[2][3][4] Maccanico began his career at the Chamber of Deputies as a referendary in June 1947 during the Constituent Assembly of Italy period.

[4] As the author of several publications in the field of public finance and institutional and political problems, Maccanico was the representative of Italy in the Brussels ad hoc committee for the preparation of the European convention for direct elections to the European Parliament, a committee of which he had been president from September–December 1975.

[3] In the 1970s and 1980s, Maccanico served for nine years as the general secretary in the office of the then Italian presidents Sandro Pertini and Francesco Cossiga.

[8] He was elected a member of the Senate of the Republic on 6 April 1992 for the Italian Republican Party and served in the post until 1994.

[2] Following the resignation of Prime Minister Lamberto Dini in January 1996, Maccanico was tasked with forming a government on 1 February 1996.

[11] To overcome the television problem, Telecom Italia presented an ambitious project for cabling Italian cities that would have allowed cable transmission, thus overcoming the reservations expressed by the Constitutional Court of Italy on over-the-air television broadcasts; the government attempt failed due to the almost complete opposition of the opposing parliamentary groups.

[9] Maccanico was elected deputy on 21 April 1996, being part of Romano Prodi's list, from the constituency of Campania 2.

[1][7] In 2014, the diaries of Maccanico edited by the historian Paolo Soddu were published under the title Con Pertini al Quirinale.