Resistance movements have become one of the most visible signs of advocating for social change, challenging an unjust system, and changing the status quo. This study aims to enhance our understanding of why some resistance movements choose a non-violent strategy, while others choose a violent one, by answering the research question: what explains the choice of violent or non-violent strategy in resistance movements? This thesis argues that when there is a presence of leaders or organisers, a movement becomes more cohesive, coordinated and able to provide protesters with an outlet for their emotions. In contrast, in the absence of a leader or organiser, a movement is expected to remain fragmented and the outbreak of violence being closer. Using the method of structured focused comparison, the hypothesis is tested on two protest movements in Tirana, Albania. Data was collected through interviews with protesters and archive research. The findings indicate that coordinated measures taken by leaders and organisers result in a cohesive resistance movement where there is a viable platform for protesters to phrase their grievances and claims for social change without resorting to violence.

This study investigated whether EU Progress Reports measured the Copenhagen political criteria in a biased manner compared to independent indices. At stake is the credibility of the EU accession process and whether countries in the Western Balkans will seek partnerships with the EU or state-actors beyond the European peninsula. This is a case study of how well Albania and North Macedonia fared regarding the political criteria during 2014 and 2017. Each country was ranked against one another in order to find potential discrepancies between measurements from Progress Reports and independent indices. This paper did find evidence that suggests the European Commission disfavored North Macedonia and favored Albania. However, other results were inconclusive. The finding supported accession literature that has called into question the objectivity of the EU accession process.

No description available.

La presente tesi raggruppa tre contributi che analizzano la partecipazione dei minori ad attività lavorative e scolastiche in Marocco, le variabili correlate con il benessere individuale e le differenze nei livelli salariali in Albania. I tre saggi tentano di fornire analisi empiriche basate sulla letteratura più recente e di contribuire allo sviluppo della metodologia quantitativa più comunemente utilizzata. / The present thesis is a collection of three contributions which investigate children’s schooling and labour participation in Morocco, the correlates of subjective well being and the differences in wage levels in Albania. The papers try to carry out empirical analyses of these issues based on the most recent developments in the relevant literature and to contribute to the empirical methodology commonly used.

This diploma thesis is dedicated to the needs of the piano teaching for kids from 6 to 9 years old in Albania who decide to study piano playing. This work contains a methodology that is based on professional playing starting from middle C to counter hand movement to playing directly with both music clefs, the treble and the bass one. The methodology is inspired by the world's modern methods and needs for the proper development of the child. Contains well-known, popular songs and classical pieces in a lighter version to achieve more easier and fun piano beginnings. The work is divided into five chapters, which introduce not only the musical life in Albania, but also the insufficient conditions for teaching piano. It also contains a selection of the most famous piano textbooks and albums that exist in Albania, which were used before for piano teaching and probably from that time nothing better or improved came out. And last but not least, the aim that is wanted form this work to be achieved is bringing the new ideas and innovation of my own piano methodology.

My thesis explores the roles in Albanian nation-building of the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjin, an early-twentieth century codification of northern-Albanian customary practices, and the Pajtimi i Gjaqeve, a late-twentieth century movement to conciliate blood feuds in Kosovo. To understand them, we need to know: what both were, in their own terms; their significance; and how they relate to other aspects of nation-building, and comparative examples. I draw on participant-observation fieldwork, archive work and extensive interviews. Nation-building is necessarily complicated and the Albanian case particularly so. The existence of an Albanian nation was contested by neighbouring peoples, and its characteristics, by Albanians themselves. In this complex context, the text of the Kanun, and the Pajtimi i Gjaqeve, give us good insights into Albanian understandings of the nation, and associated nation-building activities, at pivotal points in national history. While the nation-building projects of the region had many elements in common, prominent ideas of a ‘national’ legal tradition are a distinctive aspect of the Albanian case. Both the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjin and the Pajtimi i Gjaqeve need to be understood as aspects of nation-building. In the context of a crumbling Ottoman Empire, by presenting Albanian customary practices in the form of a legal code, the Albanian codifier made claims about the contents and the people from whom they came. The Kanun demonstrated the existence of a distinct people with a tradition of self-governance and mediation; and made significant contributions to the crucial process of language standardisation. In the context of the 1990s break-up of Yugoslavia, ideas of an Albanian legal tradition re-emerged in Kosovo, in the Pajtimi i Gjaqeve which presented intra-Albanian disputes as national concerns, and drew on traditional values and customary practices to effect conciliations. Subsequently, the Movement itself has become a national resource, through reference to which important ideas about the nation are expressed.

