ABSTRACT
Whatever the outcome of the decade-long process by which Italy has been seeking to reform its institutions, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro's Presidency will undoubtedly go down in history as an important part of that process. The most important roles concern government formation, the dissolution of Parliament, and the making of public statements by the President. Had Scalfaro allowed a general election one year earlier, the operation of the parliamentary system could, so such an argument runs, have been entirely different. On this view, Scalfaro did much to prop up the old unstable parliamentary system. Perhaps of greater significance for the institution of the Presidency of the Republic, however, was the possibility of a retreat to normality under conditions approximating to those of a government with a clear and stable parliamentary majority. In fact, what emerges most clearly from Scalfaro's Presidency is that he faced a decision from which the institution was bound to emerge in a more constrained form.
