The blatant phenomenon of 'election-driven legalization of informality' (original) (raw)
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Informal Economy In Albania – Its Costs in the Country Development
Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 2014
The informal economy is quite a controversial term and difficult to define precisely, but generally it summarizes in itself all unregistered aspects of economic and commercial activity in legal and fiscal system, that basically tent to avoid taxes and fees, the system of social security and health contributions, the mandatory norms of product safety, of their reliability as well as their business social responsibility. The loss that the state and society have suffered from the informal economy is large enough, this seen in different ways. Non-collection of taxes and contributions automatically led to an impoverishment of the state budget and lack of investment in public services. A social responsibility has continuously accompanied and threatened the government performance, and it is especially more vulnerable to the level of pensions and salaries, as well as in the quality of public services and investments. Actually, the debate on the informal economy, on the means and ways to "dominate" such economy, being unable to finally reduce it, is in a critical stage, even in developed countries. According to official statistics, the informal economy fluctuates in levels 5-20 % of GDP in different EU countries. Features of this "type" of economy is that it generally reaches the highest values in developing countries, where economic and social development, culture and respect for the rule of law , are low. The level of informal economy in Albania (actually, according to official statistics accounts for about 33 percent of GDP1) needs to be treated as a real threat to the economic stability of our country. Legal stability (recently there has been a frequent change of laws) is considered Important in reducing the informal economy. The fight against informality requires an integrated legislative package of measures aiming at the improvement, control and the rigorous implementation of the legislation requirements, the promotion of initiatives for a self-breakaway to from informal economy and creation of tangible opportunities to integrate liberated capital in priority development programs, in order not to repeat the negative phenomena that are still holding hostage the Albanian economy.
Opening to future scenarios for the urbanization and integration of informal settlements in Albania
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The fall of the old regime, the civil war of 1997, the war in Kosovo, and finally the process of joining the European Union, have generated a strong dynamic of social, cultural and economic change ever seen so far if we think about the Ottoman occupation or the Communist Regime. This fast political process, both internally and externally, has left little space for an academic reflection on social/territorial impact and has distorted the Political orientation. Beside these fast process problems related to informality has been concentrated in the suburbs of the main Albanian cities - generating territorial and administrative problems. The policy to legalize, urbanize and integrate the informal settlements is a program approved by un large number of laws and articles that have changed in almost 10 years - since 2004. And as we know from various authors, public policies often fail or only partially succeed and this is more evident in territorial planning policies. It is, therefore, nece...
2014
In the process of transition of the Balkan countries towards democracy, the strengthening of the "rule of law " is a key factor. The process of legalization in Albania is a clear indication that this transition has not been developed as it should have. In post-communist Albania, ranging from the 1990s to the present day the problem of illegal buildings remains a disturbing fact to which, no final solution has been found, yet. The solution that the Albanian government has given to the problem is the implementation of the system of Ownership Reform substantial part of which is the legalization of these buildings through a law of 'legalization', which makes legal, situations that were illegal up to that moment.This paper will aim to provide a solution to the question " The problems that have arisen during the legalization process in Albania. What can be done in the future by observing and taking into consideration the experience of countries with similar experi...
Opening future scenarios for the urbanization, integration of informal settlements in Albania.
The fall of the old regime, the civil war of 1997, the war in Kosovo, and finally the process of joining the European Union, have generated a strong dynamic of social, cultural and economic change ever seen so far, if we think about the Ottoman occupation or the Communist Regime. This fast political process, both internally and externally, has left little space for an academic reflection on social/territorial impact and has distorted the Political orientation. Beside this fast process problems related to informality has been concentrated in the suburbs of the main Albanian cities-generating territorial and administrative problems. The policy to legalize, urbanize and integrate the informal settlements is a program approved by un large number of laws and articles that has changed in almost 10 years-since 2004. And as we know from various authors, public policies often fail or only partially succeed and this is more evident in territorial planning policies. It is therefore necessary to evaluate public policies in order to understand if and why they did not succeed. This paper will follow a process of policy evaluation through a structured list of questions from the moment that the law on Legalization started, which will be considered (t1), to now-days (t2). Conflictual Policy on 'Specific Goals' among actors. This research is a first attempt to read the policy development for the legalization of informal settlements in Albania after 10 years of open process and to the integration of disadvantaged populations to urban contexts in Albanian cities. From that moment few projects have had the possibility to design and collaborate with regional offices charged with the implementation of this policy.
