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Algeria's pseudo-democratic politics: Lessons for democratization in the

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Algeria's pseudo-democratic politics: Lessons for

democratization in the Middle East

Frédéric Volpi

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Lessons for democratization in the Middle East, Democratization, 13:3, 442-455, DOI:
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Algeria’s Pseudo-democratic Politics: Lessons for
Democratization in the Middle East

F R É D É R I C V O L P I

This account proposes an analytical framework to understand recent developments in Algerian

politics, such as the 2004 presidential election, in the context of the rise of pseudo-democratic
regimes throughout the Muslim world. It suggests that through the tactical adaptation of the
powers-that-be to the demands of electoral democracy, the substantive value and the legitimacy
of democracy as a concept and a practical system of governance is being eroded. The key tactics
employed by the regime to entrench this pseudo-democratic model include the informal
pre-selection of the candidates, the stage-management of the election campaign and the
televised media, and poll fixing and electoral demobilization. This domestic evolution of
pseudo-democratic politics occurs in a propitious international context where the combination
of economic (oil) and security (terrorism) concerns favours trends towards short-term domestic
stability at the expense of long-term democratic transformation.

Key words: pseudo-democracy; electoral democracy; authoritarian practices; governance

A few days after the 2004 Algerian presidential election, the political establishment of
that country received a ringing endorsement of its democratic credentials from
Jacques Chirac, the French President. Commenting on the organization of the elec-
tion, President Chirac declared in front of the international press during a visit to
Algiers, ‘I cannot see how, in all good faith, I could fault this electoral process’.1
At a time when politics in the Arab – Muslim world receives so much attention
from the international community, one may perhaps ponder and wonder why the blos-
soming of electoral democracy in Algeria has received so little international attention.
No parties of high-ranking officials from the other countries of the region are
swarming to Algiers to discover how one can successfully create a functioning
democracy (a feat of social and political engineering that would be all the more
remarkable after a decade of vicious civil conflict involving a military-led regime
and Islamist guerrillas). In addition, few Western analysts and policy-makers are
suggesting that in order to help create a democratic Iraq or Middle East, the political
processes and institutions that exist in Algeria must be studied as a matter of extreme
urgency. Effectively, most Algerian specialists are suggesting that the polity is barely
able to manage its current predicament and that the prospect for genuine democracy in
the country are quite a long way away.2 Is there therefore a paradox between the
seemingly upbeat assessment of President Chirac – which was also shared by
the US administration, as shown by the letter of congratulation sent by George

Frédéric Volpi is a Lecturer in the School of International Relations, University of St Andrews, Scotland.
Democratization, Vol.13, No.3, June 2006, pp.442–455
ISSN 1351-0347 print=1743-890X online
DOI: 10.1080=13510340600579342 # 2006 Taylor & Francis
ALGERIA’S PSEUDO-DEMOCRATIC POLITICS 443

W. Bush to the Algerian President after the elections3 – and that of political analysts
and academic specialists? This study provides an analytical framework to understand
recent developments in Algerian politics, such as the 2004 presidential election, in the
context of the rise of pseudo-democratic regimes throughout the Muslim world. It also
highlights the international dimension of these events and the different ways in which
they have been interpreted by political players and commentators.

Algerian Politics from Revolution to Democratization, Twice Over

To understand the apparent discrepancies in the political judgements of seasoned (and
less seasoned) political observers of the region it is crucial to appreciate fully the
pattern of ‘democratic reforms’ in Algeria and in the rest of the Middle East and
North Africa. In the late 1980s, the Algerian democratic transition was one of the
first processes of political liberalization in the Muslim world to embody the principles
of the ‘Third Wave’ of democratization. As has been well documented, all too soon
Algeria also became a dramatic example of how the process of democratic transition
could drive a polity toward the brink of disaster.4 Until the transition, the country had
been governed by the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale/National Liberation
Front), the nationalist movement that had wrested Algeria away from its French colo-
nial masters and that turned subsequently into a state party. From the start, there were
strong institutional linkages between the political and the armed wings of the FLN,
and it is fair to say that the military controlled the party rather than the other way
around – a situation highlighted by the fact that Colonel Houari Boumedienne,
then Colonel Chadli Benjedid were Heads of State for most of the country’s post-
independence history.5 In the mid-1980s, as Algeria’s oil-subsidized ‘socialist’
economy began to feel the consequences of two decades of inadequate top-down
state management, the country’s developmentalist social contract founded on a
promise of socio-economic development in exchange for political quiescence
began to unravel. In effect, despite the efforts of the state at developing a viable
heavy industry sector in the country, over time the Algerian economy became increas-
ingly dependent on the oil rent (and the vagaries of the global oil market), with over
90 per cent of its export and 45 per cent of its Gross National Product (GNP) coming
from the oil and gas sector from the 1980s onwards.6 This situation was compounded
by a doubling of the population in the 25 years after independence, coupled to a
massive migration from the countryside to the cities, and unemployment at over
30 per cent from the mid-1980s onwards.7 At that time, in an international climate
dominated by ‘pacted’ democratic transitions in Latin America and perestroika in
the communist bloc, the Algerian regime found it practical to divert people’s attention
away from the country’s disastrous economic situation by partially giving in on the
issue of political liberties.
In October 1988 the hand of the Algerian President, Chadli Benjedid, was forced
by a massive wave of food riots with a revolutionary undercurrent that spread
throughout the country. In this precarious situation, Chadli offered to the demonstra-
tors the promise of a full democratic opening.8 In the months following the demo-
cratic opening, however, his administration and the FLN became increasingly
444 DE MOCR AT IZ AT ION

