Case notes

Edi Rama, Socialist Party of Albania

The only Albanian populist figure who reaches the 5% threshold since the return to multiparty parliamentary elections in 1992 is the Socialist Party of Albania (PS) leader Edi Rama. Rama is a former artist and basketball player who served as Mayor of Tirana between 2000 and 2011 and who took over the leadership of the PS in 2006 – the first leader of the party not to have been a member of the Albanian Communist Party (Kajsiu 2016, 289). Rama’s ascent to power took place among massive protests in 2011 following corruption allegations within the previous coalition government (Kajsiu 2014, 112). He was elected Prime Minster with a minority government in 2013 and re-elected with an outright majority in 2017.

According to several sources, in the years before his first national election in 2013, as Mayor Rama mastered a kind of “anti-politics” rhetoric that lent heavily on populist conceptions of ordinary people being held back by the elite (Kajsiu 2010, 245; Budini 2012). He was part of a group who, after the transition from communism, “came to define themselves against political parties and politicians” as part of an “anti-political project” (Budini 2012), which, in combination with his artist background and personalistic style, has led him to be classified by Budini as Albania’s “pop(ulist) star” (Budini 2008). In Kajsiu’s words:

Edi Rama, transformed the antipolitics discourse from an attack on politics in general into an attack against the “old politics” in the name of a new one. According to him the old politics of the past had caused much damage to Albania and Albanians, it had “poisoned the blood of Albanian society, it [had] halted her and her development.” (Kajsiu 2010, 245)

While some of this language is boilerplate in post-communist Albania, Rama seems to have taken it to a new level. He ran on an anti-corruption platform which targeted the entire state and political elite, claiming that corruption was “endemic in every cell of the state organism and in every contact of the state with the extended hand of the citizen that is asking for a service” (Kajsiu 2021, 40). Rama accused one incumbent, Ilir Meta of the Socialist Movement for Integration (SMI) of representing “everything that is rotten in Albanian Politics” (though he subsequently joined a coalition with him for the 2013 elections) (Kajsiu 2014, 113). He also called the incumbent government of Berisha Sali a “regime of thievery and extortionists”, and a “morally fallen power, rotten to its core” (Heba 2017, 11). In contrast to the political status quo, he has styled himself as a “political outsider” (Lela 2016, 44), declaring in 2009 “I am not a politician! I want to say this out loud. I am a citizen, like you, like many others” (Kajsiu 2010, 246). He has governed in a personalist way – for example having his supporters directly submit the names of corrupt officials whom he subsequently black listed, and campaigning in 2017 on a platform of “co-governance with common people” (André 2017). There is a dearth of English language sources on Rama’s rhetoric after becoming Prime Minister – however, owing to what has been written earlier we have coded him 3 on OTH_POLCLASS.

He has attacked critical media with significant vitriol (André 2017), but we do not think that this escalates to a 2 on the LIBDEMNORMS variable (= 1). We found no evidence for any rhetoric on the OTH_IMMIGRANTS, OTH_MILITARY, OTH_ECONOMIC or OTH_ETHNIC variables (each = 1). Rama has engaged in some nationalistic rhetoric against Albania’s neighbours (see Rrustemi 2020), but not to the point of identifying their hand in the people’s grievances (OTH_FOREIGN = 1).

According to most sources Rama is notably “charismatic” (Fras 2017; Triantis, n.d.), and his campaigns have turned the PS into a “one-man show” (Kalemaj 2020, 32). However, given the existing strength of the party before his rise we’ve coded it 2 on CHARISMA. Despite the fact that Rama has advocated for the irredentist cause of “Greater Albania” including ethnic Albanian Kosovo and parts of North Macedonia, and has been called a “nationalist” (Rrustemi 2020, 19, 25), he clearly belongs to the centre left tradition in Albanian politics (LRPOSITION = CL). Owing to his non-political past we’ve coded him 1 on INSIDER up to 2013 and 3 after he became Prime Minister in 2013.

References

André, Jérôme. 2017. “Co-Governance with Citizens — What Kind of Democracy under Edi Rama?” Exit - Explaining Albania (blog). October 4, 2017. https://exit.al/en/2017/10/04/edi-rama-a-new-enver-hoxha/.

Budini, Belina. 2008. Edi Rama: Politikani Pop (Ulist)-Star. UET Press.

———. 2012. “Yll i partisë, yll i mediave: Rasti i ngritjes mediatike të Edi Ramës [Edi Rama, the case of a media-driven politician in Albania: The implications for political parties].” POLIS, no. 11: 85–94.

Fras, Max. 2017. “Prime Minister Edi Rama Takes Total Control in Albania, but Who Can Keep Him in Check?” LSE Europe Politics and Policy Blog (blog). June 30, 2017. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2017/06/30/edi-rama-takes-control-albania/.

Heba, Holta. 2017. “Propaganda in the Albanian Political Communication Prio to and Following 1990.” Juornalos of Advanced Scientific Research and Innovation 11 (31): 1–15.

Kajsiu, Blendi. 2010. “Down with Politics! The Crisis of Representation in Post-Communist Albania.” East European Politics and Societies 24 (2): 229–53.

———. 2014. “The 2013 Parliamentary Elections in Albania: Lights and Shadows.” Contemporary Southeastern Europe 1 (1).

———. 2016. “Polarization without Radicalization: Political Radicalism in Albania in a Comparative Perspective.” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 24 (2): 280–99.

———. 2021. “Public or Private Corruption?: The Ideological Dimension of Anti-Corruption Discourses in Colombia, Ecuador and Albania.” Journal of Extreme Anthropology 5 (2): 27–51.

Kalemaj, Ilir. 2020. “Albania: A Taxing Journey Toward Democratic Consolidation and European Integration.” In Political History of the Balkans (1989–2018), edited by József Dúró and Egeresi Zoltán, 23–34. Budapest: Dialóg Campus.

Lela, Alfred. 2016. “Communicating in Style: The Aesthetic Politics of Edi Rama.” International Journal of Academic Research and Reflection 4 (5): 44–49.

Rrustemi, Arlinda. 2020. Far-Right Trends in South Eastern Europe: The Influences of Russia, Croatia, Serbia and Albania. JSTOR.

Triantis, Loukas. n.d. “Colour Politics and Urban Identities: A Critical Evluation of the Facade-Colouring Project, in Edi Rama’s Tirana.” https://www.academia.edu/download/35308323/Triantis_Painting_Tirana_2010.pdf.