Latest posts by Akram Yahiaoui (see all)
- Populism in Algeria: Negation of Politics - March 5, 2025
If one term can describe Algeria’s political system from its inception to today, it is populism. For social, cultural, and historical reasons, populism served as the ideological foundation for the national liberation movement and, later, the independent Algerian system. While the October 1988 riots seemed to signify its demise, populism merely shifted from the corridors of power to radical religious opposition.
The challenges, or even the failure, of democratization stem from the persistent influence of populism within the prevailing “political culture.” Populism, which assumes the unity of the political body—the people—clashes with democracy, as the latter institutionalizes economic and ideological differences within society, weakening the people against internal and external threats.
This article explores the foundations of Algerian populism, its relationship with neo-patrimonial logic, and why it has hindered democratization, at least temporarily.
Populism as the Negation of Politics
To begin, it is important to clarify the meaning of populism. Historically, modern populism emerged in Tsarist Russia during the second half of the 19th century. Russian populists of that era viewed the peasantry as the only true revolutionary class, aiming to preserve traditional agrarian structures against industrialization and capitalism. However, by the end of the century, as Marxism gained traction in Russia, populism waned, replaced by labor movements advocating industrial development and a transition to socialism.
Populism varies across regions, taking different forms: American populism, Latin American populism, Arab populism, etc.
In Algeria, populism perceives the “people” as the ultimate revolutionary force—a homogeneous political entity free of major divisions. The *Tripoli Program*, an ideological-political text adopted in June 1962 by the FLN (Front de libération nationale), classifies the political body as follows:
- Poor peasants: Including agricultural laborers (seasonal or permanent), sharecroppers (khammès), and small tenant farmers, alongside very small landowners.
- The proletariat: Relatively few in number, but alongside an expansive urban underclass.
- Intermediate social categories: This includes artisans, small and medium employees, civil servants, small shopkeepers, and some members of liberal professions, forming what could be described as the petty bourgeoisie. This group often actively participated in the liberation struggle by providing political cadres.
- The bourgeois class: A minor segment composed of businessmen, major traders, entrepreneurs, and a few industrialists, along with large landowners and notables of the colonial administration. These last two groups participated in the movement sporadically, either out of conviction or opportunism, except for colonial collaborators and notorious traitors.
According to the *Tripoli Program*, the “people” encompasses all Algerians except those who collaborated with colonialism. Three observations arise from this classification:
- The people are hierarchically organized, with revolutionary potential decreasing at each level. The most revolutionary are the poor peasants; the least revolutionary are colonial-era notables.
- Belonging to the political body depends on one’s stance toward the national liberation movement.
- This conception of the political body stems from the anti-colonial struggle, which sought to mobilize the entire population’s energies.
In practice, responsibilities within the FLN were assigned based on loyalty to the national cause rather than social class. The *Tripoli Program* served as ideological rhetoric, attempting to depict the Algerian revolution and its actors in a detached, idealized manner. It presented a revolutionary legitimacy rooted in the traditions of the peasantry, uniting the broader population. This narrative justified seizing power in the name of the poor peasantry while sidelining contenders from urban centers. The idealization of the peasantry reflects a power struggle—speaking for the rural poor was a means of claiming authority in their name, despite their limited capacity for political organization.
In 1962, populism became an ideological inheritance used in the power struggle. The group that seized power aligned itself symbolically with the rural poor, considered custodians of revolutionary tradition by the *Tripoli Program*. However, this alignment ignored the program’s hierarchical distinctions, which could lead to conflict. Algerian populism inherently rejects political conflict, which it views as incompatible with national unity. By denying the existence of such conflict, Algerian populism negates the essence of politics, asserting that the Algerian people are not divided by political disagreements.
Populism and Neo-Patrimonialism
In practice, populism has produced two significant effects. First, by denying political conflict, it hindered state-building efforts. Second, since 1962, it served as the ideological foundation for neo-patrimonialism.
How Populism Hindered State-Building
To understand how populism obstructed state-building, we must revisit the concept of the state and the historical conditions of its emergence. The modern state is a contingent historical construct. It constitutes a political unit in which no internal group denies its authority. This recognition, obtained through violence or consent, ensures the unity of the political community, whose boundaries it defines.
However, conflicts inevitably arise within every political community—economic, ideological, and cultural disputes among its members. The modern state acts as a superstructure that resolves these internal conflicts without undermining the community’s political unity. Moreover, the state redistributes power among various entities: regions, parliaments, the press, unions, the judiciary, etc. These powers’ legal existence stems from the permanence of conflicts, resolved through mechanisms of checks and balances.
