Between the Core Executive and the Style of Leadership: What really matters? The case of the Prodi Government

In the past 25 years the Italian parliamentary executive has been going through an important transformation. While until the end of the 1990’s such transformation process developed at an increasing but slow pace, in the last five years it has shown a quick acceleration. In general, these changes led undoubtedly to a more powerful executive and a stronger Prime Minister role. To date, only a few researchers focused on this transformative process. This paper provides an overview of the Italian cabinet’s core transformation after the Berlusconi government. In particular, it will analyse the present-day Prodi executive starting from the 16th of May 2006. This paper will focus on the various power resources implemented by the Prime Minister, other ministers and departments, in order to understand how such resources allow the Italian core executive to affect political and policy outcomes. Particular attention will be paid to the characteristics of the executive formation in the Prime Minister staff, the organization of portfolio allocation and the decisional power about the chosen policies. The theoretical approach privileges the institutional and organizational analytical dimensions, though without disregarding the importance of the leadership style, that is the personal power of government executives.