Albania is a unitary parliamentary constitutional republic, in which the president of Albania is the head of state and the prime minister of Albania is the head of government in a multi-party system. The executive power is exercised by the Government and the prime minister with its Cabinet. Legislative power is vested in the Parliament of Albania. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. The political system of Albania is laid out in the 1998 constitution. The Parliament adopted the current constitution on 28 November 1998. Historically Albania has had many constitutions. Initially constituted as a monarchy in 1913, Albania became briefly a republic in 1925, and then a authoritarian monarchy in 1928. In 1939 Albania was invaded by Fascist Italian forces, imposing a puppet state, and later occupied by Nazi German forces. Following the partisan liberation from the Nazis in 1944 a provisional government was formed, which by 1946 had transformed into a communist one-party state. In March 1991 democracy was restored with multi-party elections.
Sali Ram Berisha is an Albanian cardiologist and conservative politician who served as the president of Albania from 1992 to 1997 and 32nd prime minister from 2005 to 2013. Berisha serves as Chairman of the Democratic Party of Albania since 2022 and has held the position previously from 1990 to 2013. He also serves as the incumbent Leader of Opposition in the Albanian parliament.
Edi Rama is an Albanian politician, painter, writer, former university lecturer, publicist and former basketball player, who has served as the 33rd and incumbent Prime Minister of Albania since 2013 and chairman of the Socialist Party of Albania since 2005. He was appointed Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports in 1998, an office he held until 2000. First elected mayor of Tirana in 2000, he was reelected in 2003 and 2007.
The Democratic Party of Albania is a conservative political party in Albania. It has been the largest opposition party in the country since 2013.
Regular elections in Albania are mandated by the Constitution and legislation enacted by Parliament. The Parliament (Kuvendi) has 140 members elected for four-year terms. The electoral system is open list proportional representation. There are 12 multi-member constituencies corresponding to the country's 12 administrative regions. Within any constituency, parties must meet a threshold of 3 percent of votes, and pre-election coalitions must meet a threshold of 5 percent of votes.
The administrative divisions of Albania comprise 12 counties, 61 municipalities, 373 administrative units, and 2,972 villages. Since its 1912 Declaration of Independence, Albania has reorganized its domestic administrative divisions 21 times. Its internal boundaries have been enlarged or subdivided into prefectures, counties, districts, subprefectures, municipalities, communes, neighborhoods or wards, villages, and localities. The most recent changes were made in 2014 and enacted in 2015.
Local elections were held in Albania on 18 February 2007. They came after threats to boycott the elections by opposition parties because of accusations over fraudulent voting rolls; because of this, the elections were rescheduled from 20 January 2007 to the new date on very short notice, a move which was criticized by observers. The elections were seen as crucial to the future of Albanian integration with the European Union.
The Central Election Commission, commonly abbreviated in Albanian as KQZ, is a permanent, non-independent partisan statutory agency responsible for conducting parliamentary and local elections in the Republic of Albania. The commission, which overlooks the local election commissions in the country is made up of 7 party affiliated members representing the distribution of seats in the Albanian Assembly.
Arben Ristani is the former head of the Central Election Commission and currently a member of Democratic Party of Albania.
The Albanian local elections of 2011 took place on 8 May 2011 in Albania. Electors were asked to elect their municipality's mayor, municipal council members, municipal unit mayor, and municipal unit members. The elections were administrated by the Central Election Commission of Albania. Only 9 of the 384 winning candidates were women.
The Municipal Council of Tirana is the legislative body of Tirana, Albania. As of 2019 it consists of 61 members who serve a 4-year term. The members of the council are elected in local elections and the last elections were won by the Socialist Party. The member of the council elects the Chairman of the council. During the 2019–2021 Albanian political crisis members from the opposition had boycotted the election. Which resulted in a Socialist Party landslide. Around the split of the opposition Democratic Party of Albania many democrats would join Together We Win coalition.
The Social Democratic Initiative(Albanian: Nisma Socialdemokrate) also known as NISMA, is a political party in Kosovo formed by Fatmir Limaj and Jakup Krasniqi, former members of the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK).
Local elections were held in Albania on 21 June 2015. Voters elected mayors, municipal council members, municipal unit mayors and municipal unit members. The Central Election Commission of Albania was responsible for administrating the elections. This provided that the community type of komuna is abolished and at the same time the total number of communities were reduced from 373 to 61 Bashkia. Those entitled to vote elected the executive and legislative representatives of their communities, the 61 mayors (and on the other hand the total of 1595 municipal councils.
Olta Xhaçka is an Albanian politician and Socialist Party member of Parliament. She served as the minister of Europe and foreign affairs from January 2021 to September 2023. She served as Albanian minister of social welfare and youth between March 2017 to August 2017 and as minister of defense from September 2017 to December 2020.
Ogerta Manastirliu is an Albanian Socialist Party politician.She is the Minister of Education,Sport and Youth of Albania since 12 September 2023 and Member of Parliament (MP) for Tirana. On 13 March 2017, she was appointed as Minister of Health. She held the office until 21 May 2017, due to the general election.
Parliamentary elections were held in Albania on 25 April 2021. It took place during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Hashtag Initiative or simply # Initiative is a centrist anti-corruptionist political movement in Albania was founded after the student protests of 2018, by a group of young intellectuals, and is led by a young lecturer and activist, Dr. Endrit Shabani. In 2019 leaders of Nisma, Dr. Shabani, Pano Soko, Erion Kristo and Mirush Kabashi toured the country demanding a series of constitutional amendments discussed in Charter 2020. Following its success in changing the Electoral code in 2020, they registered in the Parliamentary Election of 2021, becoming as the most popular anti-establishment political group in the country. Their political Manifesto is underpinned by three pillars: 1) equal opportunities for progress 2) participatory democracy 3) national solidarity
Parliamentary elections will be held in Albania by June 2025.
Local elections were held on 14 May 2023 in Albania. Mayors and municipal council seats were being elected in each of Albania's 61 municipalities.
Shaqir Totaj is a Kosovo-Albanian conservative politician currently serving as Mayor of Prizren. Totaj was elected mayor in 2021 and belongs to the center-right PDK party.