The typical tourism planning and development process can be divided into different phases: preparation (goals and objectives), research, conclusions, recommendations, implementation, monitoring & evaluation. This thesis is a part of such a development process and position itself in the research phase with the aim to create a knowledge base for future sustainable development of tourism in the world heritage city of Gjirokastra in the southern part of Albania. To create the socio-environmental map of the thesis, the authors lived two months in Gjirokastra, and with a holistic approach collected, compiled and analyzed an immense amount of data. Thus this thesis is only providing the first piece in the puzzle of the bigger project: to create a sustainable tourism development plan for the city of Gjirokastra.  Gjirokastra has special conditions for tourism since it is a World Heritage site, elected in 2005 for its rare type of Ottoman stone houses which the old bazaar/old town is dominated by. The management of a World Heritage site is both a national and a global concern involving many stakeholders exhibiting different desires and requests. World heritage management and tourism destination aspirations are only two of many other issues facing the city of Gjirokastra and the nation of Albania. Like many other post-communist countries Albania is struggling between a fast economic development and the restraints of preserving heritage: modernization vs. tradition. In Gjirokastra this is evident through the city’s division in a new and old town – each fighting for attention and resources.  The results of the thesis contains information on the tourism resources of Gjirokastra; this is described in chapters of supply research and culture-, economy- and natural resources. The current status and potential of each has been described and analyzed, data being collected through participant observation, analyzing written material and through interviews with visitors, local businesses and stakeholders.  The result describes a city facing many problems due to lack of laws and regulations creating a variety of issues both in nature, culture and economy: poverty, “brain-leakage” through migration, waste, water and pollution, unemployment, poor stakeholder collaboration, abandoned houses and traditions, bureaucracy, corruption, management issue, a lack of tourism activities and information, poor marketing and poor tourism services. Tourism development is identified as an important tool for problem solution and societal development by the stakeholders, however the municipality’s actions are focused on the citizens and by catering to them it is considered that tourists will also benefit. This approach results in interest conflicts between the stakeholders where the municipality is focusing on improving the new town and the cultural organizations on the old town. Even though many elaborate tourism strategies already exists amongst the different stakeholders no one has so far been successfully implemented due to unclear responsibilities, action time frame issues and a lack of funds. Since there is no budget for tourism the different strategies turns into wish-lists from which money is sought. The result is a few successful short term projects funded by various different European organizations. The problem of restoring houses is also the following revitalization of them. The citizens of Gjirokastra want a modern life which the old houses cannot under the world heritage regulation provide. Here is where tourism is considered to be the solution – creating an attractive living and business area that will revitalize the old town. As of now the world heritage suffers from not having a management plan, the old houses are stuck in after-communism-legal issues in many cases then abandoned or modernized. There is no waste management in Gjirokastra and the effects of this is not being researched. The observation and interview result shows that there are multiple environmental problems that now accumulate, in this study the tourist satisfaction was affected by the waste appearance. Without laws and restrictions on tourism, heritage and environment it is easy to turn the eyes away from carrying capacity and focus on short term solutions.  Tourism is in the meanwhile driven by private local entrepreneurship and innovation but without strategies, regulations or market research an imbalance in the tourism system is evident in the market and supply match. A bench marketing tradition or “copy & pasting” has so far resulted in restaurants, hotels, cafes and souvenir shops selling indistinguishable products and only a few other activities than sightseeing are being offered. In the visitor surveys from time to time it is apparent that tourists think Gjirokastra has great potential but the city’s problems are surfacing and affecting the level of satisfaction.   There is thus a pressing need for collaboration between the different stakeholders to create one sustainable tourism development plan, to define roles and responsibilities and action implementation. The natural and cultural resources and its potentials for tourism are huge but without these regulatory bodies tourism impacts might be irreversible negative. It is in this moment of time, before goals are decided upon, ideal that ideas of sustainability, in this case meaning that the environment’s, culture’s and economy’s interests are also taken in account and incorporated to shape the development process. This is highlighted throughout the thesis.

