Written by Adri Nurellari
Every evening, with the remote control in your hand, you change channels and you have the feeling that the TV is broken because you see the same chronicles, the same “reforms”, the same problems for decades. Drinking water still a luxury, while the Western Lowlands are flooded again, infrastructure still a promise, while the newly inaugurated road is collapsing, the electoral reform of the new government that “this time” will completely fix the system, the reform of the previous territorial reform, etc., etc., The only thing that has really changed is you because you have added a few gray hairs, maybe a few kilograms, while your friends and relatives are increasingly on “WhatsApp”, because they have physically left the country that is constantly reforming, but never fixing itself.
Like the White Rabbit in “Alice in Wonderland,” the state runs sweaty with a watch in its hand and panic on its face: “we’re late!”, “we need reform!”, “we need action!”. It opens task forces like kiosks, declares emergencies like airport announcements, and recycles crises like television seasons. It moves nonstop, produces noise, but gets nowhere. And the citizen, like Alice, runs breathlessly after this neurotic rabbit, only to discover that after all the national sprint, the landscape remains the same. This logic reminds one of Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr’s expression: “The more it changes, the more it remains the same.” (Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose). This sentence defines this government that sells movement as progress, but produces stagnation. The names of reforms, packaging, structures, and slogans change, but the fundamental problems remain untouched.
A problem is not solved, but pushed aside, opening up another crisis that shifts public attention. Thus, as soon as you start asking why the fight against informality failed, the war on energy is declared. As soon as you ask why the uninterrupted supply of electricity was not regulated, the action against illegal construction comes. As soon as illegal construction is forgotten, institutions are restructured, a new mega-minister is invented and an offensive against plastic is launched. At the center of this choreography that leads nowhere stands Prime Minister Rama, who for years has achieved a rare political skill; to create the feeling of movement without moving the country from place to place. He is not simply a politician of reforms; he is the architect of a governance model where change becomes a permanent state, while the result is postponed indefinitely for later. After more than a decade of reforms, he has built a provisional state: temporary laws, unstable institutions, personalized policies, everything is in transition, except the transition itself (because where the latter has become permanent).
During his government, reform for the sake of reform has become a kind of administrative fetishism. In this institutional theater, the government invests colossal energy in renaming structures, changing logos, and designing fresh strategies and actions that serve only as electoral bait. This creates an optical illusion of progress; a frenetic movement that, in fact, does not produce any real shift from point zero. When new packaging is sold as a historic achievement, but basic problems remain untouched, we are not dealing with development, but with camouflaged backwardness.
This situation is clearly described by Samuel Huntington, who warned that the problem of societies in transition is not the lack of reform, but the speed of change that exceeds the institutional capacity to absorb it. When change is continuous and institutions fail to consolidate, the result is instability, not modernization. Albania is a clear example of this paradox: every reform is proclaimed as a final solution, but is treated as temporary from birth. This cycle, which resembles a dog that comes around to bite its own tail, produces a state that does not learn from mistakes, because it never stops to take stock. Already restructured institutions are restructured, ministries and agencies are invented that are reinvented or dissolved within another mandate, while tasks that should be part of administrative routine are sold as “task forces” or “national actions”.
The only reform that is surviving today, and this more with “international dialysis” than with internal oxygen, is that of justice. But this very exception confirms the general rule of institutional instability. It has not survived because the government has embraced it, but because it has not yet managed to completely stifle it. The government continues to put sticks under the wheels of SPAK, sometimes through attacks on prosecutors and judges, sometimes through a lack of institutional cooperation, sometimes through double standards as soon as investigations approach the dome of power. Justice is applauded when it hits political rivals and questioned when it affects people in the government court. There are no resignations to pave the way for it, there is no culture of responsibility, there are no denunciations from institutions; there are no dismissals when serious doubts arise or there is no active cooperation with the justice bodies. There is only rhetoric of merit and selective accusations. Thus, justice reform is not consolidated, but simply resists. And a justice system that only resists, without being normalized as a daily function of the state, is not proof of the strength of institutions, but of the fact that even the most serious change in this country survives only as an anomaly and not as a standard.
But the damage is also economic. According to Douglass North, institutions are the “rules of the game” that create predictability for long-term investment; when these rules are changed frequently or applied selectively, capital is shifted from productivity to short-term adaptation. This is the dynamic that is emerging in Albania today: the fiscal system is constantly revised, selective exemptions are increased, and rules fluctuate according to political moods, pushing economic actors to avoid sectors that require long horizons (industry, manufacturing, innovation) and orient themselves towards activities with quick returns, especially construction. Concrete becomes a haven for capital not because it is the most productive sector, but because it is the sector where the rules are most flexible and the negotiable is highest. This provisional institutional architecture does not produce development, but simply replaces economic growth with systematic avoidance of institutional uncertainty and makes concrete seem a safer investment than innovation.
The researcher Francis Fukuyama would say that our problem is not the lack of reforms, but the fact that we do not have a state that functions without shouting. According to him, states do not fail because they lack laws or reforms, but because they lack the institutional capacity to implement them in a professional, sustainable and impartial manner. This is precisely where our tragedy lies; we have plenty of laws, as many strategies as you want, “actions” every week; but we do not have institutions that function on their own, without political orders. Everything is turned on from above and turned off from above. Therefore, governance lives with permanent emergency; today a task force, tomorrow reform, the day after tomorrow restructuring. Because there is no professional routine that makes the state run even without cameras. This produces a grotesque paradox where we have a state that is hyperactive in communication, but chronically weak in implementation and consolidation. Governance survives with actions and task forces, because it has not built normal mechanisms that produce order and continuity.
This frenetic movement is what sociologists call 'mimic isomorphism' and implies the adoption of modern forms of governance only to appear like a Western state in the eyes of Brussels, while the internal 'muscles' of our institutions remain atrophied. We have copied the packaging of the state, but we have forgotten the product. This spectacle may create the illusion of action, but it hides an unpleasant truth; institutions do not function normally and therefore everything ordinary is presented as heroic. It must also be said that reform is no longer an instrument of public policy, but a language of power. It serves to cover up failure, to postpone responsibility and to keep the public busy. In short, this recycling of crises is not a coincidence, but a method of governance: the next crisis serves as an alibi for not giving an account of the previous crisis and thus, the state always remains in a state of emergency and never in normality.
Maybe one day Albania will make the most radical reform of all, the reform of normality. Without actions. Without task forces. Without slogans. Simply a state that does its job every day and does not need to sell it as a heroic battle. Maybe then the citizens will meet, like Carroll's Lisa, the cat that snarls at them cynically: "We are all crazy here" who swallow this absurdity. There they will finally understand that the problem is not the speed of movement, but the lack of orientation towards a destination. Until then, the citizen will continue to change channels with the remote control, listen to the same promises and swallow reality with an ever deeper apathy. Because in Albania everything changes only so that nothing changes.
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