The Conservative Discovery of Albania: Drawing on a Heritage of Strong Social Codes to Modernize the Center Right

Almost five decades of the harshest communist regime in Europe isolated Albania, transforming it into a European North Korea. Therefore, the European identity of Albanians and many aspects of its society, viewpoints and similarities with other nations of the Old Continent were lost to Europeans. This paper examines how Albania’s historical social codes laid the groundwork for modern conservatism, the ideological and political struggles that defined its post-communist development, and the ongoing efforts to institutionalize conservatism in the country’s center-right movement.