unable to deal with the political consequences of the process of political liberal-
ization, and especially with the rise of the Islamic opposition led by the FIS
(Front Islamique du Salut/Islamic Salvation Front). After obtaining over 55 per
cent of the vote in the 1990 local and regional elections, the FIS was poised to win
an absolute majority in the National Assembly after performing extremely well in
the first round of the parliamentary elections in December 1991. Early in January
1992, however, a group of military officers led by Khaled Nezzar, the Defence
Minister, stepped in and engineered a coup d’état. The more secular-conservative
social and political players in Algeria (as well as some ‘progressive’ secularists)
welcomed this so-called ‘pause’ in the democratic transition. Abroad, the key
players in the international community, who had their attention firmly focused on
democratic troubles elsewhere – principally in a disintegrating Soviet Union – and
who suspected that Islamist movements might hijack the process of democratization
adopted an attitude of cautious restraint and voiced only muted criticisms.9
On the ground, however, within a few weeks of the coup, as the supporters of the
Islamic party took to the streets to protest again the cancellation of the elections and
were confronted by military repression, a vicious circle of violence and retribution set
in. Deprived of the veneer of legitimacy that previously characterized its rule, the
military-led Algerian regime faced a crisis in which the state and its subjects appeared
to be no longer able to find a political compromise on the basis of the previous nation-
alist and ‘Arab Socialist’ consensus, but not yet able to reach a political consensus on
a democratic basis. As the FIS was banned and its supporters arrested in droves, civil
disobedience turned into open resistance to the regime, and with the emergence of the
first Islamist guerrilla movement, the MIA (Mouvement Islamique Armé/Armed
Islamic Movement), in the spring of 1992, the situation escalated into a full-blown
civil conflict. As Luis Martinez indicated, the dramatic political transformation that
occurred at the heart of the Algerian political system at the start of 1992 ensured
that revolutionary politics became routine politics for most of the players involved
in this struggle for state power.10
Although the military proved to be more resilient than their political opponents
had predicted in this ruthless confrontation, they also showed that they knew no
better than the other players how to diffuse the political, ideological, social and econ-
omic conflicts that had undermined the democratic transition. In effect, rather than
trying to solve these problems, the military decided to work around them by setting
up a complex system of divide et impera in the polity. In the second half of the
1990s, most armed Islamist guerrilla groups were either progressively coopted by
the regime (which offered them an amnesty and financial incentives), or contained
in pockets of insurrection around the country where they posed no direct threat to
the ruling elite. Nowadays, only the Salafist Group for Combat and Preaching
(GSPC), with its estimated strength of 500 –1,000 members, retains a relatively
consistent policy of political and military opposition to the regime.11 However,
they are an ‘Islamist card’ that the Algerian regime has learnt to play effectively
on the international stage to obtain the support of the international community in
the post-9/11 context. Thus in 2003, after the kidnapping of European tourists in
the Algerian Sahara by a branch of the GSPC, the United States sent Special
ALGERIA’S PSEUDO-DEMOCRATIC POLITICS 445

Forces personnel to Algeria, increased the level of its training funds for the Algerian
military, and stepped up its preparations for a military base there to monitor the activi-
ties of ‘al Qaeda-type’ groups in the Sahara.12
The Algerian military-backed regime also brokered a series of deals with most
pro-Islamic forces and other opposition movements in the country over the years.
It imposed a life-long ban on the political activities of the FIS, but it allowed other
smaller pro-Islamic parties (Ennahda, Islah) to participate in the political process.
It also authorized larger pro-Islamic movements such as the Wafa of Taleb Ibrahimi
to operate as civil society associations but refused to legalize them as political parties.
Other political forces in the country (nationalists, regionalists, socialists, democrats,
and so on) have also been coopted more or less successfully in a democratic façade,
where the executive retains a near-total control over the choices of the legislature.
(In effect, through a complex system of presidential appointees in the Senate, the
Algerian President has a de facto veto on the laws proposed by the Parliament.)13
This state of affairs ensures that the role of the executive, and particularly that of
the President, is crucial for the good functioning of the country’s tentative electoral
democracy because both their direct institutional prerogatives and their informal
influence shape the modus operandi of Algerian politics.
Looking back at the evolution of Algerian ‘democracy’ from the early days of the
democratic transition in 1988 to the current situation at the beginning of the twenty-
first century, it is easy to have serious doubts about the prospects for genuine demo-
cratic progress in the country. Besides the fleeting moment of dialogue between the
state and civil society, as well as between different civil society actors, that followed
the 1988 October riots, the modus vivendi of the political transition in Algeria has
been a zero-sum power game where any gain made by one socio-political group
seems to be at the expense of another. Far from being a mechanism that would
allow a more effective representation of the multifaceted demands/needs of the citi-
zenry in the formal decision-making process, political democratization reinforced
social polarization and, ultimately, led to armed confrontation between different sec-
tions of society having varying access to the state apparatus and welfare provisions.
The recurrent dilemma that constrained democratization in Algeria throughout these
years – a dilemma that is by no means unique to the country but that has been
expressed in a dramatically violent form there – is the lack of an inclusive political
community that can agree on the rules of the political game through institutionalized
means. This lack of inclusiveness at the top has its roots in the power struggle
that followed the war of decolonization, and it has been revived in the 1990s
by the confrontation between the Islamists (and to a lesser extent the democrats)
and the republican-nationalist ruling coalition.

