Abstract
The study analyzes the beginning of the Albanian student movement of December 1990 from a historical–sociological and comparative perspective. This historical interpretation of various sources (newspaper articles, activists’ memoirs, interviews, and archival documents) draws its theoretical arguments from social movement studies, student activism, and the sociology of higher education. The study offers a complex explanation of the role of the movement during the country’s democratic transition by also looking at similar cases. Considerations of the broader international and local implications, the role of the university, the academic staff, and the student organization all are accounted for. After tracing the repertoires of strategies and content of the movement to the Albanian Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, the study argues that student activism benefitted from the structural opportunities provided by changes introduced in higher education during the historical sequence of late Socialism.
Highlights
In 2018, a small student demonstration evolved into a massive protest that threatened the survival of the recently elected government
These narratives highlight the impact of the student movement on the regime transition and acknowledge it as a source of political legitimacy13
The historical sequence of late Socialism (Idrizi 2018) represents the sufficient and necessary conditions for the transformation of power relations within the elite, which caused the reversal of the early events of the cultural revolution
Summary
In 2018, a small student demonstration evolved into a massive protest that threatened the survival of the recently elected government. The above discussion on the most recent student movement illustrates the importance of historical thinking for the activists In their analysis of the legacy and the strategic choices of the December 1990 movement, Albanian researchers show similar patterns of understanding (Halili 2016; Rama 2020a). Comparative macro-structural studies on democratic transitions assume that the political elite controlled the regime change in Albania from its outset (Merkel 1999), or in alliance with the activists (Rossi and Della Porta, 2017). This view diminishes the role of the December 1990 movement. Zooming in on the institutional and interactional level from a historical perspective helps to identify the movement as a key moment of a historical constellation (Kitschelt 2003, p. 54)—a culmination of a historical alliance of the students and the intelligentsia
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