Electoral System and its Impact on Political Parties in Albania

  • Abstract:
    Political parties are an important element of the development of a democratic system. Electoral systems affect democratic systems today. Both are elements which give the system either democratic character or authoritarian or dictatorial. In Europe and elsewhere there are known totalitarian, communist, fascist systems, etc.. In these systems there have been operating different electoral systems and always has been the authority of a single political force. Exactly even Albania in 45 years has been under a single party. By changing the system it also changed the concept for political rights and freedoms. The further electoral systems gave assistance to the appearance of more than one political party in Albania.
    In this paper we will focus on how the electoral system has contributed to political parties. In brief we will see that electoral systems that have been operating in Albania after the Independence in 1912. In parallel with the progress of the electoral system in Albania the development of political parties has progressed too. With the guarantee of human rights and political freedoms after 1991 and the most comprehensive coverage in the Constitution of the Republic of Albania in 1998 of the political parties, they are now highly developed. Through the comparison method, we will emphasize those elements that have changed the political parties since their genesis. What serves as findings is the fact that in the history of political parties in Albania they have not always had the role of the sister parties throughout Europe. Albania has gone through two stages in the communist system where only one party was known and the democratic system where political pluralism was known. From this point of view emerge even peculiarities of the political system in Albania. The value of this paper consist in the fact that it is an original work based on different historical facts that have influenced the development of political parties. Highlighting the role of political parties as an important promoter of state functioning makes it an important study. All the political game is organized by political parties themselves which with their own candidates influence lawmaking, decision-making, other acts emerging from the central government. Moreover, the different electoral systems play an important role of course.