For all the noise about Albany insiders celebrating the sin-fueled fall of that would-be great reformer, Eliot Spitzer, not so much will change on Monday, when David Paterson becomes governor. New Yorkers should expect a return to the capital’s dysfunctional status quo — and after the past 15 months, there’s reason to cheer this development.

Mr. Paterson, whose politics are generally to Mr. Spitzer’s left — he formerly favored voting rights for non-citizens, and a law that would have prohibited cops from shooting to kill — brings to the governor’s office a quarter century of experience and knowledge of the capital’s culture and mechanics.

Lost in the hubbub of Mr. Spitzer’s catalog of scandals and botched initiatives — the Steamroller boast, Troopergate, the immigrant drivers license proposal, and now the sad affair of client nine — was that upon coming to office with a record-setting 69% of the vote and a broad mandate for reform, he reformed, with the partial exception of the Workers Compensation system and some small cuts in Medicaid spending, almost nothing, no matter his boast to have “done more in three weeks than any governor has done in the history of the state.” Spending continued to rise at unsustainable rates. In this economic downturn, Mr. Spitzer was the only governor in America to have proposed a budget where spending increased at a rate greater than the rate of inflation.

While this means there’s still low-hanging fruit to pluck, Mr. Paterson’s in an awfully tough starting position, coming into his first executive office — really his first office with much power at all — and likely bringing a new team with him just as the budget is being negotiated. This surely whets the appetites of the perennially gluttonous legislature, which sees a chance to bring home more bacon in spite of reclining revenue projections.

Even if Mr. Paterson wants to put his mark on the budget by controlling the state’s unsustainable spending, Joseph Bruno and the Democratic Speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, will have significant leverage over a relatively weak, unelected governor, with no clear agenda of his own. While both have offered their old colleague kind words, there’s no doubt they’ll pounce at the first sign of weakness.

Mr. Paterson, who became state senate minority leader in a 2002 coup, used that office to work to reduce the Republicans 60-year run of control of the state Senate. But Mr. Bruno may use his strong budget hand to help maintain the Republican’s imperiled control of the state Senate, which they’ve held a majority of for the past 60 years.

As upstate population loss and other trends have eroded that majority, the Republicans have maintained their edge by a combination of spending and alliances that have rendered them all but ideologically indistinguishable from Democrats. Doubtless Mr. Bruno will demand a hands-off political stance from the governor, in contrast to Mr. Spitzer’s aggressive politicking on behalf of Democrats challenging Republican Senate seats, as a condition of coming to the table at all.

Expect Mr. Silver to play his usual game, holding things up at the last minute and saying little as to why or what he wants, and then signing off on whatever it is — it rarely seems like the details are so important to him — so long as he exacts a payoff.

It’s not clear how able or willing Mr. Paterson will be to fight back, or to otherwise effect broad and politically difficult changes. While he’s been many things in his quarter-century of public life, reformer isn’t one of them. His career up until now has been a mass of contradictions: a would-be outsider who was effectively given the state Senate seat he held with little distinction for his first 15 years in office by Harlem’s ruling Gang of Five, whose number includes his father, Basil Paterson, and his father’s labor lawyers.

Even after he stepped into a larger role as minority leader in 2002, which made him the first non-white state legislative leader and, at least until Monday, the highest-ranking black elected official in the history of New York State, he still did little of policy distinction, and mostly remained mum about his agenda past winning Democratic control of the Senate.

Mr. Paterson’s ascension actually sets that goal back, since the Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, now takes over the powers of the lieutenant governor, among them the tie-breaking vote in the senate, thus effectively taking the number of seats the Democrats must win to take control to two from one.

Finally, he’s a rebel — having repeatedly run for office without the endorsement of even his own father — without a cause, as he’s never publicly articulated a broad policy agenda, nor for that matter had the power to execute one.

He’s perhaps best known policy-wise for his Shelly Silver-like way of offering positions on issues — including the death penalty and school choice — so nuanced that he’s effectively on all sides of an issue at once, which of course better suits a legislator than it does a governor.

With Mr. Spitzer’s departure, the call for reform that swept the Spitzer-Paterson ticket into office is again being sounded. Mr. Paterson has a chance to make a great impact if he’s willing to do battle with the so-called “agents of the status quo” when needed. But with no popular mandate, and with Attorney General Cuomo, who ran for Governor in 2002, looking over his shoulder, the question remains: will Governor Paterson take up the challenge?

There’s little in his background to suggest it. Still, even if he offers only cooler and more considered leadership, New York will be in better hands.

The Siegels are the authors of “The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York, and the Genius of American Life.”