Constitutional reforms in Albania and Macedonia represent a good opportunity to analyze EU-Eastern European Countries (EECs) negotiations as a process where the EU imposes on membership-aspiring countries consociational practices on two levels. The case regarding Albania is much simpler than that of Macedonia. Although Albanian elites were bitterly divided, the same was not true of the Albanian public. The almost half century of communist rule had played a major role in culturally unifying Albanian society. Shaped according to a Stalinist-type repression, communist rule in Albania combined Marxism with Albanian lore, and proletarian internationalism with local mythology, while dreams of industrialization and technological progress created a surrealist environment in which time stalled and everyone found themselves equally poor. Systematic purges within the Partia e Punës (PP) (Party of Labor), the Albanian communist party, stirred by a dictator growing increasingly paranoid with age, oppressed communists and dissenters alike. The strict system of pashaportizim (residence permit) thwarted any demographic movement outside the party's control and, as the pace of industrialization slowed after a rupture with China in 1978, population movement practically stalled.

Two to three generations of Albanians were born and died in the same residential site, and perhaps even in the same apartment. High mountains and a poor national highway system isolated the country's regions from each other, while the state-run internal transportation system was deplorable; movement of people within the country was very limited.