The 2004 Presidential Elections: Shaping the Present in the Light of the Past
For seasoned observers of Middle Eastern and North African politics, the results of
the 2004 Algerian presidential election were always highly predictable in outline.
The pseudo-democratic situation that prevails in the country since the mid-1990s is
well controlled by the military establishment allied to the conservative nationalist
446 DE MOCR AT IZ AT ION

political elite. In effect, the results and modus operandi of the 2004 election were
similar to those of the first ‘open’ presidential contest in the country, a decade
earlier. In 1995 General Liamine Zeroual, then President-elect, was voted in with
more than 60 per cent of the votes, clearly outperforming the moderate Islamist
leader Mahfoud Nahnah, who obtained about 25 per cent and the Kabyle secular
democrat Saı̈d Sadi, who scored about 10 per cent. The 2004 presidential election
re-affirmed the political battle-lines that the regime had sought to institutionalize
since the mid-1990s. In April 2004, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the President in office,
was re-elected with 85 per cent of the vote.14 The nearest contender Ali Benflis,
the leader of the FLN, obtained just over 6 per cent of the votes while Abdallah
Djaballah, the moderate Islamist, obtained about 5 per cent, and Saı̈d Sadi gained a
mere 2 per cent. (The other candidates included the representative of the far-left –
and the only woman candidate – Louisa Hanoune, who obtained 1 per cent, and
the nationalist Ali Fawzi Rebaı̈ne who remained below the 1 per cent threshold.)
These outcomes illustrate how the Algerian political scene is being carved up
between nationalist, Islamist and democratic currents, and how the regime is able
to use these divisions to maintain its control over the polity. This pattern has been
clear for some time now, as the typologies proposed by specialists such as Robert
Mortimer after the 1995 presidential election and William Quandt after the 2002
parliamentary elections already indicated.15 What remains to elucidate is what
these divisions mean for the future of democracy in the country – and beyond
Algeria, for future political developments in Middle Eastern countries confronted
by similar social fractures. Quandt noted that although elections have brought these
problems in the open, ‘they have done little either to legitimize governance or to chal-
lenge the positions of those in power. Nor have democratic procedures taken root as a
way of resolving conflict.’16 In effect, it seems that this flaw of Algerian ‘democracy’
ensures that an unstable and unsatisfactory political stalemate remains in the country
despite the presence of an electoral process. To fully appreciate the inherent weakness
of the Algerian model one must unpack the political mechanisms that underpin this
electoral order and repeatedly produce its all-too-predictable outcomes.
Domestically, Algerian electoral democracy rests upon three main components.
First, the political field is pre-organized to favour the candidates that are deemed
acceptable by the ruling elite – either because they pose no real challenge to the
regime, or because they do not propose any substantive change of policy. Second,
the political debate in the televised media is controlled by the regime and tailored
to the needs of the ruling elite. Third, the administration can be depended upon to
engineer the ‘right’ kind of election results – either by activating their patronage net-
works to offer ‘incentives’ to voters or, more crudely, by rigging the polls (or both).
The first component of this electoral equation is undoubtedly one of the most
crucial and delicate manoeuvres that the ruling elite must perform repeatedly in
order to meet its objectives. It is delicate because the regime has to convince a substan-
tial part of the political class and of civil society that the electoral process is not a
useless venting of popular frustrations, but instead a meaningful way for the citizenry
to express their political choices. It is also a crucial manoeuvre because in Algeria, as in
most countries of the MENA, the most serious challengers to the regime propose a
ALGERIA’S PSEUDO-DEMOCRATIC POLITICS 447

popular (and populist) pro-Islamic agenda. The powers-that-be realize that this Islamic
current should be engaged in the electoral process, but in such a way that whoever
comes to embody it formally cannot or will not actually challenge the status quo.
Thus, in the 1995 presidential election in Algeria, the de facto bearer of the Islamic
flag, Nahnah, had come out strongly against the FIS and in favour of the regime
prior to the organization of the elections; and in 2004, the designated representative
of the Islamic camp, Djaballah, was known to be reliant on a limited support base in
the east of the country to remain an occasional player in national politics. (There
were, of course, no opportunities for any public figure associated with the FIS to
become involved in the formal political process, because all the leading members of
the movement have been barred from political activities.) Thus, each electoral race
is carefully stage-managed and preceded by a discreet but crucial pre-electoral balan-
cing act in which the regime seeks to convince enough political figures from the
opposition to participate in this process, while discouraging those political players
who could pose a real threat to their leadership from entering the race.17
For the 2004 presidential contest the most established Algerian pro-democratic
party, the Kabyle-based FFS, still reeling from the earlier spate of election rigging
and from the police violence in Kabylia, ruled itself out of the race and called for a
boycott of the election.18 In the pro-Islamic camp, the process of self-selection (and
self-elimination) of the candidates was less straightforward. Taleb Ibrahimi, one of
the most prominent candidates in the marred 1999 presidential election and the
leader of the Wafa movement, did not withdraw willingly from the race. Yet,
because the size of his potential electoral base worried the regime, he was not
allowed to run by the Constitutional Court. (Here the regime certainly learned from
its mistakes in the 1999 election, when the administration became very concerned
during the electoral campaign that Taleb Ibrahimi could actually win the race and
resorted to blatant poll-rigging, thereby discrediting the entire process.) Officially,
but controversially, in 2003 this disqualification was simply the result of receiving
an insufficient number of institutional endorsements of his candidature.19 With these
main opposition players out of the race, the regime was keen to encourage the partici-
pation of the smaller secularist democratic party led by Sadi, the RCD, as well as the
moderate pro-Islamic party led by Djaballah, the Islah. In addition, Ali Benflis, Boute-
flika’s former Prime Minister and the leader of the FLN, emboldened by his party’s
success in the 2002 parliamentary election, also decided to join the presidential race;
thus introducing an element of competition inside the nationalist camp. In the end,
the pre-electoral strategy of the ruling elite worked well by ensuring that the race
was open to a handful of nationalist, democratic and Islamic orientated candidates
who gave the appearance of pluralism without posing any serious threat to the
ruling elite. In effect, their handiwork was so well marketed on the international
scene that many in the Western media suggested that the 2004 election would be
genuinely open for the first time since the 1992 military intervention.20
The second component of this stage-managed electoral process intervenes during
the electoral campaign itself, and it concerns the management of the political debate
in the media. The public exposure of the opposition candidates and their ability to
promote their message is severely curtailed, particularly on the state-controlled
448 DE MOCR AT IZ AT ION

