ROME — A payment of $260,000 to the Calabrian Mafia for 4,000 votes. Procuring prostitutes for the prime minister. The theft in just one region of more than $1.3 million from public coffers. Lavish holidays and fancy dinners, all on the public dime.

Twenty years after Italy’s postwar political order collapsed in a bribery scandal, accusations are again flying in a widening array of new scandals that is further eroding Italians’ already shaky confidence in their politicians. The last round led to the rise of a former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and the question now is what the latest implosion will yield.

“We’re in a moment of transition, which creates anxiety,” said Michele Ainis, a constitutional law professor and political columnist. “Everyone sees that the phase of the Second Republic is finishing, and we don’t yet know what the Third Republic will be.”

In a nod to growing public outrage at political graft, the technocratic government of Prime Minister Mario Monti passed a bill on Wednesday that calls for creating an anticorruption watchdog and increases the penalties for extortion and abuse of office.