by Eric J. Lyman

ROME, April 24 (Xinhua) -- Already under-influential in Europe and further afield, Italy could see its sway erode further as it struggles to form a government nearly two months after an indecisive national vote.

Paolo Gentiloni, prime minister since December 2016, has been reduced to a pure caretaker role in the wake of the March 4 vote. That election saw a record number of votes cast, with four parties ending up with the support of at least 14 percent of the electorate. But no party approached the 40-percent threshold that would have paved the way for a new government by awarding bonus seats in parliament.

Instead, party representatives have met dozens of times with no apparent progress toward any party cobbling together a majority coalition. T

"With the Gentiloni government only able to conduct the day-to-day business of government, Italy runs the risk of being marginalized in European Commission discussions and in other multilateral negotiations," Marco Angelo Gervasoni, a political systems expert with Rome's LUISS University, told Xinhua. "The reforms Italy needs to make the economy more competitive will have to wait until a new government is in power."

Gervasoni said an ineffective national government could also unbalance political power toward regional governments.

"There is a theory that says the controversy around the Catalan independence referendum only rose up because of the struggles to form a national government in Spain," Gervasoni said.

Italy is a founding member of the European Union, with the fourth biggest population in western Europe and the third biggest economy in the eurozone. It is one of the world's top five tourist destinations, and is at the geographic center of the Mediterranean Sea, one of the world's most dense commercial shipping channels.

Yet because of political instability and a tradition of poor economic growth, the country has a history of punching below its weight internationally and within the European Union (EU), where fellow founding member states Germany and France are most likely to play central roles.

But Andrea Fumagalli, an economist from Italy's University of Pavia, said in an interview that because of Italy's history of political and economic problems a protracted political struggle like the one taking place now has less of an impact than it would have had in the past.

"This kind of situation would have been much more serious 20 or 30 years ago," Fumagalli said. "But now, the economy isn't that dependent on the government. Companies just go about their business."

While Fumagalli noted that Italy was in need of reform and modernization, he thought many key economic reforms had already been passed in recent years and he warned that reform for the sake of reform was not a good strategy.

"It all depends on what the reform is," Fumagalli said. "It might be better to wait until there is a stable government representing a majority of Italians before figuring out if and how things should be changed."

One impact so far stemming from the protracted government crisis is that the first draft proposal for the country's 2019 budget had been due in early April. The deadline has now been extended into May, and could be pushed back further if the political stalemate continues.