television. During the 2004 election campaign, the Bouteflika administration worked
hard to maintain the advantage that their official position gave them in terms of access
to the televised media. In addition, Bouteflika was able to use the state machinery to
start an informal electoral campaign months before the other candidates were allowed
to campaign. Touring all the Algerian regions, and organizing twice as many political
meetings as all the other candidates put together, Bouteflika proposed generous
regional development programmes in most circumscriptions.21 As other candidates,
and particularly Benflis, began to circumvent these obstacles by gaining access to sat-
ellite news channels based outside Algeria, the administration had to increase the
level of media censorship in the country. Significantly, they succeeded in stopping
the pro-Benflis London-based news channel Khalifa News from broadcasting to
Algeria.22 Even in the congenial international environment created by the ‘war on
terror’, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Lorne Craner, could
not help but voice his concerns to the Algerian government regarding ‘the uneven
coverage of all points of view by the public media, and an uneven political playing
field’.23 In practice, beside the practical disadvantages that this stage-management
of the information creates for the opposition to the regime, the engineering of an
information deficit in the population at large is also particularly damaging for a
post-conflict society such as Algeria, where the terms of the political debates and
the battle-lines between political factions have been drawn in very stark (and
bloody) terms.24 The lack of genuine opportunity to debate and propose a new,
more consensual, discourse on the state and governance at election times ensures
that that both opposition and government remain defined by the positions that charac-
terized the coup d’état and the civil conflict.
The third and final component of this stage-managed electoral process is simply
poll-fixing. In the 2004 election, however, the skilful combination of the first two
components of this political scheme allowed the ruling elite to avoid an undue reliance
on this last-resort tool of electoral engineering. In particular, the regime was able to
avoid the disastrous public relations exercise that took place during the 1999 presiden-
tial election, when all the candidates but one – Bouteflika – withdrew en bloc on the
eve of the poll to protest against the early poll-rigging witnessed among military per-
sonnel and conscripts.25 This does not mean that there was no electoral fraud in 2004.
In all likelihood there was, not merely because the final scores suggest it, but also
because this is the way officials in the Algerian civil administration have learnt to
deal with electoral processes over the last decade. (More precisely, the well-tried
method of providing socio-economic rewards to specific groups in exchange for politi-
cal quiescence has been harnessed to the mechanisms and cycles of an electoral
process.) Unsurprisingly, accusations of electoral fraud quickly appeared in the
national and international press, as disappointed candidates and sceptical journalists
reported on their personal experiences of the event. Although anecdotal, these
reports of fraud heightened the climate of suspicion that had been created by the
announcement of Bouteflika’s astonishingly high re-election score of 85 per cent.
Doubts were also raised concerning the turnout rate (58 per cent) in the election,
with Djaballah indicating that the number of registered voters had been propped up
by the inclusion of people who were already dead or had migrated and registered to
ALGERIA’S PSEUDO-DEMOCRATIC POLITICS 449

