The office was first established in 1848 in Italy's predecessor state, the
Kingdom of Sardinia—although it was not mentioned in its constitution, the
Albertine Statute.
Historical Right and Historical Left , first Italian Prime Minister After the
unification of Italy and the establishment of the
kingdom, the procedure did not change. In fact, the candidate for office was appointed by the
king and presided over a very unstable political system. The first prime minister was
Camillo Benso di Cavour, who was appointed on 23 March 1861, but he died on 6 June the same year. From 1861 to 1911,
Historical Right and
Historical Left prime ministers alternatively governed the country. According to the letter of the
Statuto Albertino, the prime minister and other ministers were politically responsible to the king and legally responsible to Parliament. With time, it became all but impossible for a king to appoint a government entirely of his own choosing or keep it in office against the will of Parliament. As a result, in practice the prime minister was now both politically and legally responsible to Parliament, and had to maintain its confidence to stay in office. One of the most famous and influential prime ministers of this period was
Francesco Crispi, a left-wing patriot and statesman, the first head of the government from
Southern Italy. He led the country for six years from 1887 until 1891 and again from 1893 until 1896. Crispi was internationally famous and often mentioned along with world statesmen such as
Otto von Bismarck,
William Ewart Gladstone and
Salisbury. Originally an enlightened Italian patriot and democrat liberal, Crispi went on to become a bellicose authoritarian prime minister, ally and admirer of Bismarck. His career ended amid controversy and failure due to becoming involved in a major banking scandal and subsequently fell from power in 1896 after a devastating colonial defeat in Ethiopia. He is often seen as a precursor of the
fascist dictator
Benito Mussolini.
Giolittian Era , longest-serving democratically elected Prime Minister in Italian history, and the second-longest serving overall after Mussolini In 1892,
Giovanni Giolitti, a leftist lawyer and politician, was appointed prime minister by King
Umberto I, but after less than a year he was forced to resign and Crispi returned to power. In 1903, he was appointed again head of the government after a period of instability. Giolitti was prime minister five times between 1892 and 1921 and the second-longest serving prime minister in Italian history. Giolitti was a master in the political art of
trasformismo, the method of making a flexible, fluid centrist coalition in Parliament that sought to isolate the extremes of the left (
Historical Far Left) and the right (
Conservative Catholics) in Italian politics. Under his influence, the
Italian Liberals did not develop as a structured party. They were instead a series of informal personal groupings with no formal links to political constituencies. The period between the start of the 20th century and the start of
World War I, when he was prime minister and Minister of the Interior from 1901 to 1914 with only brief interruptions, is often called the
Giolittian Era. A
left-wing liberal, Giolitti's periods in the office were notable for the passage of a wide range of progressive social reforms which improved the living standards of ordinary Italians, together with the enactment of several policies of government intervention. Besides putting in place several
tariffs, subsidies and government projects, Giolitti nationalized the private telephone and railroad operators. Liberal proponents of
free trade criticized what they called the Giolittian System, although Giolitti himself saw the development of the national economy as essential in the production of wealth.
Fascist regime , the longest-serving prime minister of Italy and
Duce of
fascism The Italian prime minister presided over a very unstable political system as in its first sixty years of existence (1861–1921) Italy changed its head of the government 37 times. Regarding this situation, the first goal of
Benito Mussolini, who was appointed in October 1922 after the
March on Rome, was to abolish the Parliament's ability to put him to a
vote of no confidence, basing his power on the will of the King and the
National Fascist Party (PNF) alone. After destroying all political opposition through his secret police and outlawing labor strikes, Mussolini and his
Italian fascist followers consolidated their power through a series of laws that transformed the nation into a
one-party dictatorship. Within five years, he had established dictatorial authority by both legal and extraordinary means, aspiring to create a
totalitarian state. In 1925, the title of "President of the Council of Ministers" was changed into "Head of the Government, Prime Minister, Secretary of State", symbolizing the new dictatorial powers of Mussolini. The convention that the prime minister was responsible to Parliament had become so entrenched that Mussolini had to pass a law stating that he was not responsible to Parliament. Mussolini remained in power until he was deposed by King
Victor Emmanuel III in 1943 following a vote of no confidence by the
Grand Council of Fascism and replaced by Marshal
Pietro Badoglio. A few months later, Italy was invaded by
Nazi Germany as part of
Operation Achse and Mussolini was reinstated as head of a puppet State called
Italian Social Republic, while the authorities of the Kingdom were forced to relocate in
Southern Italy, which was under the control of the Allied Forces. In 1944, Badoglio resigned and
Ivanoe Bonomi was appointed to the post of prime minister, restoring the old title of president of the Council of Ministers. Bonomi was briefly succeeded by
Ferruccio Parri in 1945 and then by
Alcide De Gasperi, leader of the newly formed
Christian Democracy (DC) political party.