If we accept this definition of the state, it becomes evident that populism—by denying conflict—cannot facilitate state-building. Populism presumes that the political community’s unity is inherent, as conflicts are only seen as the result of selfish collaborators serving foreign interests. Therefore, there is no need to redistribute power within the community. On the contrary, populism demands centralization and concentration of power in the hands of those who claim to represent the entire people, to reinforce the cohesion of the populace. Consequently, the head of state must also be the head of government, the party, and the military.
Populism constructs an administrative hierarchy, which it mistakenly calls a state. By doing so, it disconnects power from the population, leaving it to operate within its own self-preserving logic. When political power refuses to redistribute itself within society, it inevitably drifts toward neo-patrimonialism.
The Notion of Neo-Patrimonialism
The concept of neo-patrimonialism derives from Max Weber’s notion of patrimonialism, which he identified in medieval European monarchies. In patrimonial systems, kings viewed their kingdoms as extensions of their private domains. The boundaries between the king’s wealth and public assets were blurred, as were distinctions between private and state funds.
Western states evolved from patrimonial monarchies, which transitioned into feudal systems. In feudal systems, the power of lords counterbalanced the monarch’s authority. Over time, as civil society gained autonomy, these regimes eventually gave way to modern state structures.
In newly independent Third World countries, political groups that seized power could not explicitly declare the country as their private property, given the historical and ideological context of their emergence. These regimes could not be patrimonial in the traditional sense but instead claimed to serve a historic mission—economic and social development or socialism—which legitimized their hold on power until this mission was achieved. This phenomenon, which S. M. Eisenstadt called neo-patrimonialism, aligns with populism in that it excludes any alternative to the ruling authority.
Populism and Neo-Patrimonialism in Algeria
The historical conditions in Algeria justified neo-patrimonial practices. After a popular war, participation in the conflict conferred the right to govern public affairs on any individual. Thus, centralizing and confiscating political power became a necessity to stabilize the system and dismantle traditional allegiances—vestiges of old local or tribal powers. State and party administrations absorbed these allegiances, redirecting them toward the center, whose goal was to create political cohesion within the community.
Neo-patrimonialism was initially accepted because it guaranteed national unity. It is crucial, however, to view populism and neo-patrimonialism not as individual failings of leaders but as historical necessities shaped by broader circumstances.
The Persistence of Populism
In a way, the Islamist movement (FIS) replicated the populist model, aiming to establish a neo-patrimonial regime with new political actors. This suggests that the ideological foundations of populism and the relevance of neo-patrimonialism remain entrenched in Algerian political culture. Thirty years of independence did little to alter popular political perceptions. This marks the failure of the FLN as a liberation movement, which had aimed to dismantle the colonial system and modernize society.
Populism is a combative ideology; it serves to close ranks in the struggle against a foreign enemy by eliminating all divergences. As soon as its justification disappears, it loses its relevance and effectiveness. In Algeria, it was used after independence to legitimize the ruling power, but over the years, it became less and less effective in silencing dissent, culminating in the events of October 1988.
By demobilizing various social groups through the militarization of their social and professional organizations, by blocking social mobility through the exclusion of workers from official political life, by muzzling the press, by disconnecting power from the population, by fostering political-administrative clientelism, and by distributing political positions to servile and obsequious individuals—necessarily incompetent, immoral, and dishonest—populism degrades the entire country and presents a highly deteriorated image of the Algerian state abroad.
However, it is important to note that populism does not carry a Machiavellian intent. On the contrary, its underlying intention is a generous one, based on the naive belief that political conflict can be avoided in a given society.
From 1962 onward, Algeria adopted an economic and social policy that was formally popular, initially designed to benefit poor peasants, workers, and disadvantaged social groups. Until 1987, the populist regime prevented colonial-era farms from falling into private hands; it encouraged the development of a large public sector; it established a significant industrial base; it ensured that energy revenues were not monopolized by a comprador bourgeoisie; it democratized access to higher education, and so on. However, by trapping society within a bureaucratic straitjacket, it undermined all these achievements. The self-managed farms, which had once enriched colonial settlers, became a financial burden on the state budget due to their chronic deficits. The public sector became synonymous with waste and economic inefficiency. The industrial base that was established failed to generate returns on the investments that funded it. A growing portion of energy revenues was used to pay for food imports, meaning that it was consumed unproductively. The democratization of higher education was accompanied by a decline in academic standards. Added to this were the daily struggles of the population: low purchasing power for those with fixed incomes, the rise of massive fortunes, the housing crisis, transportation problems, the lack of cultural and recreational opportunities, and so on. All these crises were manifestations of the contradictions of populism, which drove both young and old to rise up, set fire to, and destroy public buildings in October 1988.
But how does a populist regime manage to drain a popular economic policy of its substance and degrade the economy? Let’s take the example of the economic system in which populism has caused devastation. Economic logic is inherently conflictual. The economy generates what economists call net product and what accountants refer to as added value. Net product consists of wages and profits, and it is the result of the exploitation of labor power. This outcome is achieved through pressure exerted on workers during the production process. Workers resist and negotiate their share of the net product, which takes the form of wages. However, this resistance and negotiation are carried out by legally recognized labor unions in capitalist countries.
