ABSTRACT
This book began with a puzzle. How was it possible that Albania during the period 1998–2005 enjoyed some of the best anti-corruption institutions but yet experienced growing levels of corruption? I tried to resolve this puzzle by showing that the dominant corruption discourse during this period served to institute and legitimize a neoliberal order in Albania in four interrelated ways. First, international and local actors by portraying corruption as the main cause of almost every Albanian failure from 1998 onwards could blame every political, economic, and social failure on corruption rather than on any of the neoliberal developmental policies that Albanian governments implemented since the collapse of the communist regime in 1991. Second, during the period 1998–2005 both international and local political actors articulated corruption primarily as abuse of public office for private gain, consigning it to the public sector. Hence, the elimination of corruption called for the reduction of the public sector and the extension of the market, through more privatization, deregulation, and opening of the local economy. Third, once corruption was articulated as the source of every Albanian failure anti-corruption stood for every possible solution from deregulation and privatization to democracy and transparency. In other words, anti-corruption became an empty signifier through which international and local actors could articulate neoliberal policies of privatization, deregulation, integration in the global market, and asymmetric relations of dependency, in harmony with democratization, public participation, and an active local civil society. Finally, international institutions articulated corruption as an internal Albanian problem, pertaining to its institutions, politicians, and society. Against a thoroughly corrupt Albania, international institutions had both the moral high ground and the necessary expertise to cure Albania of its corruption problem. In all of the above aspects, anti-corruption policies were quite successful in cementing a neoliberal order in Albania, regardless of their impact, or lack thereof, on ‘actual’ levels of corruption.
