Get the Book Bridging The Gap

Forward

The development context of any political system in transformation from one system to another is quickly evolving in some ways and paralyzed in others.  As in any situation involving human input to resolve, there are a wide variety of ideas, motivations and visions for what success will look like.  Some will want to conserve the best of the old system and retool it going forward.  Yet others will want to completely scrap the old and pick the best of the modern models.  There is social discontent because it feels as though their once-familiar world is no longer tethered to dependable anchors.  Polarized factions blame the other for impeding meaningful progress.

Expatriate organizations enter a country eager to assist in that transformation.  Each group comes from a more developed country with their own models of what “developed” will look like.  It is no mystery that approximation to their home countries will be the goal.  It is reasonable to assume each organization will set goals and objectives familiar and functional in their home contexts.  In Albania’s case, most developed countries from Western Europe and North America were represented with their varied models and agendas.

The thesis here is that expatriate work will meet with significantly more confusion and failure in year one than in year ten and beyond.  Not that everything is running smoothly by year ten, but it will be more predictable and projects will be more successful and efficient.  In year ten, I looked back and wished I had waited on some projects and scrapped others.  In every case, I would have chosen differently if I would have had the education then that came from a decade of making mistakes.

This study focuses on the Albanian people and considers all the aspects of what defines their attitudes, their expectations and their “starting point” when help arrives.   Two Albanian mountain villages will be compared to examine the rural cultural context and importance of attitude.  The villages were recommended as being “typical.”  The two villages are very similar in culture, altitude, population, and potential, but differ in attitude.

Comparison data is from personal visits to the villages in 1994 through 1996 and updated information through the year 2007.  In Albania, “typical” is usually understood as a measure of population, land area, elevation, and other empirical factors.  Based on observation, the standard of living attained by a village is limited more by attitude than by opportunity or potential.  Attitude is, often unintentionally, overlooked or at best underestimated by expatriate workers in a redevelopment context.

The additional variables of ex-patriot organizations that have come to help the newly transitioning country are also considered.  Each type of organization: governmental agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), faith-based non-governmental organizations (FBNGOs) and businesses have their own ideas of what to do and how to do it.

Each organization truly desires to bring the fledgling government and infant free-market economy toward a successful conclusion.  The collision of indigenous attitudes, historical and cultural precedents with the differing expatriate paradigms of what constitutes success creates a complex, unpredictable development context.  Inter-agency collaboration between the varying expatriate organizations would smooth the transition between a strictly centralized, authoritarian system to a free-market democracy by reducing early project failure, thus, building the people’s faith and increasing their patience toward the new system.