The constitution of a ‘new politics beyond left and right’: From ideological ambiguity to populist political communication

This article examines the political discourse of the Albanian Socialist Party from 2005 to 2009 during which it establishment a new profile under the leadership of Edi Rama. The article is intentionally constrained in scope and time as it seeks to zoom into the interrelation between the chairman’s political discourse and the political profile of his party. More concretely, this article investigates to what extent does Rama’s core theme of a ‘new politics beyond left and right’ frame the profile of the Socialist Party of Albania (SPA) in terms of: (i) political identity; (ii) political program; and (iii) relationship to constituents. Through discourse analysis of the SPA manifesto and Rama’s speeches, the article argues that the ideological ambiguity of Rama’s political discourse for a ‘new politics beyond left and right’ gives way to a political party, which moves sometimes on the right and other times on the left, without constituting a clear political identity and thus conducting a politics of avoidance. The article concludes that the SPA suffers from the absence of a coherent political program and is losing its representative function, by pretending to be the ‘party of all citizens’. The politics of avoidance and the ideological ambiguity have led to an increase in the use of populist political communication.