Regional Outlook : Turmoil in Leadership Traps Balkans in a Vicious Cycle : The instability is making life worse in Albania, Bulgaria and Romania. The only hope is for voters to support one force long enough to let reforms work.

On the grimy streets of Bucharest, the first sprouts of capitalism can be seen in the proliferation of shops selling “luxury goods” such as juice and macaroni.

In Sofia, the Bulgarian capital that is facing another winter of candlelight and cold, curious strollers often crowd around the few private bars and restaurants to gawk at those rich enough to buy something inside.

A burgeoning resentment afflicts the people of the poor Balkan countries, where a revolving door of leaderships and triple-digit inflation have combined to make life after communism worse instead of better.

Distress over the hardships inflicted by reform has already exploded into anti-government rioting in Bulgaria, Albania and Romania, all of which ousted elected leaderships over the past year.

More unsettling is that the decline in living conditions is destined to get worse, raising the likelihood that reform in the Balkans will be paralyzed by successive bouts of second thoughts and indecision.

Bulgarians went to the polls last month to replace the government they forced out nearly a year ago. But they gave only the slightest edge to a 16-party opposition coalition, the Union of Democratic Forces, over the reformed Communists they voted for last year. No party won a majority in the 400-seat Parliament because several other opposition movements split the vote.

The outcome promises a time-consuming power struggle. It took four weeks for the divided Parliament to approve Cabinet appointments, finally endorsed Friday, and the legislators have not even begun what are expected to be lengthy debates on crucial bills to expand private enterprise and attract foreign investment.

Albania, which threw out its Communist leadership less than three months after elections this March, has been too distracted by recurring riots and food shortages to decide how to go about choosing new leaders. An interim government of opposition capitalists and Communist stalwarts continues to battle over who should direct the chaos.

Romanian politicians also remain too divided even to decide when to hold new elections. Few expect a vote before spring to replace the government of former Prime Minister Petre Roman. A headstrong reformer who plunged ahead with free-market policies despite a loud public outcry, Roman was forced to resign in late September after miners rioting against price hikes attacked his government headquarters with axes and firebombs.

The political tumult has thrown into question the region’s commitment to economic transformation and trapped the Balkans in a vicious cycle: Economic hardship sparks violence that undermines the government and deters foreign investment, worsening the economy and spawning new outbreaks of unrest.

“The reforms are in danger now. This, for sure, is a consequence of the rioting, because no one will trust us,” said Valentina Mihart, an aide to the Romanian Council of Ministers.

Romania suffers the worst black eye from the region-wide political turmoil. Rampaging miners have swept through Bucharest three times in less than two years, shattering any illusions that the country was recovering from a quarter-century of depraved leadership under Communist tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu.

Bucharest officials say the rioting caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage and scared away $750 million in foreign aid and investment.

The miners are not the only disgruntled workers in devastated Romania. The difficulty of making ends meet amid 170% inflation and declining production has turned many of Romania’s 23 million people against the leadership they chose so decisively in May, 1990.

Roman’s National Salvation Front won two-thirds of the Parliament seats and its presidential candidate, Ion Iliescu, captured 85% of that vote. By its own calculation, the front now has about 31% voter support, and opposition parties say even that share is grossly exaggerated.

Yet no other political force can claim even a third of that backing, as voter sympathies have fractured among dozens of minor parties.

A coalition of parties now in opposition is planned after new elections expected to result in a broadly split vote, said Gheorghe Radulescu, executive director of the anti-Communist Civic Alliance movement.

How effectively such a diverse coalition could govern remains open to question. Those parties so far committed to working together range from far-right agrarians and monarchists to ecologists and social democrats on the left.

Divided on most essential issues, the parties appear united mostly by their opposition to the front.

Added to the uncertainty of the next election’s outcome is concern over how Romania will fare under an interim government that will have to steer it through a difficult winter.

“A lot of time is being lost that we don’t have,” said Virginia Gheorghiu, an adviser to Reform Minister Adrian Severin, who was forced to resign along with Roman. “The first priority will now be preparation for the elections, not the reforms.”

Ironically, most opposition parties support the same difficult economic reforms that led to Roman’s demise. That suggests that whatever force emerges to rule after the next election will face similar resistance by the discontented population.

“These problems cannot be overcome in two days,” conceded Bogdan Popescu, the National Liberal Party’s executive director. But he insisted that his party and other opponents of the front could stimulate production, liquidate the residue of socialism’s command economy and make food and consumer goods available at reasonable prices within two to three years.

That opposition leaders acknowledge the long-term nature of an economic restructuring yet blame the front for failing to accomplish it sooner reflects a duplicity among Romanian politicians that is a legacy of a dictatorship that destroyed all sense of fair play.

“The truly frightening aspect of these past two years is that we are probably in for more of the same,” said one Romanian journalist, who complained that voters are too fickle to stand by their choices.

Some Romanians are worried that Iliescu, the populist president, and the interim government he named will step away from reform for fear of losing public support as they gear up for another election.

The desperate conditions in neighboring Bulgaria offer a frightening window on the future for countries engaged in a political tug of war between urban reformers and former Communists in the countryside. In Romania, Bulgaria and Albania, the economy has ground to a halt while leaders and opponents squabble over who should rule.

Bulgarians endure a nearly 700% inflation rate, the result of a 21% drop in industrial production this year. Bulgaria has also been hardest hit by Soviet energy cutbacks, forcing the country of 9 million into rationing that cuts power to homes and factories for five hours each day.

Tiny Albania, with only 3 million people, already suffers such widespread food shortages and industrial paralysis that tens of thousands have fled the country in search of a chance to survive. Conditions have become so desperate that looters have attacked the trucks of foreign charities bringing in humanitarian aid.

At the root of the problem is the Balkan peoples’ lack of experience with pluralism. Communist dictatorship was harshest in the Balkans, where autocratic leaders decided every detail of life, from what jobs students should be trained for to how many children a family should have. Suddenly saddled with the responsibility for rebuilding their societies, voters in the Balkans have zigzagged between extremes.

The political pendulum has swung from strong support for reformed Communists to hesitant backing of inexperienced opposition groups that virtually no one expects to make much of a difference.

To break the cycle of political instability undermining the economy and fueling unrest, voters in the turbulent Balkans will have to let one or the other force rule long enough to effect change.

Economist Gheorghe Marian, who manages Bucharest’s busy Levi Strauss shop that opened in June, argued that Romania is foundering because it has no promising alternative to the front, which many view as a repackaged holdover from the Communist era.

“The problem is that Romanians are very frightened. They don’t know what will happen tomorrow, and they don’t trust anyone to guide them, which is not a reasonable view,” Marian said. “Maybe what we need is not foreign credit but more trust in ourselves.”

Shaky Times in the Balkans Leadership changes are compounding the economic hardships for the people of Albania, Bulgaria and Romania. Here is where the governments stand:

ALBANIA: Population: 23 million After the country threw out Communist leaders it had elected in March, President Ramiz Alia appointed Ylli Bufi as prime minister to lead an interim government until elections. But no date has been set. BULGARIA: Populatio: 9 million President Zhelyu Zhelev, leader of the Union of Democratic Forces, a 16-party coalition, was voted in last year. In elections last month, no party won a majority in Parliament. Cabinet appointments finally were endorsed last week. ROMANIA: Population: 3 million Reformist Prime Minister Petre Roman was forced to resign in September after riots by miners protesting price hikes. President Ion Iliescu, who took over after Nicolae Ceausescu’s overthrow and execution in 1989, and his National Salvation Front are losing favor. Elections are not expected before spring.