NEWS ANALYSIS : Italy Votes Pox on Both Houses, but Now What? : Election: The long-term prospect of effective government to prepare for a role in a united Europe seems nil, experts say.

ROME —  Funereal skies and soaking rain doused Rome on Tuesday, fitting epitaph to elections that marked the demise of Italy’s postwar political Establishment and raised the prospect of an uncertain spring.

Final returns confirmed the decline of the two Cold War dragons of Italian politics and the rise of protest movements demanding new political structures in a rich but uneasy country overdue for modernization.

What the elections failed to spell out is the form that change should take or how it could be achieved--questions that may dominate the national political agenda for months to come.

The contours of the political landscape are the same as they were before the election, but the main hills have been flattened and new hillocks have appeared. The Christian Democrats, who have dominated all 50 of Italy’s postwar governments, remain the country’s largest party. The Communists, their foil all that time, remain the second-largest party, now called the Democratic Party of the Left and, officially, social democratic.

In their first encounter since the Berlin Wall fell, however, the Christian Democrats failed to take advantage of the collapse of communism. And, although split and wounded, the former Communists survived it. They lost 10% of their 1987 vote and 70 Chamber of Deputies seats, but their showing of 16.1% and 107 legislators was enough to maintain them as the major force on the political left. As usual, they made the strongest showing in the so-called “Red Belt” around Bologna, the richest part of Italy.

For the Christian Democrats, their first election without Communists to campaign against was their worst ever. The party that was once boosted to near 40% of the vote as bulwark against the “red menace” won 29.7% of the vote and 206 deputies in the 630-seat Chamber this time--a loss of 28 seats. They also lost 18 seats in the 315-seat Senate.

In general, partners in the four-party coalition headed by outgoing Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti failed to make headway. The Socialists, with 13.6% of the vote, dropped two Chamber seats, finishing with 92. The Social Democrats, with 2.7%, dropped one seat to 16, while the Liberals jumped six seats, winding up with 2.8% and 17 seats. Returns for the Senate were comparable but not identical, since Italians vote at 18 but only those over 25 vote for senators.

Mathematically, the four-party coalition could be resurrected as a new government, particularly since the opposition is splintered in a dozen directions. As a practical matter, however, Italian observers consider that impossible.

“A majority could theoretically be found, but not a working majority. The best that could be hoped for would be shifting majorities on issues, and that would depend on the credibility and authoritativeness of the prime minister,” said Gianfranco Pasquino, a political scientist and independent leftist who lost his bid for a third term in the Senate, squeezed from office by protest voters of the populist right and the hard-line left.

Some observers think the Christian Democrats will again woo the white-collar, free-market Republicans, who left the coalition last year and won 4.4% and 27 seats this time.

But the long-term prospect of an effective and resolute government to prepare Italy for the new united Europe seems nil, in the view of nearly all analysts. Neither, they say, would a weak, retread coalition be able to confront pressing national issues such as organized crime, waste, corruption, poor services and a spendthrift national administration.

These concerns are what led to the protest vote, but in turning against the Christian Democrats and the former Communists, Italians veered off in different directions.

“We lose, OK, but it’s not as though a democratic alternative has burst forth,” Andreotti sanguinely observed after the head of the Christian Democrats offered to resign.