CHALLENGES OF LOCAL DEMOCRACY IN ALBANIA

Abstract

Local democracy is very important for every country. There are not great democracies in the world without a strong local level that has characteristics such as: accountability, responsiveness and representativeness. The present paper tries to describe local democracy in today`s challenging. Firstly we will show the different theoretical aspects of local democracy and then the study will analyze the state of local democracy in Albania. Our study aim is to show how this former communist country with a very centralized authority has progressed on the way of democracy and especially at the local level. The research will also focus on the local institutional level. It will be interesting to show the degree of autonomy they have in and trying to compare them in logic of transparency and accountability towards the citizens and the central government. Finally, this paper will summarize several EU recommendations on this topic and emphasizes the future development of local democracy in Albania.