INTRODUCTION of imposing civil society concepts in these countries via the language of projects, while Stubbs has seen it as a form of colonialism(Stubbs, 2000). Global concerns and players have dominated the discourse on actors of social policy and its devel­opment in transition. This has promoted a view of major donor organisations as constant, monolithic agents, unresponsive to the fast changing environments they try to operate within. As crucially, their neo-liberal agendas and approaches have led to a fear of the subordination of social policy to the economic policy require­ments(Deacon, 1992; Deacon et al, 1992). Yet, to understand their role in social policy one has to investigate the origin and nature of its establishment in country to better trace the real complexities of each situation. A small tentative in this regard is presented next. The Albanian Context: Discussion of Research Findings Institutions of Government The establishment of the institutions of Government was a necessarily hasty affair in the Albania of the early 1990’s. Organisations were formed and policies effected to respond politically to some of the immediate costs of transition – the ‘valley of tears’ GDP slump(McAuley, 1991) and an epidemic of unemployment. The Ministry of Labour was a result of an emergency call to respond politi­cally to what was seen as the cost of transition, from a centrally planned economy, with full employment and universal welfare, to new policies for an aspiring market economy undergoing rapid privatisation and deregulation. The deepening eco­nomic crisis, exacerbated by the difficulty of the system in coping with the rapid transformations that were taking place, resulted in increasing social problems. Government gave precedence at that time to economic and industrial reform, but as early as 1992, the need for an institutional response, in the form of architected so­cial policies, became readily apparent. Initially positions there were filled‘based on political affiliation’ or other ex­pediencies, before considerations of competency, consequently leading to a great need for training – ‘To be honest, we had no idea what to do. We were given a difficult job, and it was a time of great changes. We were told that we would be trained and so we were! We travelled the world to get training and experience, almost all western Europe as well as America. There was so much money spent on training those days.’ 81 Albania was notorious for changing governments almost every 6 months at the time and there was a‘re-branding of MOLSA for each hand-over of power in 81 Quotes from interviews and group discussions are presented here in separate paragraphs in italics. Names of the respondents have been removed to respect their right to anonymity. 207