First decades of the Italian Republic , the first prime minister of the Italian Republic Following the
1946 Italian institutional referendum, the monarchy was abolished and De Gasperi became the first Prime Minister of the Italian Republic. The First Republic was dominated by the Christian Democracy, which was the senior party in each government coalitions from 1946 to 1994 while the opposition was led by the
Italian Communist Party (PCI), the largest one in Western Europe. In the first years of the Republic, the governments were led by De Gasperi, who is also considered a founding father of the
European Union. After the death of De Gasperi, Italy returned in a period of political instability and a lot of cabinets were formed in few decades. The second part of the 20th century was dominated by De Gasperi's protégé
Giulio Andreotti, who was appointed prime minister seven times from 1972 to 1992. From the late 1960s until the early 1980s, the country experienced the
Years of Lead, a period characterised by economic crisis (especially after the
1973 oil crisis), widespread social conflicts and terrorist massacres carried out by opposing extremist groups, with the alleged involvement of United States and Soviet intelligence. The Years of Lead culminated in the assassination of the Christian Democrat leader
Aldo Moro in 1978 and the
Bologna railway station massacre in 1980, where 85 people died. In the 1980s, for the first time since 1945, two governments were led by non-Christian Democrat prime ministers:
Giovanni Spadolini of the
Italian Republican Party (PRI) and
Bettino Craxi of the
Italian Socialist Party (PSI), although the Christian Democrats remained the main government party. During Craxi's government, the economy recovered and Italy became the world's fifth-largest industrial nation, gaining entry into the
Group of Seven; however, as a result of his spending policies, the Italian national debt skyrocketed during the Craxi era, soon passing 100% of the GDP. In the early 1990s, Italy faced significant challenges as voters—disenchanted with political paralysis, massive public debt and the extensive corruption system (known as
Tangentopoli) uncovered by the "Clean Hands" (
Mani pulite) investigation—demanded radical reforms. The scandals involved all major parties, but especially those in the government coalition: the Christian Democrats, who ruled for almost 50 years, underwent a severe crisis and eventually disbanded, splitting up into several factions. Moreover, the Communist Party was reorganised as a social-democratic force, the
Democratic Party of the Left (PDS).
Second Republic , the longest-serving post-war prime minister In the midst of the
Mani pulite investigation, which shook political parties in 1994, media magnate
Silvio Berlusconi, owner of three private TV channels, founded (Forward Italy) party and won the
1994 Italian general election, becoming one of Italy's most important political and economic figures for the next decade. Berlusconi is also the longest-serving prime minister in the history of the Italian Republic and the third-longest serving in the whole history after Mussolini and Giolitti. Ousted after a few months of government and following a loss in 1996 to
The Olive Tree, Berlusconi returned to power in 2001. Subsequently, he lost the
2006 Italian general election to
Romano Prodi and
The Union. Following the fall of the
second Prodi government, Berlusconi won the
2008 Italian general election and was elected prime minister for the third time in May 2008. In November 2011, Berlusconi lost his majority in the Chamber of Deputies and resigned. His successor,
Mario Monti, formed a new government, composed of "technicians" and supported by both centre-left and centre-right parties. In April 2013, after the
2013 Italian general election in February resulted in a
hung parliament, the
Democratic Party (PD) deputy secretary
Enrico Letta led a
grand coalition composed by the PD and the centre-right
People of Freedom (PdL), the two largest parties, and minor centrist parties, including Monti's
Civic Choice (SC). In November 2013, the PdL exited the Letta government,
de facto ending the grand coalition between the PD and the PdL. Led by
Angelino Alfano, the centre-right coalition candidate for prime minister in 2013, dissidents within the PdL established the
New Centre-Right (NCD) and joined the government majority still led by Letta. On 22 February 2014, after tensions in the PD, the party secretary
Matteo Renzi was sworn in as the new prime minister, with the support of NCD and some of the remaining parties of Letta's coalition. As part of the
Nazareno Pact with Berlusconi and his
2013-refounded Forza Italia (FI), Renzi proposed several reforms, including a
constitutional reform that would radical overhaul of the
Senate of the Republic and a new electoral law (
Italicum); however, the Nazareno Pact was called off the
2015 Italian presidential election of
Sergio Mattarella,
Italicum was ultimately found unconstitutional, and the proposed reforms were rejected in the
2016 Italian constitutional referendum in December. , the first female prime minister of Italy Following the referendum's results, Renzi resigned and his Foreign Affairs Minister
Paolo Gentiloni was appointed new prime minister, acting as a
caretaker government during the remaining one year and half of the legislature. On 1 June 2018, after the
2018 Italian general election where the
anti-establishment and populist
Five Star Movement become the largest party in Parliament,
Giuseppe Conte (an
independent politician close to the M5S) was sworn in as prime minister at the head of a
populist coalition of the M5S and the
League (Lega). After the
2019 European Parliament election in Italy, where the League exceeded the M5S,
Matteo Salvini (leader of the League) proposed a
no-confidence vote in the
first Conte government and Conte resigned. After the consultations between the President
Sergio Mattarella and the political parties, Conte was reappointed as prime minister, heading the
second Conte government, a coalition between the M5S and the PD of
Nicola Zingaretti. In January 2021, the centrist party
Italia Viva, led by Renzi, withdrew its support to Conte's government. In February 2021, President Mattarella appointed
Mario Draghi, former president of the
European Central Bank, as prime minister. His new cabinet, a
national unity government, was supported by most Italian parties, including the League, M5S, PD, and FI. In October 2022, after the centre-right coalition won the
2022 Italian general election in September, President Mattarella appointed
Giorgia Meloni of
Brothers of Italy (FdI) as Italy's first female prime minister, following the
fall of the Draghi government in July 2022 leading to a
snap election. == Living former prime ministers of Italy ==