Building Representative Institutions in a Post-socialist Country. Electoral Reforms in Albania

From the first pluralistic electoral legislation to date Albania has made a considerable number of alterations in its election rules. The country reformed its electoral code 16 times since the downfall of communism in 1990. These changes have gone from constitutional reviews to bipartisan political agreements, but even today there persists a climate of doubt and dissatisfaction with the electoral operation. Albania still struggles with holding free and fair representation through a widely accepted democratic standard. The atmosphere of mutual distrust still characterizes the relations between political parties. This paper intends to offer a relative evaluation of two of the great Albanian electoral frameworks. The first and more important political choice in this change has affected the electoral formula, but there have been raised even more important questions about territorial and democratic representation, fairness of application of such framework in sensitive cases including media access, campaign financing, results publishing, etc. This topic becomes more interesting because of the multiple correlations between its subjects and dynamics, as the only fixed notion to date remains that the way we apply the law will be more important than its formal drafting and approval.