Why can't Albania be compared to Germany?

Prime Minister Edi Rama gave the argument of Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany for four terms, in defense of his candidacy for a fourth term. Without needing to enter into comparative discussions between Merkel and Rama, we should note that there are some key differences between a country like Germany and another like Albania, which makes the comparison inappropriate.

In 2017, Turkey held a constitutional referendum where the changes transformed Turkey’s presidency into an executive presidency, with broad powers even over the justice system. In a debate on an Albanian television station, a woman covering her hair, in a kind of solidarity among Muslims, supported the controversial referendum initiative in Turkey with the argument that “even the United States is a Presidential Republic.”

The comparison between Turkey, a country that has gone from military dictatorship to parliamentary republic form several times since the founding of the state by Ataturk, who was the liberator, founder, father of the nation and the first long-term dictator, with the United States, a country that was founded as a democracy by the Founding Fathers, – despite all the objections that a normal person has towards this democracy, from the history of slavery to the non-universal right to vote, to inequality and the enormous power of the wealthy like Trump or Musk – was in fact like being slapped in the face in a completely unbelievable transgression of the laws of logic.

We are almost eight years behind and things seem to have not changed. Erdogan continues to be president, this time with executive power, while logic would have it otherwise. And Rama in Albania continues to be prime minister, in a completely different context, completely incomparable with Erdogan's Turkey and equally incomparable with Angela Merkel's Germany.

That Germany is different from Albania, I think even the Prime Minister himself agrees, who has recently suggested more than once that life in Germany is much worse than in Albania, but I do not want to deal with all sorts of changes; I want to point out the changes in the constitutional systems, changes that make comparing Erdogan's Turkey with America a logical error and the same goes for comparing Albania with Germany. And since Prime Minister Rama has for some time now been made Chairman of the Scientific Council by a law proposed by him, he should probably know that the world of science and philosophy has a term for these kinds of inappropriate comparisons or logical errors. It is called: post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Leaving for another time the explanation of what a logical fallacy of the post hoc ergo propter hoc type is, let's deal with the fundamental difference between Albania and Germany, or, if I may, between Turkey and America.

Do you know what the form of government of the Republic of Albania is called? According to the Constitution, Albania is a “Parliamentary Republic” and is also a “Unitary and Indivisible State”. Unlike Albania, Germany is a Federal Republic. And the United States is also a Federal Republic. If that young socialist, the rose petal, had received the proper constitutional, historical and legal education, he would understand what a dramatic difference in freedom and quality of life the change between the Unitary State and the Federal Republic brings. And likewise, the Albanian supporter of Erdogan eight years ago would not have rushed to make the comparison between Turkey, (also a unitary state) and the United States, in the case of the 2017 referendum.

The Federal Republic is a product of Thomas Jefferson, and we can, from an Albanian perspective, see this figure in American history as the antidote to Ndoc Rroku. I have heard things about what is meant in different parts of Albania by the term “Ndoc Rroku,” which does not make much sense to dwell on here. But in the final instance, in all likelihood, Ndoc Rroku is a completely Albanian phenomenon, while Thomas Jefferson and his lessons are what America can teach the world, including the separation of powers, the limitation and balancing of executive power by the legislature, and the supervision of both by the judiciary.

Yes!

To explain it, I can give you a banal explanation that was given some six decades ago by Milton Friedman, the champion of capitalism who, against the background of today's American administration, would probably seem like a militant of the extreme left. Let's say you don't like the way the local government or the federal state in which you live manages its sewage, you don't like it, Friedman explained. You can go to another municipality or to another state. He said that the difference between a federal republic and unitary states like the Soviet Union is that, if a citizen doesn't like something about the government of one of the American states, he can easily, and without any great emotional, economic, or social cost, go to another state. In short, if you don't like the liberalism of California, you can easily go and live in Texas. If you don't like the progressivism of New York, you can go to Utah, and if you like something in between, you have quite a few options for where to go and build your life according to your preferences.

But if all the power is in the hands of the central government and you don't like it, you have practically zero choice, you have to endure it or flee to another country.

This kind of explanation is also valid for Germany, where Angela Merkel was indeed chancellor for 16 years. While she was chancellor in the federal government, the sixteen constituent states of the Federal Republic of Germany each have their own politics, their own parliament, their own government and their own laws. Merkel was indeed chancellor but her power was limited by the Basic Law, Germany’s constitution which makes the central government responsible for areas such as Foreign Affairs, Defence, Issuance of Currency, Foreign Trade, National Infrastructure and such major things while everything else, including spatial planning, economic development, social policies, schools and so on, is in the hands of these states, or, as they are known in Germany, the Länder. If you don’t like the liberal politics of the city-state of Berlin, you can easily move to another Länder, whose policies are more in line with yours. And in any case, although the federal government was controlled for 16 years by Merkel, the state politics all had their own parties with their own parliaments and their own politics, not to mention local government, communes and municipalities, each with its own council and its own politicians.

Unlike Merkel, the Albanian prime minister is responsible for practically everything. The vast majority of the state budget is managed by him. And with the changes he made to the urban planning law, only he has the right to grant permission for any building a citizen may wish to build, if the building is larger than 250 square meters. So, if you don't like the way a municipality manages things, you don't have the option of running to another municipality, as Friedman suggests, because you have Rama in every one of them.

In short, comparing Rama to Merkel and Albania to Germany, just like comparing Erdogan's Albanian supporter between Erdogan's Turkey and Thomas Jefferson's United States, is nothing more than a post hoc ergo propter hoc.