56 rT ansitional Justice and Democratic Consolidation in post-communist aE stern uE rope: Romania and Albania. effects and nuances of different transitional justice measures and how they have impacted the shape of democracy writ large in these countries. Also, from a policy-making angle, this is important because it shows that the adoption of various transitional justice measures, such as retributive, restorative or reparative, can have different results, especially when we discuss posttotalitarian societies, which have a different trajectory from post-conflict or post-junta examples. All in all, my findings show that the success of transition and democratic consolidation relies to a large degree on what transitional justice mechanisms have been adopted, how they were implemented and with what effect. Although my findings do not show evidence of a direct causal effect of the implementation of transitional justice on democratic consolidation, there is definitely a correlation between the speed or timeliness of transitional justice adoption and successful democratization and enforcement of the rule of law. Adopting transitional justice measures quickly appears more likely to result in democratic consolidation. Organizationally, the paper first gives an overview of the main debates in democratization studies, by focusing chiefly on CEE countries and their transitions from communist dictatorships. Then, it focuses on contemporary debates on transitional justice measures, particularly how they have been implemented in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe. It continues with caseselection justification and the construction of a typology that helps us understand the framework of CEE countries when measured in how effective the transitional justice mechanisms have been to help these countries transition to consolidated democracies that enforce the rule of law. Lastly it focuses on the cases of Romania and Albania. It first discusses what transitional justice measures have been in place and how they have affected these two countries’ transition trajectories. While there is significant scholarship on Romania, the Albanian case is rather unexplored and has much to offer as an archetypical state in our understanding of how transitional justice measures affect the shape of democratization in post-communist societies. In a nutshell, although both Romania and Albania implemented similar transitional justice measures (which were neither the most complete, nor the most imperfect of CEE countries), they had different outcomes when it comes to democratic consolidation: Romania has had the more successful democracy trajectory of the two.  LITERATURE REVIEW a. Transitology and Considology debates in Eastern Europe This section focuses on introducing some of the relevant debates that relate to the speed of transitions and present-day shape of democracies in post-communist CEE. By also discussing the role and degree of implementation of transitional justice measures, and how they have impacted these transitions, we can fill an important gap in the existing scholarship and contribute to existing debates in the field. Therefore, I start with a brief introduction of transitology and considology debates that set up the framework of my discussion. My dependent variable is democratic consolidation and the shape and speed of transitions in CEE generally, Albania and Romania in particular. While there is an abundant literature that discusses Romania’s implementation of transitional justice measures and how they have impacted its democratization, information on the Albanian case is scarce, notwithstanding their similarities in other regards. Then, it continues with a discussion of contemporary transitional justice debates, since these measures are the ones that I rely upon as independent variables, the implementation of which