Negotiating Post-Socialist Property and State: Struggles over Forests in Albania and Romania

Since the demise of socialism, countries of Central and Eastern Europe have experienced intense negotiations over access and property. This article uses four case studies on struggles over forest in Albania and Romania to examine how these negotiations intersect with processes constituting authority. The cases demonstrate significant variations in the configurations of property and authority regarding forest, but they also reflect the influence of national politics in the two countries. In Albania, custom not only competes with the state as an institution sanctioning rights to forest but actually emerges as an alternative politico-legal institution contesting state authority more broadly. In Romania, local struggles over forests play out the contestations between personalized and law-based exercises of state authority at the national level. These insights suggest that due to their radical nature and simultaneous occurrence, negotiations over property and authority have challenged the position of post-socialist states as primary politico-legal institutions and have generated different exercises of state authority.