Africa & The Middle East In this section: 32: Algeria’s ‘Revolution of Smiles’: Fighting for Democracy or Pursuing Economic Stability 34: Sudan’s Uprising: A Regional Triumph 36: Beyond Sectarian Divides: The Lebanon Protests in Perspective
Algeria’s ‘Revolution of Smiles’: Fighting for Democracy or Pursuing Economic Stability? By Nicolò Vertecchi Algeria’s “le pouvoir” – the opaque system of governance that has been in control of the country since the end of the Algerian War of Independence - is crumbling under the sledgehammer of popular protest. The straw that broke the camel’s back is the decision by 82year-old Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has been ruling the country since 1999, to run for a fifth consecutive term in the 2019 April elections. This article KCL Politics Society
will argue that Algeria’s biggest protests in 30 years are not a manifestation that the spirit of liberal democracy has awakened in people, but that the Algeria’s old clientelist regime, since the economic and oil crisis of 2014, has been unable to meet the material demands of civil society, regardless of the political nature of his government. On the contrary Algerians are turning towards nonformal means of political participation, given the ineffectiveness of the democratic process throughout the years, and their weariness with democratic principles, understood in the West as having free and fair elections. Under these circumstances, Algeria’s Arab Spring risks of becoming another chapter in the history of strong men acquiring power and imposing their will in the region. Since the acquisition of independence from French rule in 1962, the country has traditionally been run by a network of patronage, whereby the President only played a formal role, while the important matters were decided by a nexus of army chiefs, ranking officials, wealthy businessmen,
secret service officers, and older politicians, that influenced state’s decisions, by placing or removing new individuals in government, according to their needs. And yet, massive popular protests, took place only after 20 years of Bouteflika’s entourage’s rule. By looking at various statistics, it is possible to argue that people’s uprisings were a response to the economic conditions in which civilians struggled to live, and to the government’s increasing inability to meet the material needs of the civil society, rather than the nature of the formally democratic government, or the spreading of greater democratic ideals. During the 2010s Bouteflika’s policies aimed at acquiescing the people, by bolstering the economic system. This strategy worked for the government’s stability, as in 2013, according to a research conducted by Princeton University and published in the Arab Barometer, two thirds of the population rated the economy as ‘good or very good’. Protests against the undemocratic rule of the ‘pouvoir’ were very rare at this point, and mainly consisted of minor riots, known as ‘protesta’.
