If we analyze the substance of Albanian politics across three spaces, North Macedonia, Kosovo, and Albania, we observe significant differences in how political momentum and leadership symbolism have been constructed. In North Macedonia, there has been a lack of a clear impulse of cultural and urban dissent comparable to the cases of Edi Rama in Albania or Albin Kurti in Kosovo. Although today they represent opposing political poles, in essence Rama and Kurti share a common point of origin, the atypical disruption of traditional politics.
Written by: Lorik Idrizi
Edi Rama initially emerged as a symbol of aesthetic and urban renewal in Albanian politics, introducing a discourse that intertwined art, urbanity, and modernity. Albin Kurti, meanwhile, embodied an urban and cultural form of dissent inspired by alternative subcultures, music, and protest, a political expression that challenged the establishment not only in substance, but also in form. In both cases, politics did not present itself merely as a program, but as a form of cultural and urban dissent.
What followed, however, illustrates a familiar phenomenon, leaders are often projections of the societies that produce them. Populism, which initially serves as a tool for electoral mobilization and the acquisition of power, gradually transforms into the very content of governance. At this stage, early idealism fades and is replaced by the reproduction of the status quo, often justified through moral or symbolic discourses.
In Kosovo, the Vetevendosje Movement, during its four year mandate, failed to deliver substantial economic and social developments, while many electoral promises remained unfulfilled. Nevertheless, the result of around 41 percent of the vote indicates that the decline was significantly smaller than expected.
Edi Rama, too, during his fourth term, appears to have normalized power. From an atypical figure and a symbol of aesthetic and urban change, he now presents himself as an increasingly typical and institutionalized politician, far removed from the origins that once projected him as an alternative to traditional politics.
By observing the political scene and analyzing the trajectories of Rama and Kurti not through ideological or programmatic dimensions, but through the lens of political atypicality and urban and cultural representation, it becomes clear that what they share lies not only in the way they came to power, but also in the way power ultimately normalized them.