by Eric J. Lyman
ROME, May 3 (Xinhua) -- If history is any indication, Italy could be headed for a period of pronounced political instability -- even by its own standards -- as the ongoing stalemate that has left the country with a caretaker government approaches the two-month mark with no end in sight.
The March 4 general election was indecisive, with four parties earning at least 14-percent of the vote, but none of them approached the 50-percent threshold needed to form a government. Since the vote, negotiations have proposed various alliances between various blocs without success.
Italy is known for political instability. But this is only the fourth time Italy has found itself in the midst of such a protracted crisis since the country's current constitution came into force in 1946, according to Lorenzo Castellani, a fellow at the Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance think tank.
The previous three times -- in 1979, 1992, and 2013 -- all ended with flawed governments.
The 1979 elections took place in the wake of the kidnapping and assignation of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro, Castellani noted, upsetting traditional party bases and resulting in a wounded government under Francesco Cossiga that could not confront rising domestic terror threats.
The vote in 1992 took place in the shadow of the widespread "mani pulite" (clean hands) government corruption scandal that ultimately abolished the established political parties, resulting in four consecutive governments lasting 15 months or less.
The situation five years ago was similar to the current one, with votes split between three main alliances that prevented any faction from taking power. Italy since then has had four consecutive unelected prime ministers, leading up to the current day.
All three of those logjams lasted at least 50 days, a little less than the current crisis.
"The Italian system is inherently instable, because of the way parliamentary seats are awarded and the fact that there are so many parties," Alessandro Campi, a professor of political thought from the University of Perugia, told Xinhua.
"Now, it's worse because of the trend in many countries, including Italy, to have three poles: the political left, the political right, and a populist party."
That has been the case in Italy since the 2013 vote, with the center-left Democratic Party, the center-right alliance between the separatist Northern League and Forza Italia -- the party created by billionaire media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi in the wake of the troubled 1992 vote, and the new anti-establishment Five-Star Movement party founded by comedian and activist Beppe Grillo.
"These crisis situations are becoming more frequent and more difficult," Castellani said in an interview. "It's hard to imagine that whatever government emerges from the current situation will be stable and effective."
The latest development in the current crisis is that Luigi di Maio -- the head of the Five-Star Movement which finished first in the March 4 vote with the support of nearly a third of the electorate -- has called for a new round of voting as early as this summer.
But Castellani, Campi, and others said new elections this year were unlikely, and even if they did take place they would probably not produce a clearer result until election rules are reformed to change the way seats in parliament are awarded to make it easier for a strong party to achieve a majority.
"These things will happen until the political system is reformed," Paolo Simoncelli, a political scientist at Rome's La Sapienza University, told Xinhua. "The problem is, you need a strong government in order to pass such a reform."