In Algeria, populism, by denying the specificity of labor demands, refuses to recognize the autonomy of labor unions because it threatens the ideology of unanimity, which does not acknowledge the contradiction between capital and labor in Algerian society. By rejecting the existence of an autonomous labor union, populism deprives itself of a mechanism to exert pressure on workers to increase net product. Since labor demands are declared illegal, workers do not show enthusiasm in the workplace. Instead, giant billboards in factories and cities, as well as messages broadcast on radio, television, and newspapers, implore workers to increase production and productivity. Meetings, rallies, and national conferences are organized to boost production—often during working hours. To an economic law, to a labor issue, populism responds with morality. But economics is based on reciprocity, on market exchange, and this system does not operate on morality, whether populist or revolutionary. A worker will only work if there is pressure, in exchange for which he receives a wage that allows him to feed and house his family. In economics, this pressure is exerted through competition, which implies conflict, contradictions, protests, and resistance—all notions to which populism is deeply allergic.
The result of this moralistic approach to economics is the enormous deficit of state-owned enterprises, which amounted to 110 billion Algerian dinars in 1987. It is clear that this deficit is at the root of social discontent and the devaluation of the national currency. If this deficit is not addressed, the situation will become untenable because it weakens the purchasing power of those with fixed incomes, fuels the accumulation of vast fortunes, and worsens the trade deficit.
However, the experience of democratization attempted since the riots of October 1988 indicates that populism has not been defeated as a political ideology. It is as if, having deserted the spheres of power, it had taken refuge in religious opposition to perpetuate itself. Indeed, the rhetoric of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) implicitly claims the populism of the National Liberation Front (FLN), accusing it of failing to fulfill its promises of justice and social equality. Democracy is accused of dividing the social body—the people—through artificial parties. The popularity of the FIS suggests that Algeria was in search of another single party, composed of sincere and honest militants whose sincerity and honesty would be guaranteed by the fear of God.
The upheavals of Algerian political life show that democratization does not depend solely on the goodwill of the ruling elite. It necessarily requires a civic culture that permeates social relations, as well as an economic situation in which the struggle for livelihood does not become desperate for the underprivileged social classes. Indeed, economic crisis is fertile ground for demagogic one-upmanship and the perpetuation of populism, particularly religious populism, in the absence of a clear distinction between politics and a secularized social space. Since October 1988, Algeria has been stagnating in terms of economic and social transformations. The regime that emerged from independence remains in place, while the main opposition force—the Islamists—promotes a populist discourse that breaks with the fundamental principles of political freedom and citizenship. It is true that in Islamic countries, modernity must be reinvented while respecting cultural identity and the heritage of the past.
Faced with the effects of economic paralysis, the Algerian regime has thus agreed to change institutions by introducing multipartyism, hoping this would alleviate the demands placed on the state by the population. While the people perceive democracy—and its corollary, multipartyism—as greater state involvement, the ruling elite sees it as a means to end the redistributive economy (such as subsidies for imported food products and loss-making state enterprises). For some, democracy means greater state intervention; for those in power, it is a way to withdraw the state from the economic sphere in favor of market regulation. These two conceptions of political and economic organization clashed between 1988 and 1992. Having experience in governance and having learned from its developmental failures, the ruling elite was drawn to the market, expecting it to revive the economy. At the other end of the spectrum, the Islamists, bolstered by their popularity, were tempted to replicate the FLN’s model, but with religious ethics added. It was as if the Islamists reproached the FLN for failing to implement its own program and promised to do so by relying on Sharia law. This led to shifts and realignments within the ruling bloc in light of this divide. It also explains why many FLN figures (such as Belaïd Abdessalam, Taleb Ahmed, and A. Belkhadem) called on the FIS base, proposing an alliance at the expense of what they termed the “secular-assimilationists.” A whole faction of the FLN, from its leadership to its grassroots, resistant to market policies and multipartyism, was drawn to the Islamists’ religious populism, in which they saw a new political ideology.
If Algerian political life remains dominated by the conflict between a regime seeking to maintain itself by changing its economic and social policies and Islamists aiming to oust it in order to implement the same economic policy, the future of democracy is in jeopardy. However, the evolution of the confrontation has reached a point where the issue is no longer about economic policy. The annulment of the December 1991 legislative elections shifted the focus to the physical survival of the protagonists. This explains the bloody turn of events. Entrenched in their populist culture, both the military and the Islamists do not see each other as adversaries within the same political sphere but as enemies, unworthy of belonging to the people. Consequently, the duty to “purify” the people becomes a sacred obligation.
