Mapping Albania’s Path in the 1990s: Between Authoritarianism and Democratisation

Abstract

For nearly half a century as one of the most repressive communist dictatorships of Eastern Europe, thoroughly lacking a democratic political culture, Albania is considered to have undergone a prolonged and difficult transition towards liberalisation. Despite the political transformations that occurred in the beginning of the 1990s, the democratic quality continued to be influenced by the legacies of the past. In this context, the article focuses on the trails of Albania’s political behaviour during the new pluralistic order where features of authoritarianism and intolerance were continuously manifested by the country’s leadership. Given the frequent instability atmosphere, the article analyses and assesses the key moments of the first post-communist decade by trying to demonstrate that the need to build a proper democratic political system was (un)intentionally ignored by the ruling elite in turns, consequently leading to a rather distorted picture of Albania’s transition path in the 1990s.