vote elsewhere.26 These suspicions were particularly high in electoral districts which
had been under the sway of the (now amnestied) Islamist guerrilla groups, and
where voters turned out en masse to vote for Bouteflika. (In the circumscriptions of
Djelfa, El Bayadh, Laghouat, Sidi-bel-Abbès, Témouchent, Tiaret, Tissemsilt and
Tlemcen the participation rate was over 75 per cent and Bouteflika received more
than 90 per cent of the votes.)27 The chief organizer of Benflis’ campaign also indicated
that some of their representatives had been barred access to the voting stations, and
Djaballah pointed out that over 17,000 voting stations only had representatives for
one candidate – Bouteflika.28 None the less, the 56,000 representatives that the
other candidates had in place in the other voting stations were not able to point at a
pattern of systemic fraud.29 The paucity of immediate hard evidence notwithstanding,
Ali Benflis declared immediately after the announcement of the results that he did not
endorse ‘this electoral process based on systematic fraud’.30
On this occasion, if systematic fraud there was, it was difficult to prove in practice.
Instead, the (rather few) international observers dispatched by the OSCE (five), the
European Parliament (five), the African Union (52) and the Arab League (63) to
monitor the election gave the Algerian regime a clean bill of health. Based on the
125 voting stations visited by the election observers, the Head of the OSCE
mission in Algeria, Bruce George, declared that ‘the voting process that took place
should be an example for the Arab world’.31 However, with tens of thousands of
voting stations to monitor, even with all the good will in the world, these observers
were unlikely to find out how far the process was devoid of fraud. The Head of the
delegation from the European Parliament, Pasqualina Napoletano, was more cautious
in her approach and explained that her delegation ‘is not in any way pretending to
conduct a proper and thorough electoral monitoring because it lacks the time and
the human and material resources needed to do so’.32 In the end, because of a lack
of direct evidence against it, the Algerian regime was able to ‘sell’ successfully
this election to the international community – although not necessarily to its domestic
audience. It did so by doing just enough to appear credibly committed to electoral
democracy, while not practically endangering the modus operandi of its rule.
Ultimately, probably the most relevant point to make in connection to the elec-
toral process in Algeria – from pre-electoral manoeuvring to vote-fixing – is
simply that electoral manipulation is seen by most participants as an entrenched
feature of the political system. In effect, for ordinary Algerians, it is difficult to
conceive how in a political order dominated by patronage and nepotism, the admin-
istrative apparatus could now deliver free and fair elections even if the country’s
leaders (genuinely) demanded it. This is by no means a new feature of transitions
from authoritarianism. As the literature on democratization shows abundantly, to
produce free and fair electoral contests in a situation where the population is reliably
informed of its options and all the political actors are included in a level playing field
is an intrinsically difficult task.33 Because of the way it came into being, the current
Algerian regime simply does not yet possess the skills needed to create such a politi-
cal environment – nor, some might add, the willingness. It is therefore tempting to
concur with the leader of the FFS, Hocine Aı̈t Ahmed, when he remarks regarding
the climate of political confrontation that prevails in the country, that ‘far from
450 DE MOCR AT IZ AT ION

breaking this vicious circle the presidential election is but one cog in the machinery
that maintains the status quo’.34

The Future of Pseudo-democracy in Algeria and Beyond

Common wisdom among Middle Eastern and North African specialists is that in the
medium term the best the Algerian polity can hope for is gradually to evolve into a
more sophisticated type of pseudo-democracy, such as Turkey, where tensions
between democrats, nationalists and Islamists are resolved within a relatively open
political process and where the military only intervene exceptionally to change the
rules of the game. Quandt suggests that as the current Algerian military leadership
grows older, the possibility of negotiating a ‘Chilean-style’ pacted transition
becomes more realistic.35 Today, however, it is clear that the opening up the political
system to the extent that a moderate pro-Islamic party (such as the Refah or the Justice
and Development parties in Turkey) could head the government is not something that
the current generation of military and nationalist leaders is ready to accept – princi-
pally because of their painful recent experiences with radical Islam. In this respect,
the declarations made before the 2004 presidential election by General Lamari, the
main power behind the throne at that time, that the military would respect the
choice of the people ‘even if it is Djaballah’, had to be taken with a pinch of salt
in view of the extremely low electoral prospects of the candidate of the small Islah
party.36 In practice, the Algerian ruling elite is currently not willing to take any
chance with the Islamists, as illustrated by the repeated refusals to grant legal party
recognition to the well-established associative movement led by Taleb Ibrahimi,
the Wafa. Although it is far from obvious that the Wafa could obtain a parliamentary
majority if it was allowed to compete in free and fair elections, this rebuff indicates
clearly that this is the kind of democratic gamble that Algeria’s rulers are not willing
to take (and even the eviction of Lamari from the military High Command in August
2004 and his replacement with officers close to President Bouteflika is unlikely to
change this situation). These choices are evidently a gamble on the future because
they ensure that moderate Islamists are unable to establish their political approach
as meaningful inside the Islamic movement, thereby leaving the door open for
more radical leaders from the armed wing of the movement to take the ideological
upper hand, should the socio-economic situation worsen again in the country.
Beside the existence of this short-term deadlock, there is one other important
reason to doubt the cautiously optimistic readings of the Algerian situation evoked
above. In Algeria as in many other parts of the contemporary Middle East and
North Africa where democratization has stalled, the inadequacies of the system of
electoral democracy underscore the ongoing ability of non-democratic and non-
liberal actors and practices to set the rules of the political game. As specialists of
democratization have noted in recent years, the resilience of pseudo-democracies
and other liberalized autocracies in the region strongly indicates that there exist
important causal factors that support such stable alternatives to ‘democracy-as-we-
know-it’.37 Quite demonstrably across the region, the powers-that-be have been
able to introduce democratic reforms that did not challenge their leadership over
ALGERIA’S PSEUDO-DEMOCRATIC POLITICS 451