No description available.

Ce travail de doctorat sur la communication politique dans l’Albanie postcommuniste vise à étudier la place, le rôle, les effets de l’industrie de l’image et de la communication politique basée sur l’image pendant les campagnes électorales au niveau national et local durant la période de la transition politique en Albanie. Au centre des analyses effectuées, nous avons établi des thèmes, importants et cruciaux comme le rôle, la fonction et la place des images dans le cadre de la communication politique et électorale, l’évolution et la transformation de ce rôle jusqu’au point où elle a réussi à se placer au centre des stratégies de persuasion et de propagande des partis politiques et des autres acteurs politiques du pays. L’image dans le contexte de cette thèse est considéré comme un ensemble significatif de formes, de couleurs, de mouvements, qui représentent des objets réels ou imaginaires, des signes spatiaux souvent associés à des bandes sonores et des textes, articulés sur des supports variés : affiches électorales, spots publicitaires électoraux et structuration des apparitions télévisées des acteurs politiques locaux, et la « scénographie –type » des évènements organisés dans le cadre des campagnes électorales. Toujours en fonction des besoins de cette étude, nous allons appeler cet aspect de la communication politique : « communication par l’image», et par ce terme que nous emprunterons tout au long de cette thèse, nous entendrons : Communication à travers les affiches électorales, la publicité électorale ainsi que la structuration scénographique de l’apparition des acteurs politiques locaux devant les médias en période de campagne électorale. L’utilisation de l’image dans la communication politique en Albanie représente une caractéristique locale importante. Il s’agit d’une tendance qui suit les dynamiques communicationnelles en Occident. Par un comportement de mimétisme, les acteurs politiques locaux ont trouvé intéressant, efficace et rentable d’appliquer en Albanie le modèle occidental de la communication politique sous tous ses aspects et surtout en ce qui concerne la logique interne des processus qui constituent la communication politique, les infrastructures qui rendent possible la communication politique, les principes des rapports des acteurs qui produisent la communication politique dans le triangle politique -médias - images, et jusqu’à l’introduction dans le pays des modèles de communication politique au travers des compagnies occidentales, surtout américaines, qui sont consultées par les principaux partis politiques localement situés ou qui restent derrière eux dans le processus de réalisation des stratégies politiques réalisées au cours des élections.Le processus de l’adoption des instruments, techniques et des modèles qui viennent de l’Occident a été réalisé dans le contexte albanais avec une rapidité surprenante pour s’achever en l’espace d’une seule décennie. La question qui se pose ici, ce serait : Quels sont les effets de la communication à travers les images sur l’intégralité du processus politique local ? Il s’agit, en effet, d’une communication politique qui s’éloigne toujours plus d’une tradition locale fondée sur la communication politique directe, interpersonnelle, face à face, orale et fondée sur un réseau organisationnel partisan. Bref, il faudrait bien évidemment étudier les avantages de la communication par l’image par rapport à la communication politique verbale et celle organisationnelle – partisane. Cette thèse a pour objectif de décrire et d’analyser la façon dont s’est développé ce processus dans le temps, quelle était la logique interne de cette transformation, comment la société albanaise est passée d’une communication politique fondée sur la parole écrite ou sur des moyens oraux de l’expression, vers une communication orientée vers un univers d’images ou vers le virtuel. / This doctoral thesis on political communication in post-communist Albania, aims to study the national and local election campaigns carried out during the political transition in Albania after 1991. This is done so to highlight the communication through images. The analysis thus centres on the role, evolution, transformation and the use of images to enable political and electoral communication. We use images in this thesis to mean: electoral posters, electoral campaign adverts, as well as the construction of the TV appearances of the local political actors, which we will call a “typical stage”. In this thesis when interpreting this aspect of political communication we will use “image communication” to mean: communication through electoral posters, electoral campaign adverts as a set up stage for the local political leaders to play in front of the media during the election campaigns. The use of images in political communication in Albania represents a distinguished local feature, which in turn shows also the integration to what happened in Western Europe. This can be seen as a full reflection of the western political communication regarding: the internal rationale process of creating political communication, the infrastructure enabling political communication, the principles of the actors that produce political communication in the politics-media-image industry triangle as well as the importing of these models through the western companies. The latter are mostly American and they consult and stand behind the most important political parties during the political election campaigns It is worth noting that within a decade most of the western models, instruments and technical features were fully adapted in Albania. Therefore the enquiry that arises concerns the implication of extensively using image communication. The recent political communication is distancing even more to the local tradition of direct personal and oral political communication highlighting the advantage of image communication to political communication. 318 The objective of this thesis is to describe and analyse the development of this process over time, the internal rationale of this transformation and how political communication moved away from oral and direct communication to the more universal and virtual images. As regards to time, this thesis focuses on the use of virtual images during the political communication course accompanying national election campaign from 1991, the first free elections held in Albania, to 2009, the last national elections in the country. In this thesis we also include the last local elections for the Tirana Municipality starting in year 2000 to 2007. These elections are the embryo of the above mentioned phenomena that were in turn quickly adopted at the national level and thus changing the political communication landscape. The political candidate Edi Rama has constantly won these elections from year 2000 thus representing what we earlier called image communication, as he was the first to embrace and use the power of image. He modelled a new type of politician who would enter politics after working in the media. His approach was copied extensively and his success is evident as in 2005 he became the leader of the socialist party, one of the biggest parties in the country, without being a career politician neither in the country’s political scene nor within the party.

