This chapter explores the topic of public leadership within international scholarship in the field of public administration. Four perspectives on studies of public leadership are depicted: leadership for public value and in collaborative governance; decentralized and collective leadership; crises leadership; and administrative leadership. The third section discusses how Italian public administration systems seem to be mainly characterized by the third and fourth approaches to public leadership, enacted primarily through a logic of bureaucratic managerialism. Moreover, it problematizes multi-level governance relations, describing them as characterized by apparent decentralization, which is, however, intertwined with stronger centralization patterns. In the last section, this chapter argues the need to adopt place-based thinking to better understand the role and potential of public leadership, as contemporary and complex challenges require more collective and collaborative approaches.