those issues and institutions that were essential for maintaining their grip over these
polities. They also have been skilful enough to withdraw these democratic options
whenever they have had the opportunity, thereby creating an ebb and flow of political
liberalization and de-liberalization that effectively maintained the status quo in the
region.38 Thus, instead of witnessing a gradual process of democratization in the
Middle East and North Africa, what we observe is a merry-go-round of liberal and
autocratic reforms at the periphery of state power.
In this context, it is tempting to suggest that the very reason that Quandt invoked
in support of his guarded optimism about the future of democracy in Algeria –
namely Dankwart Rustow’s argument about having ‘a period of habituation to
nonviolent handovers of power from one group to another’ – is the reason why demo-
cratization does not genuinely occur in the polity.39 This apparent handover of power
is in fact mostly illusory – either because it is taking place within a selected coterie or
because it is about control over marginal aspects of state power. In any case, it does
not lead to the demos having any real say in politics through their representatives, but
instead reinforces the position of the ruling elite and their techniques of stage-man-
agement of electoral democracy. As Aı̈t Ahmed hinted in 2004, the organization of
predictably inconsequential electoral contests in Algeria is one of the main reasons
why democratization does not progress in the country.40 Worse still, while in the
late 1980s – early 1990s the Algerian populace saw elections as a means to influence
the choices of the ruling elite, it seems that at the beginning of the twenty-first century
the Algerian ruling elite succeeded in instrumentalizing elections in such a way that
they could now influence the choices of the populace. In practice, there has been no
genuine transfer of power, merely an instrumentalization of the symbols of
democratic handover.
This is worrying news, not only for Algerians but also for the states and citizens in
the rest of the region. It is disquieting because what is being fostered in Algeria today
is not a more tolerant, liberal or democratic political ethos, but a manipulative and
autocratic political order and social consensus. Certainly, the military and the nation-
alist elite have shown that they were able to keep a lid on the situation in the country –
and considering where Algeria comes from and what is happening in the rest of the
Middle East today this may not altogether be a bad thing. Indeed, this is the position
that France, one of the main international power brokers in the region, has adopted
in recent years. Increasingly the French government has been trying to deal with
the regime as it currently is rather than try to advance any formal framework for
(democratic) reform in the country. The repeated support of the French government
for Bouteflika before and after the 2004 presidential election was a means to influence
the subtle balance of power inside the Algerian military-nationalist alliance. The
warm welcome that Bouteflika received in France, and the visit of the French
President to Algiers, followed by that of his Finance Minister and of his Defence
Minister, were intended to signify to the Algerian elite that Bouteflika could
count on the political, economic and military support of France. As Michèle
Alliot-Marie, the French Defence Minister declared after Bouteflika’s re-election:
‘confronted by the new strategic dynamics that we witness today and conscious of
the need to come together in the fight against terrorism and other regional crises,
452 DE MOCR AT IZ AT ION

there comes a time when we must turn the page. This [visit] was an opportunity to turn
the page in the area of defense.’41 In effect, this symbolic gesture, which was
accompanied by more concrete talks about armament contracts, was strong enough
to tilt the balance in favour of Bouteflika’s allies in the military High Command
and led to the retirement of the powerful Chief of Staff, Mohamed Lamari, only
days later.42
Yet, this strategy of democratic ‘gradualism’ and the uneasy peace that accompa-
nies it comes at a price. Because of the exclusionary model of politics that is currently
being implemented in the country, ordinary Algerian citizens and political actors
alike have little opportunities to develop the political habits and skills that are necess-
ary for producing a functioning democracy. This point is perhaps best encapsulated in
the once fashionable saying about revolution – this process is like riding a bicycle; if
you stop moving forward you fall over. For democratization, too, there can be no such
thing as standing still. If the polity does not incrementally produce more liberal and
democratic practices, it means that what is being created and entrenched is a set of
new non-liberal and non-democratic practices. The eviction of General Lamari –
one of the main players in the 1992 coup d’état and in the repression against the
Islamists during the civil conflict – should not be seen therefore primarily as a step
towards the liberalization of the Algerian state elite, let alone as a move towards
democratization. It is mainly a move in a complex game of musical chairs still
ruled by authoritarian practices. Indeed, in conjunction with the departure of
Lamari, Bouteflika replaced the Heads of four of Algeria’s six military regions –
although, significantly, the President did not remove the powerful Heads of
Counter-Intelligence, Smain Lamari (not related to Mohammed Lamari), and of Intel-
ligence and Security, Mohamed Mediene.43 But it is worth remembering that a similar
reorganization of the military High Command already took place after Bouteflika’s
first presidential victory in 1999, without much consequence for the Algerian polity.

Conclusion
In the short to medium term, the Algerian regime has little incentive to make the
political process more inclusive in the country. A combination of favourable external
factors – the War on Terror, troubles in the Gulf – ensures that the complex pseudo-
democratic domestic arrangements that are being developed in the Algeria will not be
upset by pressures from abroad. The Algerian state has dependable financial resources
at its disposal because of high oil prices, as well as dependable political and even
military support from Europe and the United States. (An international recognition
illustrated in 2004 by the fact that Algeria obtained the vice-chairmanship of the
United Nation Counter-Terrorism Committee that was set up after 9/11 to coordinate
international efforts in the fight against terrorism). Hence, the ruling elite does not
currently need to strengthen its political institutions and power base. Instead, they
can afford to keep using their tried-and-tested methods of financial subsidies and
patronage to reward their allies, and a combination of repression and political and
economic exclusion to chastise their opponents. Tellingly, in the aftermath of
Benflis’ failed 2004 presidential bid, the FLN evicted him from the leadership of
ALGERIA’S PSEUDO-DEMOCRATIC POLITICS 453

