the Italian anarchist and socialist movements in the period up to the biennio rosso. It focuses on the activities of Errico Malatesta (1853–1932) in 1920 after his return from exile in London. Italian anarchism may have relied upon the informal prestige of leaders such as Malatesta to keep the sinews of its organizations together, however even if Malatesta drew enormous crowds on his return, his oratory was far less demagogic than his maximalist socialist competitors. Malatesta's charisma was a product of the supercharged atmosphere of 1920 and his reputation as the ‘socialist Garibaldi’ or the ‘Lenin of Italy’. In fact his Socratic approach, demonstrated in his written and spoken interventions, was rather closer to the educationalism of Mazzini.

Mussolini was the prototype of twentieth-century charismatic dictators. His personal charisma antedated the founding of Fascism and the formal construction of collective charisma through the movement and the personality cult. First forged in the socialist movement, Mussolini's charisma assumed a new guise when he became a supporter of Italy's intervention in the First World War. He acquired an aura for the third time as Fascist leader. There were always tensions between the Duce and Fascism as the latter embodied the collective charisma of a movement. Nevertheless, Fascist ideology and culture incorporated the idea of the charismatic leader as a focus and source of authority on the model of the Catholic Church. Although it was difficult by the 1930s to distinguish between the believer's exaltation and courtly adulation, Mussolini exercised a personal charisma for many Fascists even after his death.

The modern popular cult of the Pope, which originated with the ‘disinherited’ papacy of Pius IX, reached its acme with Pius XII. Phases of intensification of this cult, which was linked to other ‘devotions’, those of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and of the Virgin Mary, served to mobilize the Catholic masses at critical junctures for the Catholic Church and in the face of what were perceived as political threats. Pius XII had to animate ‘movement’ in an age proclaimed to be one of a unique crisis of civilization. The projection of him as a charismatic figure was linked to that of Rome as a sacred centre and as the very fulcrum of world history. The Catholic activist ethos of ‘movement’ and also the presentation of the interchange between Pius XII and the Crowd had features in common with Fascist rhetorics, but ultimately the cult of the ‘victim-Pope’ represented an inversion of the crasser forms of power-imagery.

After twenty years of Fascism, political leaders were faced with the need to rediscover or invent new ways of relating to the mass public and, in the first place, to distance themselves from the type of relationship consolidated under Fascism. This article is based on an examination of the representations of De Gasperi and Togliatti in illustrated weeklies and in the satirical press, as well as their more or less hagiographical biographies. From the sources it emerges that, in the case of the Christian Democrat leader, the hypothesis that there was a personality cult is hard to sustain. By contrast, in the case of Togliatti, it does seem possible to argue that there were manifestations of a genuine cult, but these were set within the context of an institutional charisma.

The Northern League is sometimes referred to as a ‘charismatic party’. The reason for this description is the presence of a highly visible—and audible—leader: Umberto Bossi. This article aims to demonstrate that Bossi is perceived as a charismatic leader largely thanks to a constructed personality and image which is designed to symbolize the League's identity. Since it is this image, along with Bossi's organizational skills and tactical abilities, rather than his ‘charisma’ which is the basis of his authority within the League, it is erroneous to regard the League as a true example of a charismatic party.

Berlusconi became a high-profile entrepreneur in the course of the 1980s, founding his empire on construction, television and department stores. His transformation of AC Milan into a powerful force in football and popular culture set the scene for his entry into politics in 1994. Berlusconi presented himself as an outsider and a possible saviour of the nation in crisis. With his appealing image and constant repetition of his personal success story, he conveyed to the electorate a reassuring message of future prosperity. However, he lacked the visionary energy of the true charismatic leader. Instead he was a corporate politician who filled the personality vacuum left by the removal of the old élite.

Following the collapse of the ‘First Republic’, political leadership has become both more technocratic and more charismatic. Constitutional reform of a presidential type, which would reinforce this dual trend, has come near to being effected. This paper argues that organizational changes in the main political parties bring them close to being able to participate in such a system. It also argues that a plebiscitary form of constitutional democracy, namely some form of presidentialism, could reinforce the consolidation of the nascent two-bloc party system. Finally, it argues that a political system based on two competitive party blocs could be of great benefit to the Italian polity.