Regionally, the highest Party organ is the Party Conference at district and city levels, which is supposed to meet once a year and is comparable to the Party Congress at the national level. In practice, the periodic Party Conference becomes a pro forma meeting held for the purpose of displaying unanimity of opinion. Between conferences, operations are conducted by Party committees, and real power is exercised by a bureau of each committee that usually consists of about eleven members, who must first be approved by the Party Central Committee in Tirana. Bureau membership includes two secretaries who are the leading Communist officials in the city or district and, by virtue of their positions, the most powerful individuals.

The principal functions of the district or city committees are to guide the activities of all Party organizations in the district or town so as to assure the precise application of the Party line; approve the establishment of basic Party organizations; maintain records on members and look after their ideological and political education; distribute within the district or city the Party cadres; and administer the Party finances. More importantly, the district or city committee guides and regulates the activities and work of the local governmental bodies and social organizations by means of Party groups within them.

The statute describes the basic Party organizations as the foundations of the Party because they serve to link the working masses of the town and village with the Party. The basic Party organizations are established in factories and plants, agricultural enterprises, machine tractor stations, villages, units of the armed and security forces, state administration, schools, and other work centers where there were no less than three Party members. When deemed necessary and where there are less than three Party members, there can be created joint groups of the Party and of the Union of Albanian Working Youth. These groups are directed by a Party member chosen by the district or city committee.

The basic Party organizations are assigned a multitude of duties and responsibilities. They must ensure that Party orders are fully implemented, the masses are politically oriented, the Communists obtain the required ideological and political education, new members are accepted into the Party, the masses are mobilized in production work, the activities of the mass organizations are checked and guided, and control is exercised over all economic sectors and over all local governmental bodies.

The statute provides that in the armed forces Party affairs are to be directed by the Political Directorate of the Ministry of People's Defense and in the Ministry of the Interior they are to be directed by appropriate political organs. Party organizations in the armed forces operate on the basis of special instructions issued by the Party's Central Committee. All chiefs of political branches in military units and installations must be Party members with no less than five years of membership. The political organs in the military units are required to maintain close contact with the local Party committees ([see ch. 9], Internal and External Security).

The latest official figures for Party membership were given by Party First Secretary Hoxha in his report to the Fifth Party Congress in 1966. He placed the total membership at 66,327, of which 3,314 were candidate members. Since the Fourth Party Congress in 1961 the membership had grown by 12,688. According to Hoxha, the social composition of the Party membership was as follows: workers, 32.9 percent; collective farmers, 25.8 percent; private farmers, 3.2 percent; state, Party, and mass organization officials and armed forces personnel, 37.2 percent; and students and housewives, 0.9 percent. Of the total Party membership, women comprised 12.5 percent. Hoxha also said that nearly 68 percent of all Communists lived in cities and only 32 percent in villages, despite the fact, he commented, that the rural population was three times as large as that of the cities.

Party Operations

A fundamental factor in the Party's exercise of political power and control is the selection of candidates for all elected positions. Although the candidates for such elective organs as the People's Assembly, the people's courts, and the people's councils at all levels are formally nominated by the meetings of mass organizations or of workers and peasants, they have been, in fact, handpicked by the local Party organizations and approved by the Party Central Committee.

The procedure at all nominating meetings is standard and simple: a list of candidates, previously prepared by the Party district or city committee, is read; the qualifications of each candidate are described; and the list is unanimously approved. Since the first national and local elections held in 1945 in which the list of candidates included non-Party people, lists have been restricted to Party members only. Veterans of Hoxha's partisan forces of the so-called War of National Liberation still predominate among candidates for office.

A similar situation prevails with regard to the appointment of government officials. After each national election, the People's Assembly has appointed a new government. The procedure for this appointment has never varied: at the first meeting of the new People's Assembly the Party First Secretary has submitted for approval the list of the new ministers, which invariably has received unanimous approval. Because of purges in the top echelons of the Party, especially in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the government list has undergone several changes. Since the elimination of the pro-Yugoslav faction in 1948, however, these changes have affected mostly the technical and economic ministries. The three key posts in the government, however—namely, those of prime minister, minister of the interior, and minister of defense—have been consistently held by Enver Hoxha and Mehmet Shehu or their trusted lieutenants.