By ANDI BALLA
The ruling Socialist Party scored a sweeping victory in Albania’s May 14, 2023 municipal elections. SP won 54 out of 61 municipalities, including every single large city. Socialist mayors will govern more than 94 percent of the country’s population, adding to the SP domination at the national level, where it has a majority of seats in parliament and runs the government for a decade.
The election results are another sign that the country is moving from three decades of a two-party system, which at times acted like a multi-party democracy, into the realm of a dominant-party system under the rule of the SP and its leader, Prime Minister Edi Rama. A dominant party system features one political party consistently and overwhelmingly dominating the political landscape, often to the extent that it holds a near-monopoly on political power. Other parties exist and operate, but they are generally unable to challenge the dominant party’s position.
Of course, things can change in Albania, at times rapidly and unexpectedly. But current major political trends have proven stable for many years and now indicate Albania is headed for a lengthy dominant-party period to supplement SP’s current decade-old grip on power. If the latest municipal election results are any indication — the 2025 general elections’ outcome could be an SP that easily sweeps into a super-majority of more than 84 MPs in parliament, cementing its dominant-party role by having few if any constitutional checks in both the executive and legislative.
-How SP became dominant-
SP has turned dominant through a combination of grassroots support, a well-established party infrastructure, tangible results for its voters, support by important domestic and international stakeholders as well as a history of electoral success in a system designed to favor incumbents and large parties. SP’s grassroots support has its roots in both history and its ability to show results. SP is the direct descendant of the communist era single-party ruler Labor Party of Albania, changing its name and communist ideology in 1991, but inheriting a large pool of voters from sections of the population that fared better than others under the communist regime. It has further provided tangible results for voters — on one hand giving a sense of rule of law at the personal level, ending the often chaotic transition — on the other investing in improving the look and feel of Albanian cities and towns. One program alone, providing deeds for people who built homes without permits during transition, has probably garnered it more votes than any other in areas where it does not enjoy historical support. Internationally, it has also improved the country’s image by taking an active role in key international organizations.
Another key factor is that the dominant party government draws a lot of its legitimacy with voters through enjoying the support of Albania’s international strategic partners, who naturally will work with Albania’s elected leadership as the representatives of the country. With checking the right boxes on index forms and creating vote-produced stability in lieu of a vibrant democracy — what critics call “stabilocracy” — the dominant party stays in power and projects an image of a democratic rule abroad while dominating the opposition and critics at home with methods that might not often cross red lines but are nonetheless undemocratic and unfair in the spirit of democracy as rule by the people. As such, the legitimacy given to SP rule by strategic international partners of Albania needs to come with seeking stronger accountability too or it risks eroding many Albanians’ trust in European and Atlantic values.
-Opposition getting weaker-
But critics also see a darker side of how SP came to domination. They see an increasing reliance on corruption, organized crime and shady practices to fund political campaigns, steer voters and gain political favor. A long list of affairs have become public over the past decade, leading to former ministers going to prison, but not seeming to dent the party’s support at election time. These trends will also continue as SP plays a balancing act between not losing international support for its government and the need to continue to dominate the political system, critics argue, pointing to upcoming initiatives like a controversial fiscal amnesty and a golden passports program.
Much of the drive to keep SP accountable has been a product of the center-right opposition Democratic Party, SP’s main rival and balancing act in the past 30 years. DP has won a good portion of the vote in the past few elections, but it just doesn’t seem able to win them, getting weaker with each electoral loss. More recently, the party has entered a self-destructing process as different factions compete for leadership. Its unraveling in recent years is also due to some terrible political decisions, such as the abandonment of parliament and the boycott of the previous municipal elections which gave the SP the opportunity to hasten achieving its dominant party role.
-What does it mean for Albania?
The Socialist Party’s dominant rule has provided stability and continuity in governance. It has been able to effectively implement its policies and long-term development plans. In doing so, it has created a well-established class of economic winners from its policies, including a growing class of civil servants who work for the government and a small group of large and powerful companies that control most of the market and benefit from the dominant party’s development goals, in turn throwing their support behind the incumbent.
SP’s rule as a dominant party has also allowed it to pass legislation and implement reforms more swiftly, reducing political gridlock and bureaucratic hurdles. This efficiency was beneficial for implementing long-term development plans and responding to urgent national and international challenges seen during the earthquake and pandemic crises.
But all that has come at a price. Dominant party systems feature a limited choice for critical voters, undermining democratic principles and hindering the development of robust checks and balances. While laws, reforms and actions can be implemented swiftly to achieve the government’s goals in the face of little risk at the ballot box, the political and economic losers of the system — a good portion of the population — can suffer greatly and have little to no resource for accountability and ultimately give up on the system and, perhaps, the country altogether.
Concentration of power in a few hands is also a major concern as it erodes democratic values and principles, leading to authoritarian tendencies, corruption and the suppression of dissenting voices. With limited opposition influence, the dominant party may not face strong challenges to its policies or alternative proposals. This lack of competing ideas can stifle innovation, hinder policy experimentation and potentially lead to policy stagnation or blind spots.
-For a vibrant democracy, electoral system needs to change-
The SP has been good at walking the fine line between being labeled outright authoritarian and undemocratic and using unfair avenues as well as changing the rules to get an upper hand on the opposition and new political entrants before a single vote is cast in elections. For people who don’t want to live in a dominant-party system, the only choice beyond hoping for a reform and comeback of DP under better performing leadership is to seek changes in the electoral system to give a chance to voters to elect people that bring back a sense of a vibrant democracy and a true multi-party system. But even if this happens, it will take many years to implement and bear fruits.
The electoral system in Albania, as of 2008, has been designed to diminish voter control over elected representatives, effectively giving power to party leaders to decide who makes it to parliament and who can be a member of city councils. The system was so clearly undemocratic, tweaks were made in the last parliamentary elections, but they clearly did not go far enough. The bar of entry in the elections for new parties is also too high, and rules should be changed to give new entrants a leg up, rather than simply be suppressed or forced to join the dominant party if they want to have a say into how the country is run. At the end of the day, the dominant party system robs Albania of critical voices having a chance to implement proposals that differ from those of the dominant party leadership. It also robs the country’s political system from the input of people that don’t share the values, views and ideas of the dominant party.
Perhaps the worst thing for the future is that a dominant-party system gives a sense of hopelessness for people who don’t share the vision of the dominant party or who don’t belong to the group who benefits from that party’s rule. If they have no voice in the political system and no hope to join the economic winners group, they can and will choose to leave the country altogether, as many already have. This is especially the case in a country like Albania with a well-established trend of emigration. The departure of so many critical voices reinforces the stability of the dominant-party system but costs the country a huge amount of wealth, both economic and in human potential.
