The Communist Dictatorship Legacy as an Obstacle to the Albanian Transition: A Quantitative and Qualitative Study Two Decades After the Regime Collapse

Albania has experienced one of the toughest communist dictatorial regimes in the world. Two decades after the fall of communism, this country is still meeting important impediments to its transition to democracy. The literature, which is still rare on Albania, mostly concerns the relations between the two major ruling parties and adopts an historical perspective. Work on the role of the of autocracy’s legacy on the relationship between the governed and the governors is 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 carry out a quantitative analysis of the population’s political representation sense based on the European Social Survey. Secondly, we perform a qualitative analysis of interviews from 15 Albanian elites. Our study suggests that one of the main obstacles the transition in Albania is still facing is due to the legacy of the authoritarian practices. For example, nearly half of the respondents of the ESS do not indicate to what political party they feel close. This behavior can be explained by the fear of reprisals as under the old regime. The other remaining half is almost evenly distributed between the two main parties. Thus, very few people declare themselves close to other parties, which indicates the absence of a pluralistic culture among the Albanian population. The Principal Component Analysis conducted out of 14 variables makes it possible to characterize the Albanian parties’ supporters’ profiles and confirms the bipolarity of the political life in Albania as well. Furthermore, the Albanian elites’ interviews clearly show the need to change the political class mentality still marked by the authoritarian practices of the past.