Medicinal and aromatic plants' management raises increasingly important issues of sustainable use of natural resources, biodiversity conservation, economic growth, social inclusiveness and rural development. This paper examines the genesis and development of the medicinal and aromatic plant (MAP) sector in Albania since 1945. This sector is of national importance and steered by a growing international market. The sustainable management of MAPs is a central issue in both practical and analytical terms. We develop a longitudinal analysis combining the use of documents and archives, statistical and operational data and field studies with an analytical focus rooted in institutional analysis development (IAD) and global value-chain analysis (GVC). We describe the changing system of rules alongside two historical dystopias: total communist state control versus an unregulated (anarchical) market. The paper explains the complexity of the non-sustainable and non-optimum management of MAPs in Albania and identifies major limiting factors in both dystopias. Attempts to establish territory-based resource management and a relevant management community are thwarted by lock-in along the value chain under export-driven monopolist/monopsony control, conflicting institutional interplays over access to the resource and inadequate knowledge on sustainable MAP use. Overcoming these shortcomings requires tackling the diversity of local situations and plant ecology. The paper highlights the need for a renewed form of community engagement in natural resource governance within global value chains.