ABSTRACT
Although integration into international institutions was relatively easy, in internal affairs Albania moved slowly and with considerable difficulty from its hardline socialist position. Domestic politics rapidly became concentrated into a struggle between the communists’ successors in the Albanian Socialist Party and their opponents in the Democratic Party of Albania. Neither side found it easy to abandon the habits and aspirations of one-party domination. In 1997 the country suffered a total internal collapse from which it has slowly recovered, but formidable problems, above all those of crime and corruption, remain.