Rozbor oficiálních stanovisek EU k rozšíření EU o země Západního Balkánu (Chorvatsko, Makedonie, Černá Hora, Albánie, BiH, Srbsko, nově Kosovo) ukazuje na zdrženlivost EU k vlastnímu aktu přijetí. Přes všechna prohlášení o vůli přijmout tyto země, tato vyjádření zůstávají spíše proklamací, bez vyhlášení konkrétních dat přijetí těchto zemí do společenství. Na rozdíl od Rakouska, která jako jediná země EU deklaruje co nejrychlejší rozšíření EU o země Západního Balkánu přímo ve vládním programu jako prioritu své zahraniční politiky. Motivace Rakouska je založena na důkladné ekonomické analýze situace, kdy Rakouské investice do těchto zemí jsou nejvyšší ze všech zemí EU. Mezi Rakouskem a zeměmi Západního Balkánu a Rakouskem probíhá čilý obchod i pohyb osob, na který ostatní země EU nejsou ještě připraveny. Překážkou rychlého přijetí se tedy jeví důvody povahy nikoliv ekonomické, ale politické. Evropská unie se shoduje na roku 2008 jako na roku klíčovém v přístupových jednáních. V době publikace této práce ovšem EU nebyla s to jako celek schválit nezávislost Kosova. Minimálně tento bod zůstává otevřen k dořešení v roce 2008 spolu s dalšími body týkajícími se příštího rozšíření. EU má v této chvíli (duben 2008) jasno, že favorizovanými kandidáty pro přístup jsou Chorvatsko, Makedonie a Albánie, zatím bez konkrétního data přístupu.