The Italian premiership after Berlusconi: a limited legacy

Almost 30 years after the foundation of his own personal party, Forza Italia, and after having been the longest-serving prime minister of the Republic, Silvio Berlusconi is without doubt ‘the most presidential’of all Italian prime ministers. This article addresses the seven executives that followed the crisis of Silvio Berlusconi’s last govern-ment in 2011. In particular, it focuses on the management of the Presidency of the Council through the use of Prime Ministerial Decrees (DPCMs) and then explains thisprocess with two important dimensions inherited from the process of the personalization and presidentialization of politics: party leadership and populist discursive strategy. In the concluding remarks we will try to take stock of various aspects of Berlusconi’s legacy and the ways in which it was managed by his successors.