From Discourse to Implementation: Enterprise Policy Development in Postcommunist Albania

Abstract

We examine enterprise policy development in Albania, a neglected postcommunist context. Using a policy transfer approach, we explore whether the Albanian government has adopted, or adapted, enterprise policies originating elsewhere, what this has meant in practice, and how and why such processes have occurred. Enterprise policy development in Albania can be conceptualised as a process of indirect coercive transfer through transnational communication mechanisms—policy discourses, target setting, monitoring, evaluation, and ‘best practice’—that disguise the power relations in which they are embedded. The transition from adoption at the level of discourse (soft transfer) to implementation of programmes, actions, and tools (hard transfer) is shaped by knowledge, finance and legitimacy ‘deficits’, and communist-era legacies. The paper develops a deeper understanding of enterprise policy processes, their drivers, and constraints in postcommunist contexts, addressing a gap in the transition literature, by investigating these processes as complex and crowded policy spaces from design through to implementation.