Engineered Identity: Albanian Nationalism and the Limits of Established Nationalism Theories

ABSTRACT This article analyses the development of Albanian nationalism as a test case for assessing the explanatory reach of three major approaches to the study of nationalism: modernist, constructivist and historical‐comparative. Rather than privileging a single theoretical framework, the article places these approaches in dialogue, treating them as equally relevant analytical lenses through which to examine how nationalism emerges, operates and consolidates in different structural contexts. The Albanian case is particularly instructive because nationalism developed in conditions that diverge from many of the empirical settings on which these theories were originally formulated. Limited economic modernisation, weak capitalist development and a fragmented social structure shaped a trajectory in which nationalism was constructed primarily through state‐led and coercive strategies rather than through sustained bottom‐up mobilisation. Focusing on the interwar and communist periods, the analysis is organised around three central domains of nation‐building: the centralisation of political power, the regulation of education and communication and the management of religion through secularisation. Examining these domains allows for a systematic comparison of how modernist, constructivist and historical‐comparative perspectives illuminate different dimensions of Albanian nationalism, as well as where their assumptions require contextual adjustment. In this sense, Albania functions as a critical test case for exploring the flexibility and limits of prevailing theories of nationalism, demonstrating how national identities may be produced through hybrid, nonlinear and state‐centred processes in peripheral and postimperial contexts.