Albania’s constitutional path. Legitimacy, stability, and lessons from Balkan comparisons

This paper addresses the constitutional legitimacy of Albania from the viewpoint of “stability for the right reasons.” In accordance with the theory of sovereignty across generations proposed by Alessandro Ferrara, and using the findings of critical normative constitutionalism. This paper asserts that the constitutions adopted by the post-transition states of the Western Balkans, Albania among them, were written under conditions of political emergency, political bargaining among elites, and foreign pressure that have ensured stability but fall short on the moral level of legitimacy. The result of a modus vivendi among these elites, not the result of an overlapping consensus that emerges through public justification, these constitutions show a tendency towards a permanent incongruity between the sovereignty of the people and the content of the constitutional norms. The paper focuses on Albania as its prime example. It investigates the constitutional foundation from 1998 and amendments, particularly from 2008, which ambiguated the borderline between constituent power and constituted power, thereby weakening the transgenerational features of constitutional power. The paper uses concepts formulated by Ferrara about sequential sovereignty and vertical reciprocity and shows how the people’s reinterpretation according to populist ideology diminished constitutional allegiance and ownership in Albania.