Giuseppe Conte

Giuseppe Conte's ascent to Italy's highest office was a direct product of the country's political upheaval in the 2010s. A respected civil law professor with no prior elected experience, he was an improbable compromise candidate in 2018, chosen to lead a government cobbled together from the populist Five Star Movement and the right-wing League. Conte projected an image of sober, academic competence, often seen meticulously explaining complex decrees from behind a podium. His first government collapsed when the League withdrew, but he returned stronger, forming a new coalition between the Five Star Movement and the center-left Democratic Party. His tenure was overwhelmingly defined by crisis management, first of fractious domestic politics and then, most profoundly, of the COVID-19 pandemic. Conte imposed Europe's first nationwide lockdown, his grave, televised addresses becoming a defining feature of Italy's traumatic early experience with the virus. His presidency was a study in the challenges of technocratic leadership in a populist age, ending when his parliamentary support finally dissolved.