Starting All Over. The politics of protest and the struggle for democratic consolidation in Albania

Abstract

Experimenting with democracy in Albania has reached a quarter of a century, displaying that democratization is a complex project that begins with the transition but does not always end in consolidation. Therefore, novel approaches and theories that elucidate what occurred after the early transition as well as during it are considered necessary. In western democracies, one of the broadly accepted and well-practised forms of citizen engagement is protest participation. A plethora of authors deem that protest participation is a pivotal activity for the formation of a democratic public as well as an instrument for fostering democratic consolidation. Consequently, as on the one hand, we perceive an upsurge of protest activities in the western countries, hence, on the other, we see a gradual deterioration of protest participation in a Post- Communist country like Albania. Local studies on this topic are sporadic and not as much of participation trends is known of Post-Communist Albanian citizens. While, other sources of participation studies, which stems from western countries tend to construct their analyses based on broad formal questionnaires without analyzing the contrast between protest in democracies and protest in authoritarian regimes. Thus, in this article, we aim to shed light on the correlation between protest participation and state mobilization strategies. More concretely, how the state undertakes to mobilize measures to promote or prevent social movement activities? The answer to the aforesaid question will be in heart of this paper.