CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Ibishi, Lena |
|---|---|
| Title | Between Sword and Crown: Skanderbeg's League of Lezhe as a Proto-Albanian State |
| Summary | This thesis evaluates the League of Lezhë (1444–1479) as a proto-state, challenging its conventional portrayal as a transient military alliance. It argues that the League constituted a functioning political entity that exercised territorial authority, extracted fiscal resources, enacted legal norms, conducted diplomacy, and advanced an early articulation of Albanian sovereignty. To assess its state-like character, the thesis applies a six-dimensional analytical framework—governmental, legal, fiscal, military, diplomatic, and cultural—centered on the political theories of Weber, Tilly, Jackson, Philpott, Krasner, and Brubaker. Methodologically, it combines political theory with close historical analysis of primary sources and critical engagement with existing historiography. The thesis contests the dichotomy of empire and nation-state, positing instead a third political space: sovereignty without full consolidation, legitimacy without permanence, and governance without formal codification. The findings support the conclusion that the League of Lezhë functioned as a proto-state that institutionalized resistance and trained a stateless people in political endurance. Long after its dissolution, its legacy persisted: Albanian elites—socialized through the League’s formative logic—would come to occupy key positions within the Ottoman imperial structure, diffusing its political imprint from the empire’s periphery into its core and across the broader European continent. |
| Supervisor | Esmer, Tolga |
| Department | Undergraduate Studies BA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/ibishi_lena.pdf |
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