Trajectories of Civil Society Leaders in Italy – What Does it Take to Become a Leader?

Since the work of Robert Michels on the “oligarchical tendencies of modern democracy” many strands of elite theory have related elitism with top positions in organizations, meaning that individuals can monopolize and hoard organizational means and resources. The so-called “positional method” in elite research, which we adopt in this study, is based on a similar perspective, i.e. that resources and influence are largely tied to positions of leadership in organizations of national relevance. The aim of the paper is to analyze the composition of civil society leadership in Italy. It is based on a large scale mapping of civil society organizations and leaders at national level (3000 N) and a more in-depth study of the curricula of a smaller amount of top-leaders (ca. 40 N). The organizations have been chosen based on a set of indicators of internal and external influence and status. Internal to the organization we include participation in umbrella organizations and networks internal to civil society that can give influence of the agenda of the organizations that have the task of representing the sector (within a specific policy field or as a whole). Among external resources we include indicators such as access to public core funding but also posts in public committees and public consultation which give the organizations access to and possible influence on decision-making in policy processes. By a combination of these indicators we have identified “peak organizations” and built a database of the people holding leading key positions. We have conducted a mapping of presidents, members of governing councils and secretary generals and directors. Based on this data we analyse the composition of leadership by looking at governance structures, multiple positions and gender. Preliminary analysis suggest that larger organizations have also larger governance structures and more leaders. Leaders that hold positions in more than one national organization are few and that the share of women in leadership position is relatively low and decreases at the top of the organizational structure. The biographical data has been collected through the internet, when available, and focus only on the presidents of the most influential organizations. The data has been coded looking at dimensions such as: age, gender, education level, positions in civil society, positions in other sectors (public and private for-profit), current occupation (other than position as president), Social media activities (Twitter) and publications. The preliminary results suggest different typologies of leaders that seem to follow different career paths, including academics, activists, politicians, managers etc. These variations can partly be explained by differences in the types of the organizations and the different sectors within civil society for instance when it comes to the cooperative movement, the volunteering sector and the human rights organizations. The paper presents these results and relate them to the particular context of Italian civil society, third sector tradition and general political culture. The study is part of a large research program about civil society elites accrued out at Lund University.