An electoral revolution swept Italy this past week in parliamentary voting that decimated the parties that had ruled Italy since 1948.

Indeed, the remnants of the Christian Democratic Party, which had monopolized political power throughout the post-war years, received only 11 percent of the vote. The Socialists, the Christian Democrats' long-time partner in power, received so few votes they did not qualify to elect anyone. The smaller parties that had long been part of the ruling coalition -- the Social Democrats, Liberals and Republicans, no longer existed.

In their place, for the first time since Mussolini, the right was poised to take power. In an odd menage a trois, a coalition composed of forces supporting the media and business tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, the anti-central-government Northern League, and the neo-fascist National Alliance won a solid majority of seats in the lower house, and came within a hair of an absolute majority in the Senate.

The chaotic state of Italian politics is reflected in the fact that of the seven parties that passed the 4 percent threshold to elect members of Parliament, not one existed under the same name in 1980. Amazingly, only one of the seven existed as recently as 1990.

The old parties in power had been so discredited by the massive corruption scandal that has swept Italy over the past two years that, if they presented themselves at all, they did so only after dissolving and reforming under different banners. This was the case of the Christian Democrats, with many of its top leaders and hundreds of its other office-holders awaiting trial. Just two months ago the remnants of the party regrouped as the Popular Party, seeking to stake out a claim to the political center.

Meanwhile, the Italian Social Movement, the neo-fascist party known for its fondness for Roman salutes and black shirts, sought to remake its image by creating a new party it dubbed the National Alliance. Its strategy was wildly successful, as it almost tripled its vote of just two years ago, receiving 13 percent of the ballots cast. More important, while in previous years no other party would risk having anything to do with the neo-fascists, they had now become a key part of the victorious coalition.

With the former parties in power discredited, the election became a contest between the coalition on the right and a coalition dominated by the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS). The PDS had itself formed only in 1991 as a result of the jettisoning by the old Italian Communist Party of what was left of its Communist identity. Italian Communists had long had the largest party outside the Communist world. In the 1970s, the Communists had come close to winning national elections, but in recent years the party had suffered a slow decline tied in part to the collapse of the Communist regimes.

In local elections throughout the country last year, the PDS won big. With the collapse of its long-time opponents, the Christian Democrats and the Socialists, the PDS was widely believed to be in a position to win these elections. This made their defeat all the more bitter.

This was the first parliamentary election in a new electoral system that many predicted would lead to a new Republic, so radical were its anticipated effects.

The old system of proportional representation, associated with the constant need for national party leaders to wheel and deal behind closed doors to form coalition governments, was thrown out. In its place, in a compromise, three-quarters of the seats were based on single-district contests in which the candidate with the most votes would win. The other quarter of the seats were to be distributed on a national, proportional basis.

The aim of the electoral reform -- the product of a grass-roots referendum movement -- was to weaken the power of the parties and make elected officials more responsive to their constituents.

Indeed, at the heart of both the corruption scandal and the popular disgust with the political system was what Italians dub the "partitocrazia." The term refers to the way the parties have exerted control over the nation's economy. A huge sector of Italy's economy -- from transportation to basic industries to banks -- is owned by the state. The major parties essentially divide up the spoils by doling out the jobs in these state enterprises.

Yet the experience of this first vote under the new system gives little reason to believe party power has been undermined. From the early dissolution of the current Parliament in January, only a month was allowed for candidates to get on the ballot. With no provision for primaries, and with the need in the new system to ensure inter-party cooperation in putting forth coalition candidates in each district, candidates continued to be selected by party machines.

Typical of the continuity, too, was the continued practice of running candidates in districts they did not live in and, indeed, running the same candidate simultaneously in various districts in different parts of the country.

How can the startling success of Mr. Berlusconi be explained? Although he had formed clubs for his "Forza Italia" ("Go Italy") movement throughout the country last fall, these were rudimentary, and he decided to run only two months ago. Moreover, he had been closely identified with Bettino Craxi, the indicted Socialist Party leader, who epitomized the corruption of the old regime.

In answering this puzzle, many observers have emphasized the genius of Mr. Berlusconi -- who owns a number of Italy's largest television stations -- in manipulating the media. This was especially important in a short election campaign in which the centrist opposition was caught in the middle of trying to regroup.

The old political organization, for which the Christian Democrats and Communists had long been so well known, had crumbled. Before an electorate desperate for change, Mr. Berlusconi's television appeals for new leadership and his promises of a million new jobs and big tax cuts resonated mightily.

Once voters realized that the center parties (the heirs of the Christian Democrats) would not win nationally, the right had a powerful rallying call. They could claim to be the only force standing in the way of a victory for the left.

The success of the ex-Communists in the previous year's local elections was used to tap into the still deep well of anti-communism. That all of the PDS leaders, including the party head, Achille Occhetto, had previously been leaders of the Communist Party nourished these fears. The presence in the left alliance of the Communist Refoundation Party, a splinter of the old Communists that proclaimed its continuing pride in communism, did not help, either.

With the ex-Christian Democrats and Socialists discredited, the PDS, which had largely escaped the corruption scandal, had the chance to present itself as an opponent of the old system of power. Yet it never did so, in part because of its commitment to the large state ownership sector and its own continued attachment to the "partitocrazia" system.

Many analysts had predicted that the new electoral law would lead Italy to a stable European system dominated by a moderately conservative party loosely linked to the Roman Catholic Church and a Social Democratic party on the left. The results this past week provide little evidence that this is in the offing,at least in the short run.

The moderate, Church-linked conservatives suffered a total rout, while on the left, only the two offspring of the Communist Party (the PDS and the Communist Refoundation) succeeded in passing the 4 percent electoral threshold to elect members of Parliament. The Greens, the anti-Mafia Rete Party, the old Socialists and assorted other groups on the left were shut out.

Jockeying for power among the winners is already in full swing. Indeed, it is hard to see how a stable coalition can be formed on the right, given the nature of the Northern League.

The league,led by mercurial Umberto Bossi, arose as a political movement aimed against the central government. Its main tenet has been opposition to a state that takes from the productive north to support what is portrayed as a parasitical south. Sometimes calling for a virtual secession of the north,more often calling for a weaker central government and increased autonomy for the north, the league is a natural enemy of the nationalistic neo-fascists.

There is great doubt that Mr. Berlusconi will be able to construct a stable government out of these fractious ingredients.

While the old political system has been radically altered, a stable new system has yet to be born. The months ahead are likely to be tumultuous in Italy, with a precariously constructed conservative government confronting a hostile opposition.

David Kertzer, professor of social science at Brown University, is the author of several books on politics and Italy, including, most recently, "Sacrificed for Honor." He is working on a book on the transformation of the Italian Communist Party.