Recently, Parliament passed several amendments to the Penal Code to increase the penalties on vote buying and using mobile phones within voting booths, one of the methods used by all political parties that the secret of the ballot is revealed to those who paid for it. Nevertheless, a parliamentary debate, or even a national study about the underlying reasons for vote-buying is lacking.
This lack of knowledge about the rationale behind vote-buying behavior leads to blanket calls from internationals “not to sell your vote,” without a real understanding of the underlying social and political mechanisms.
A study from 2015 by Alida Karakushi investigating vote-buying practices during the 2013 Albanian general elections allows us to shed some light on precisely these underlying factors.
- The structure of governance in Albania: Delaying the delivery of public works until the end of the mandate: “[O]ften times is is physically apparent that a large part of public funds are invested at the end of the mandate of the party in power to use these funds as tools to buy votes.” Although not directly buying votes from citizens, one can see the hasty completion of Lungomare in Vlora and Skënderbeg Square in Tirana as precisely such tactics used by the government. A number of tax amnesties, distribution of building permits, and land ownership certificates all fit into this category.
- Wealth inequality: “While there is a lack of data on the distribution of wealth in Albania, as well as s substantial informal economy and tax evasion, many reports indicate high levels of inequality […], and therefore greater likelihood of vote buying, especially among the poor” (9). The World Economic Forum has indicated that economic inequality has increased during the Rama government in spite of economic growth.
- The electoral system: “Closed-list PR [proportional representation] system are linked to higher levels of corruption as candidates are less likely to be accountable and concerned with the reputation from the electorate” (10). Albanian elections have such a closed-list system, and thus Karakushi expects “higher levels of (party loyalty-based) corruption […] [to] be more prominent compared to an open-list system” (11). In spite of a few discussion earlier this of changing to an open-list system, none of the parties have accepted this.
Whereas the habits of national and local governance, wealth inequality, and the set-up of the electoral system all facilitate and enable vote-buying practices, it appears that he most fundamental problem is what Karakushi calls the “crisis of representation“: “In Albanian politics the level of partitocracy has transitioned to a form of personalistic system, this in turn has resulted in [a] crisis of representation. As such it has weakened the party affiliation link among voters making them less resistant in front [of] offers to sell their vote” (18):
Albania’s political parties share common features, of the lack of democracy within their parties and widespread engagement in clientelism. They lack clear ideological and policy platforms that could connect them with a loyal electorate. Their leaders stay in power even when they lose the elections (i.e. Berisha was the leader of DP for 22 years despite bad governance, leading the country towards collapse in 1997, and a great number of alleged corruption scandals). Political parties lack of accountability and rotation. Berisha was re-elected as leader of his party with 90% support, as was Rama and Meta. Albanian parties lack clear and different political platforms. This failure has led to election campaigns that are conducted through by candidates using antagonistic rhetoric toward each other; attacking each other’s character, individuality and family. This leads to candidates not being representative and consequently not connecting with the electorate. All the above factors facilitate vote-buying as political affiliation is based on very thin ties. (28–29)
The EU integration process has been an active component in this ideological decay, “as the lack of ideology within a given political class where EU and the EU integration agenda can serve as a substitute of political discourse ideologically framed” (6):
Given the non-ideological nature of Albanian politics which in turn is facilitated by the common political goals of EU membership and persistent party-switching among politicians, we may conclude that vote-buying finds more advantageous ground in Albania because people lack ideological ties to a political party – in other words, the ideological “cost” of selling a vote, is low compared to the monetary benefit that comes with it. (38)
The data gathered by Karakushi show that in the 2013 elections the PD and LSI voters were more willing to sell their vote than PS voters. She explains this difference as the “anti-incumbency” effect, which is Albanian parlance also known as rotacion, the idea that no leader should stay on longer than two mandates.
As Prime Minister Rama is currently at the end of his first mandate only, we expect this effect not to be as great as in 2013. But it remains rather questionable whether the few changes in the Penal Code are going to change the underlying, deep-rooted social and political reasons for vote-buying. Karakushi’s study seems to suggest that there is very little hope that this indeed will be the case.