Populism in the February 22, 2019 Protest Movement
The so-called “popular movement” in Algeria was an opportunity for political and cultural elites to organize, guide, and perhaps even lead the protest marches that took place across various provinces. The movement aimed to reject a fifth term for the late President Bouteflika. However, the outcome was disappointing—the dominant force was populism, and populist rhetoric had a greater impact than the elites’ attempts to steer this “popular revolution,” if it can be called that. This raises the question: Did the elites fail in their role, whether political, media, or cultural? Or rather, why was it so difficult for them to craft a narrative that could contain the movement, while populism successfully took control and, in a way, undermined it?
Before the protests began, the political landscape in Algeria was divided between supporters and opponents of the ruling power. The authority was concentrated in the hands of a small group referred to as “the clique.” Over twenty years, Bouteflika systematically sidelined or minimized the opposition, reducing it to minor parties with little or no parliamentary representation. Algerian media often labeled these as “microscopic parties.” Through political maneuvering, Bouteflika built a loyal political elite composed of politicians, intellectuals, and academics who revolved around the ruling system. These figures benefited from political patronage, high-ranking positions, and privileges, ensuring their allegiance. They played a key role in promoting the government’s narrative through state-controlled and private media, shaping public discourse in favor of the regime.
On the other hand, opposition figures—including party leaders, former military officers, diplomats, and journalists—formed political coalitions that sought to propose reform initiatives and even called for a smooth transition of power. However, these opposition elites largely operated within closed circles, focusing on media appearances rather than grassroots engagement. They lacked a strong presence in Algeria’s provinces and failed to build a broad support base. Despite their efforts, they were unable to shake the foundations of Bouteflika’s regime, which was backed by business elites, loyal political figures, and media outlets aligned with the ruling authority.
When the government announced Bouteflika’s intention to run for a fifth term, public frustration exploded. Years of economic stagnation, social discontent, and political deadlock fueled mass protests. The movement, which initially rejected the fifth term, soon escalated into calls for the removal of the entire ruling system. Protesters took to the streets every Friday, chanting slogans that appealed to military intervention, political change, and social justice. The movement appeared spontaneous, yet it was clear that various forces were attempting to influence it.
From the start, it was unclear whether the February 22, 2019 protests were purely organic or had been orchestrated behind the scenes. The widespread frustration caused by economic hardship and political corruption likely played a role in triggering the protests. However, as the movement gained momentum, populist rhetoric took center stage. Calls for direct democracy, rejection of leadership structures, and emotional slogans dominated the discourse. Despite attempts by opposition elites to position themselves as representatives of the movement, they were largely rejected by the crowds. Public trust in political and intellectual elites had eroded, leaving a vacuum that was filled by social media influencers rather than experienced leaders.
Throughout the movement, the authorities proposed dialogue initiatives, but protesters consistently refused to be represented by any political figures. Even well-respected individuals, untainted by corruption or ties to the regime, failed to gain acceptance as spokespeople for the protests. This raised an important question: Did the public lose faith in the elites, or was populism so dominant that it overshadowed any structured leadership?
The movement ultimately became vulnerable to ideological exploitation. Islamist groups, such as the Rashad movement—linked to former members of the banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS)—and separatist factions like the MAK (Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylie), capitalized on the unrest. Both groups promoted populist rhetoric, lacking concrete political or economic visions but fueling emotions through slogans centered on identity, religion, and regionalism. Rashad’s supporters pushed Islamic-oriented slogans, while MAK activists raised the Amazigh flag, deepening ideological divisions. As ideological conflicts intensified, the unity of the movement began to fracture, and its momentum waned.
In the end, the populist discourse that had initially energized the protests contributed to their decline. Instead of progressing towards a structured democratic transition, the movement was weakened by internal divisions and external influences. The failure of political and intellectual elites to assert leadership left a void that was filled by populist figures, ultimately derailing the movement’s potential for real change.
Following this mass uprising, the Algerian system underwent internal restructuring. Bouteflika resigned, and a series of arrests targeted corrupt figures from his regime. Subsequently, a new president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, was elected, promising “New Algeria.” However, many viewed this slogan as yet another populist discourse, raising questions about whether real change had taken place or if it was merely a continuation of the old system under a new guise.
Conclusion
Populism has been at the heart of Algerian politics for decades, shaping its trajectory from independence to the present. What started as a unifying force against colonial rule gradually turned into a means of justifying centralized power and sidelining real political debate. Even when democratization seemed within reach, populism adapted, finding new voices in religious movements and protest rhetoric. The 2019 uprising was a powerful moment of collective hope, yet it too was overshadowed by the same populist patterns that have long dominated Algeria’s political landscape.
Real change will require more than just new faces in power, it demands a shift in political culture, a recognition that differences don’t threaten unity but strengthen it. As long as populism continues to reject pluralism and institutional reform, Algeria’s struggle for democracy will remain an uphill battle.
Biography
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