A new chapter of Italy's political crisis began over the weekend when Giorgio Napolitano accepted re-election as president after the main political parties failed to select a new leader to replace him. In Italy, the role of president is largely ceremonial, but it becomes important in times of crisis. The president is in charge of helping the parties form a government and has the power to call for early elections. While the decision to re-appoint Napolitano buys Italian politicians some time, it does little to solve the country's political crisis and reveals a political class that is struggling to remain in power.

Italy's current political crisis began in November 2011, when former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi resigned under strong pressure from financial markets and the European Union. Instead of calling for new elections, Napolitano appointed former EU Commissioner Mario Monti to head a technocratic government. Napolitano's goal at the time was to avoid the uncertainty that early elections would have triggered. Italy's main parties supported Napolitano's course of action because it allowed them to approve unpopular austerity measures without being seen by voters as being directly responsible for the reforms.

This strategy proved unsuccessful. General elections in February revealed a country that is deeply fragmented, with three political parties obtaining almost identical levels of support. Moreover, the elections highlighted popular discontent with mainstream parties: The anti-system Five Star Movement received more than eight million votes. Two months after the elections, Italy still doesn't have a government — none of the parties holds enough seats in parliament to form a government by itself, and they could not agree on the formation of a coalition.

Napolitano's reappointment opens questions about Italy's political future. First, center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani announced his resignation Friday after some Democratic Party lawmakers refused to support his candidates for the presidency. This has left the party that currently holds the most seats in the Italian parliament without a leader. Second, the center-right People of Freedom party seems temporarily strengthened, since Berlusconi emerged as the only leader who managed to maintain party discipline.

The big question is the future of the Five Star Movement. After Napolitano's reappointment was announced Saturday evening, Five Star Movement leader Beppe Grillo denounced what he called a coup d'etat and promised to take a million people to the streets of Rome. This was immediately criticized by mainstream politicians, who compared Grillo's rhetoric with Benito Mussolini's March on Rome that marked his rise to power in 1922. Grillo realized he would likely lack the popular support to carry out his threat and had substantially toned down his rhetoric by Sunday, when he decided not to take part in a small protest in Italy's capital. Italians are upset with the country's traditional parties but are also afraid of the economic impact of prolonged political uncertainty. Grillo's main challenge is to find a balance between his strong criticism of the country's establishment and Italy's need to establish some degree of political stability.

Napolitano promised to begin negotiations with the country's main political parties with the aim of forming a government before the end of the week. Some technocrats and politicians who are not members of the parliament will probably be appointed to this new Cabinet, which would confirm a growing phenomenon in Italy: Mainstream parties are worried about the outcome of general elections and are looking for alternative ways of preserving their power. In Greece, it took two elections — in April and June 2012 — for mainstream political parties to form an alliance and prevent the anti-establishment SYRIZA party from accessing power. In the context of growing popular discontent, Italian political parties are fighting to remain in power and don't want to take the same risks as their Greek counterparts.

Italy's traditional political instability is becoming more acute as the economic crisis deepens. Unable to form working coalitions and afraid of going back to the polls, Italy's mainstream parties are leaning on technocratic or semi-technocratic Cabinets to ensure their survival. This prevents an escalation of the crisis in the short term, but in the long run the tactic only deepens social discontent with what increasingly appears to be a single, undifferentiated ruling class. Under Napolitano's guidance, a new Cabinet will likely be formed, but political instability will probably persist, and early elections will eventually have to be held, because the current parliament is still as divided as it was before Napolitano's re-election. In the coming months, Italian parties will pursue an agreement on a new electoral law to unlock the current political paralysis and to restore the popular confidence that has been lost. Both challenges will be extremely difficult to achieve, since neither the traditional nor the anti-establishment parties seem capable of shepherding Italy out of its political limbo.