This article addresses an important aspect of the crisis in post-socialist Albania: routinisation. Based on the concept of permanent crisis (Shevchenko 2009), I aim to discuss how conditions that are meant to be temporal become routinised and durable. I see crisis as essentially linked with the general experience of "transition" in Albania, both concepts -crisis and transition -being envisioned as temporary periods with a beginning in the past and an end in the future. Contradictory and ambiguous imaginaries on the "transition" affect the actions of social actors, sealing the success or failure of state-led reforms. I propose to call this the agency of the transition. Based on Pelkmans critique, I approach transition as a myth with two meanings: as a false version of things and as a blueprint by means of which people give meaning to their everyday experience. I suggest that the permanence of the temporal conditions can be grasped by tracing how ambiguity, alienation, and fissure are being produced in Albanian society. On the one side, through a poetical rhetoric of the temporary, a huge spectrum of international and local actors contribute to the construction of various states of emergency that are instrumentalised politically. The end of the transition becomes a "utopian object of impossible fullness" (Hartman 2007). On the other side, the common people project their expectations of security on "transition", anticipating the future return of the state. But the latter has been, however, corroded by neo-liberal rhetoric and policy in post-socialist Albania and by the failure of the authorities to recognise the embeddedness of economic processes (Hann 1998) and state institutions and agents (von Benda-Beckmann et al. 2006). I will test this hypothesis using the case of the legalisation process for informal buildings in Albania. Why did the Law of Legalisation, prescribed as the medicine for the malady of disorder, incite a second mass of illegal construction in Albania? The findings are based on ethnographic fieldwork in an urban peripheral part of the town of Elbasan and a critical examination of Albanian public discourses and literature on the topic. 1
Tirana Architecture Week - TAW2018, 2018
Economical resources, revenues from legalization, are centralized to high administrative levels and then are redistributed to each single informal areas to finance infrastructure investments. The sum of revenues reversed is differing from area to area, thus it is not equal for each informal area. (1) Firstly because revenues reversibility to cover infrastructure costs are defined by law in an arbitrary way. Respectively only 20% of the revenues from the legalization fee goes to urbanization and infrastructure. (2) Secondly, each informal area has different land size occupied, number of settlements and infrastructure dimensions. These three measurement indicators, (land, settlement, and infrastructure) also determine the core revenues and costs for the urban agenda. Thanks to a Synoptic Analysis it is possible to measure both reasons, (1) and (2), in one single indicator, called F.I.S.I.A (Final Investment for a Single Informal Area). While the objective of the Urban Agenda is to fulfill the second objective, namely to deliver infrastructure, the research aims to answer whether it is possible to determine different percentages of revenues reversibility in other to fulfill the objectives of urbanization and infrastructure. The results show that urbanization, put in infrastructure, has a negative value. It means that even if we apply a revenue reversibility of 20%, as defined by law, the urbanization process will never occur without external resources. In order to have a fair distribution of the investments on urbanization, the research proposes to apply different revenue reversibility percentage for different informal areas.
Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 2016
Informality is a significant aspect of the recent processes of land development, which has attracted the interest of academics and policy-makers, in the context of the crucial role that land has acquired for the global economy and the prevalent trends of capitalist activity. A wide variety of reforms and policies for dealing with informality have been adopted in many countries worldwide, often under the guidance of supranational organisations, though with contradictory impacts. The objective of this article is the critical appraisal of informality in land development processes in Albania, a former socialist country in “transition”, by exploring links with land reforms and socioeconomic dynamics, as well as the interaction of various actors from the global to the local level. We argue that, through multiple synergies and conflicts, informal practices serve a wide variety of interests, while informality in itself, as well as the policies for controlling it, may also lead to the intensification of socio-spatial inequalities and exclusions Our approach is based on the analysis of the land development processes in the coastal settlement of Jal as a case study. The article focuses on an incident of demolitions of informal constructions in Jal in 2007, which was associated with a World Bank's development project, as well as on the land development dynamics prior to and after this incident. We employed a mixed-method approach, based on qualitative tools, which combined fieldwork in Jal, semi-structured interviews in Jal, Tirana, and Athens, evaluation of land reforms and review of official reports and articles in the local and national press.