Party organization is usually one of the least known aspects of party structure and behaviour, and the few pieces of literature that examine the organization of political parties are based mostly on the specific profiles of Western European parties. In a narrow sense, party organization refers to the different internal organizational structures of a political party, ranging from the basic unit to the central party organizational level, i.e. from the party membership to its leadership. For a more detailed conceptualization, we must look at the following: levels of constitutional and statutory regulation of party activity, behavior, and public funding (van Biezen 2008); party organizational strength and its bureaucrati-zation (e.g. Gibson et al. 1983); the importance of the party's membership to its electoral support (e.g. Kopecký 1995); the procedures and degree of membership participation in the nomination and selection of candidates and party leaders (e.g. Pennings and Hazan 2001); the degree of power concentration within a party as well as its centralization (e.g. Katz and Mair 1995); and finally, the relationship between the central organization and the party in public office (e.g. van Biezen 2000). Exploring the puzzle of party organization is therefore a central issue for the understanding of a political party.

This article takes a deeper look at the abovementioned aspects of party organization in Albania through a detailed analysis of the content of national legislation on political parties, statutory norms, and the current power structures of Albanian political parties. In addition to the formal “official story” of party organization, we also consider the behavior of party actors and informal data in order to fully understand the real internal organization of parties in Albania. In order to examine more carefully the party organizations in Albania, we have taken into account only the main parties from the left and right spectrum that have existed since the fall of communism and have been continuously represented in parliament. The two main political parties with the above key features are the Democratic Party (DP, Partia Demokratike e Shqipërisë), and the Socialist Party (SP, Partia Socialiste e Shqipërisë) of Albania.