The communist dictatorship legacy as an obstacle to the Albanian transition: a quantitative and qualitative study two decades after the regime collapse
Résumé
Albania experienced the roughest and longest dictatorial regime of the communist bloc that isolated the country for over 46 years from the rest of the world . The country still faces significant obstacles to the construction of democracy and the rule of law due to a very strong political polarization between the ruling elites and to corruption at all levels of government . The elections are an indicator of the distribution of power between the elites trying to impose themselves. The two central groups continue to be the Democratic Party (PD) on the one hand and the Socialist Party (PS) on the other hand. Nevertheless, the majority group can not really impose itself decisively. The result of these successive elections is the quasi-permanent blocking of politics. Officials are being replaced, and several state bodies are being politicized .
A week after the beginning of the Arab Spring in Tunisia, in January 2011, Tirana also became the theater of uprisings and clashes. Following the resignation of the Deputy Prime Minister Ilir Meta, accused of corruption, and guided by the opposition PS, several hundred thousand demonstrators demanded the resignation of the government. The latter one was accused of corruption, abuse of power and manipulation of the last legislative elections in 2009. The demonstration turned into a violent confrontation between the police and the protesters . The year 2012 that followed and which precedes the election of the ruling Socialist Party, is one of the strongest polarization periods of the last decade in Albania. We argue that this unstable situation is largely due to the autocratic practices inherited from the communist regime that still affect the political life in this country.
Literature on Albania, which is still rare and often adopts a historical perspective, seeks to understand and qualify the relations between the two main parties which share the power . Works on the autocracy’s legacy’s role on the relationship between the governed and the governors are almost nonexistent. Yet, we argue that the difficult transition to democracy is primarily explained by the legacy of authoritarian practices between these stakeholders.
We examine this hypothesis by a crossover study that concerns both the Albanian population and elites . Firstly, we perform a qualitative analysis on the legacy of the practices from the past among the Albanian elites based on: secondary literature and reports, and on interviews with Albanian elites. This study clearly shows the need to change the political class mentality still marked by the old regime’s authoritarian practices (I). Secondly, a quantitative analysis on the population’s feeling of political representation validates the examined hypothesis as well. This study exploits the European Social Survey and is based on a Principal Component Analysis (II).