Capabilities, Entrepreneurship, and Political Direction in the Italian National Oil Company: AGIP/ENI (1926–1971)

This paper suggests that it is not possible to reconnect directly the performance of the Italian State owned oil company neither to the institutional order which shaped the relation between the company and its shareholder nor to its formal organization. More relevant will result the interaction between the network of personal relationships to which the company’s high management took part and the specific political-economic weight that the company could achieve by its activities. The final result was the outcome of a bargain process in which a system of general formal rules were not established (or were not respected), hence the position of the company in front of the State was more variable and complex than formal statutes suggested.