the party and closed ranks behind Bouteflika in order to be rewarded with cabinet
positions in the new administration. Beyond these ruling circles, the patron –client
relations that still form the basis of Algerian social and political life are also being
strengthened by the regime in order to buy off social aggression in the polity. As
long as the financial situation of the Algerian state remains relatively good, due to
the oil rent, the redistributive policies that were in place during the first Bouteflika
administration will continue to be implemented. The nomination of Ahmed
Ouyahia – Prime Minister under the Zeroual presidency in 1996 –97 and leader of
the RND (the party created by Zeroual in 1997 to institutionalize his rule) – to the
post of Prime Minister in April 2004 is a good indication that the political model
that prevailed in the country in the last decade is there to stay. This is particularly
damaging for the prospects for genuine democratic reform in the country because
the opposition parties that could have helped to developed a more accountable
and representative system of political rule are being kept in a subservient role or
ignored altogether. Those pro-Islamic currents with an enduring popular appeal –
from the remains of the FIS to the Wafa movement – that have become more
pragmatic over time and that could play a significant role in reconnecting
the regime to the population are quarantined by the ruling elite for fear of a re-run
of the scenario of the early 1990s. In the meantime, the legitimacy of democracy
as a concept and system of governance in the country and in the region is slowly
but surely being eroded.

NOTES

1. Quoted in Le Monde (Paris), 17 April 2004.

2. See, for example, William B. Quandt, ‘Algeria’s Uneasy Peace’, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 2
(2002), pp. 15–23; Ray Takeyh, ‘Islamism in Algeria: A Struggle between Hope and Agony’, Middle
East Policy, Vol. X, No. 2 (2003), pp. 62 –75.
3. In the aftermath of Bouteflika’s victory, the White House issued a press release stating: ‘the President
congratulates President Bouteflika on his re-election. These elections represent another step on the road
toward democracy in Algeria. The President also congratulates the Algerian people for their dedication
to building a democratic political system’ (The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, 9 April
2004). On 3 July 2004, on Algeria’s independence day, President Bush also sent a more explicit
message of support to President Bouteflika congratulating him on the progress that the country
made toward democracy, and on the role that Algeria played in the war on terror. Large excerpts
from the letter were reprinted in the Algerian press. See El Moudjahid (Algiers), 3 July 2004;
El Watan (Algiers), 4 July 2004.
4. See Frédéric Volpi, Islam and Democracy: The Failure of Dialogue in Algeria (London: Pluto Press,
2003); Michael Willis, The Islamist Challenge in Algeria: A Political History (New York: New York
University Press, 1999); William Quandt, Between Ballots and Bullets: Algeria’s Transition from
Authoritarianism (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998); Graham Fuller, Algeria: The
Next Fundamentalist State? (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1996).
5. See William Zartman, ‘The Military in the Politics of Succession: Algeria’, in J. W. Harbeson (ed.), The
Military in African Politics (New York: Praeger, 1987), pp. 21 –47.
6. Algerian oil and gas is mainly exported to neighbouring European countries such as France, Italy and
Spain, as well as the United States. See Economist Intelligence Unit, Algeria: Country Risk (EIU:
London, 2004); Giacomo Luciani, ‘The Oil Rent, the Fiscal Crisis of the State and Democratization’,
in Ghassan Salamé (ed.), Democracy without Democrats (London: I.B. Tauris, 1994), pp. 130–155.
7. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2005 (New York: UNDP,
2005).
454 DE MOCR AT IZ AT ION

