With Mr. Berlusconi’s return one of the few concrete possibilities, many Italians have expressed frustration at a political system that seems unable to produce new and dynamic leaders when people are already worried about low economic growth and low wages, and whether Italian politics will be able to change itself.

“We’ve tried the right, then a false left,” said Beppe Grillo, a political comic and blogger. “Where is the difference between right and left? There is none. If we go to elections with the same old law, people face a situation of no hope.”

In many ways, Mr. Prodi’s government seemed doomed from the start, a reflection of the difficulties of assembling a stable coalition in a nation with scores of small parties, each with a strong sense of self-preservation.

His coalition was composed of nine parties, ranging from conservative Christian Democrats to Communists. They agreed on little, and at times ministers demonstrated against their own government.

After the government fell briefly in February 2007, it collapsed fatally on Monday, after Mr. Prodi’s former justice minister, Clemente Mastella, withdrew the three votes he controlled in the Senate. That left Mr. Prodi without a majority there.

But rather than resign immediately, Mr. Prodi, 68, a former economics professor and European Commission president, demanded confidence votes in the two houses of Parliament. Although he won a vote in the lower chamber on Wednesday, it seemed unlikely from the start that he could ultimately survive.

So the confidence votes turned into something like a two-day wake, with Mr. Prodi  whose sober and high-minded demeanor is often compared to that of a parish priest  presiding over his own government’s funeral.