This article proposes new prospects about the post-collectivist agrarian transformations in the Eastern European countries. Referring to the multiple changes that have affected those countries since the beginning of the 1990’s, the aim of this work is to select some theoretical approaches and therefore to analyse the empirical facts, in order to understand better the role of formal and informal institutions. Based on the theory of public choice, the theory of ownership rights and the distributive theory of the institutional change, this article first tries to test these approaches in the explanation of the ways land reforms were conducted in eastern countries. In a second time, these approaches are confronted with the behaviour of the social actors involved and the evolution of the societal institutions of the Albanian rural society. The results of this work show that, if transition reforms were initiated by political decisions, these were led and applied by the most basical social institutions, like village community, social networks and family. In the context of a vacuum of formal institutions, societal institutions had to play a fundamental part in the socio-economic transformation and reorganization of the rural societies of the post-collectivist countries