ROME — With the collapse of Italy’s government this week, the country’s immediate political future rests once again in the hands of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement.

“They are back at center stage,” said Jacopo Iacoboni, the author of “The Experiment,” a critical investigation of the Five Star Movement.

It was a remarkable turn for a party that has been hemorrhaging popular support and which for the past year has been cannibalized and humiliated by its former coalition partner, the hard-right League Party. But by pulling the plug on the government this month in a bid for an early election, the League paradoxically empowered the Five Star Movement all over again.

If Five Star can strike an alliance with its sworn enemies in the Democratic Party, it could avoid the early elections that are likely to decimate its ranks and keep the League, and its surging leader Matteo Salvini, out of power for years.