8. There is a subtext to this version of events that introduces the role of intra-elite competition within
the regime, namely, the instrumental utilization of democratic reforms by the faction led by Chadli
in order to undermine the leadership ambitions of other factions. See Michael Willis, ‘Containing
Radicalism through the Political Process in North Africa’, Mediterranean Politics, Vol. 11, No. 1
(2006), pp. 136–148. This manipulative tradition can also be seen as one of the antecedents of the
contemporary pseudo-democratic model in the country, not least because some of the political
players involved are the same.
9. Francesco Cavatorta, ‘The Failed Liberalisation of Algeria and the International Context: A Legacy of
Stable Authoritarianism’, Journal of North African Studies, Vol. 7, No. (2002), pp. 23–43.
10. Luis Martinez, The Algerian Civil War 1990– 1998, trans. J. Derrick (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2000).
11. Frédéric Volpi, ‘Democratisation and its Enemies: The Algerian Transition to Authoritarianism’, in
R. Luckham and G. Cawthra (eds), Governing Insecurity: Democratic Control of Military and Security
Establishments in Transitional Democracies (London: Zed Books, 2003), pp. 155– 180.
12. Mustafa Barth, ‘Sand Castles in the Sahara: US Military Basing in Algeria’, Review of African Political
Economy, Vol. 30, No. 98 (2003), pp. 679– 85.
13. The Senate must ratify the laws proposed by the National Assembly by a quorum of three quarters of
the chamber to grant them legislative power. Because presidential appointees constitute a third of the
Senate, they are able to block any law by acting in concert See Constitution de la République
Algérienne Démocratique et Populaire, Journal Officiel de la République Algérienne Démocratique
et Populaire, No. 76, 8 December 1996 (especially Part 2, Chapter 2, Article 120).
14. The official results are published in the Journal Officiel de la République Algérienne Démocratique et
Populaire, No. 24, 18 April 2004.
15. Robert Mortimer, ‘Islamists, Soldiers, and Democrats: The Second Algerian War’, Middle East
Journal, Vol. 50, No. 1 (1996), pp. 18–39.
16. Quandt (note 2), p. 19.
17. Interestingly, in some circumstances this balancing act can be initiated by the Islamic camp itself, as
witnessed in neighbouring Morocco where the Justice and Development Party decided not to put
forward candidates in all the electoral circumscriptions for the 2002 legislative elections, for fear of
upsetting the regime and triggering repression against its members. See Michael Willis, ‘Morocco’s
Islamists and the Legislative Elections of 2002: The Strange Case of the Party that Did Not Want to
Win’, Mediterranean Politics, Vol. 9, No. 1 (2004), pp. 53–81.
18. See the interview of the FFS spokesperson, Karim Tabbou, in L’Expression (Algiers), 13 March 2004.
19. There was a quasi-farcical episode in the run-up to the election, involving a break-in the Constitutional
Court, which led to the elimination of the candidature of Taleb Ibrahimi amid complaints of irregula-
rities voiced by the Wafa party and the press. See Le Matin (Algiers), 7 March 2004; Libération (Paris),
6 April 2004.
20. See the analysis of Daniel Schneidermann in Libération (Paris), 16 April 2004.
21. Of the 3000 or so electoral meetings that were held for this election, more than 2000 were organized by
Bouteflika’s campaign organization; the remaining five candidates between themselves did not manage
to reach half that – with Benflis coming second best with just over 600 meetings organized. See Hamid
Grine, Chronique d’une Élection Pas Comme les Autres (Algiers: Alpha Design Editions, 2004).
22. Le Matin (Algiers), 31 March 2004.
23. Quoted in The New York Times, 25 January 2004.
24. The recent example of Bosnia shows that the emergence of a new political debate is difficult to engineer
even when the international community ensures impartiality in the utilization of the national media. See
Carrie Manning and Miljenko Antic, ‘The Limits of Electoral Engineering’, Journal of Democracy
Vol. 14, No. 3 (2003), pp. 45–59.
25. In the 1999 presidential election, the official turnout was announced at over 60 per cent and Bouteflika
received over 70 per cent of the votes. Another embarrassing incident took place earlier during the 1997
parliamentary elections, when poll rigging by members of the local administration at several voting
stations was casually caught on camera by foreign TV crews covering the event. See Volpi (note 4).
26. L’Expression (Algiers), 10 April 2004.
27. See Journal Officiel de la République Algérienne Démocratique et Populaire, No. 24, 18 April 2004.
28. El Watan (Algiers), 9 April 2004.
29. L’Expression (Algiers), 10 April 2004.
30. Le Monde (Paris), 9 April 2004.
31. El Watan (Algiers), 10 April 2004.
32. Le Jeune Indépendant (Algiers), 11 April 2004.
ALGERIA’S PSEUDO-DEMOCRATIC POLITICS 455

33. The continuation of electoral fraud by political players linked to previous authoritarian regimes has
been well studied in new Latin American democracies. See Michelle M. Taylor-Robinson, ‘Old
Parties and New Democracies: Do They Bring Out the Best in One Another?’, Party Politics,
Vol. 7, No. 5 (2001), pp. 581– 604. For early trends in Algeria, see Youcef Bouandel, ‘Political
Parties and the Transition from Authoritarianism: The Case of Algeria’, Journal of Modern African
Studies, Vol. 41, No. (2003), pp. 1–22.
34. Quoted in El Watan (Algiers), 21 December 2003
35. Quandt (note 2).
36. Quoted in Le Matin (Algiers), 18 June 2003.
37. Thomas Carothers, ‘The End of the Transition Paradigm’, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 1
(2002), pp. 5–21; Larry Diamond, ‘Thinking about Hybrid Regimes’, Journal of Democracy, Vol.
13, No. 2 (2002), pp. 21 –35; Daniel Brumberg, ‘The Trap of Liberalized Autocracy’, Journal of
Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 4 (2002), pp. 46–68; Frédéric Volpi, ‘Pseudo-Democracy in the Muslim
World’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 4 (2004), pp. 1061–78.
38. See, for example, Jillian Schwedler, ‘Don’t Blink. Jordan’s Democratic Opening and Closing’, Middle
East Report Online, July 3, 2002.
39. Quandt (note 2), p. 22; Dankwart Rustow, ‘Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model’,
Comparative Politics, Vol. 2, No. 3 (1970), pp. 1033– 53.
40. El Watan (Algiers), 21 December 2003.
41. The declaration of the French Defence Minister is available at: http://www.defense.gouv.fr/actua-
lites/communiques/2004/i190704/190704.htm.
42. For the French interpretation of these developments see Libération (Paris), 14 July 2004, Le Monde
(Paris), 15 July 2004, Le Monde, 17 July 2004, Libération, 19 July 2004, Le Monde, 20 July 2004.
For an Algerian perspective see Le Quotidien d’Oran (Oran), 14 July 2004; El Watan (Algiers), 17
July 2004; Liberté (Algiers), 17 July 2004; El Watan, 18 July 2004.
43. The newly promoted Generals were Habib Chentouf (first military region), Saı̈d Bey (second region),
Saı̈d Chanegriha (third region) and Abderahmane Kamel (fifth region). In addition, General Salah
Ahmed Gaı̈d became Chief of Staff, General Ahmed Tafer was promoted Head of the Land Forces
and General Ahmed Senhadji was nominated General Secretary of the Defence Ministry. Journal
Officiel de la République Algérienne Démocratique et Populaire, No. 24, 18 April 2004.

Manuscript accepted for publication January 2006.

Address for correspondence: Frédéric Volpi, School of International Relations, University of St Andrews,
KY16 9AL, Scotland, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

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