The International Dimension of the Failed Algerian Transition : Democracy Betrayed? [1 ed.] 9781847792778, 9780719076169

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The international dimension of the failed Algerian transition

perspectives on democratic practice

series editors: SHIRIN M. RAI and WYN GRANT With the ebbing away of the ‘third wave’ of democratisation, democratic practice is unfolding and consolidating in different ways. While state based representative democracy remains central to our understanding of the concept, we are also conscious of the importance of social movements, non-governmental organisations and governance institutions. New mechanisms of accountability are being developed, together with new ­political vocabularies to address these elements in democratic practice. The books published in this series focus on three aspects of democratic practice: analytical and normative democratic theory, including ­processes by which democratic practice can be explained and achieved; new social and protest movements, especially work with a comparative and ­international focus; and institution-building and practice, ­including ­transformations in democratic institutions in response to social and ­democratic forces. Their importance arises from the fact that they are ­concerned with key questions about how power can be more fairly ­distributed and how people can be empowered to have a greater influence on decisions that affect their lives.   This series takes forward the intellectual project of the earlier MUP series, Perspectives on Democratization. Already published Susan Buckingham and Geraldine Lievesley (eds) In the hands of women: paradigms of citizenship Bart Cammaerts Mind the gap: Internet mediated policy processes beyond the nation state Francesco Cavatorta The international dimension of the failed Algerian transition: Democracy betrayed? Katherine Fierlbeck Globalizing democracy: power, legitimacy and the interpretation of democratic ideas (2nd edn) Carina Gunnarson Cultural warfare and trust: fighting the Mafia in Palermo Jennifer S. Holmes Terrorism and democratic stability revisited (2nd edn) Anca Pusca Revolution, democratic transition and ­disillusionment: the case of Romania

The international ­dimension of the failed Algerian transition Democracy betrayed? FRANCESCO CAVATORTA

Manchester University Press Manchester and New York

distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan

Copyright © Francesco Cavatorta 2009 The right of Francesco Cavatorta to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Distributed in Canada exclusively by UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

ISBN  978 0 7190 7616 9 hardback First published 2009 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Edited and typeset by Frances Hackeson Freelance Publishing Services, Brinscall, Lancs Printed in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn

Contents

   Acknowledgements    Preface 1     2  3     4  5  6     7     8 

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Introduction: Algeria’s failed process of democratisation Regime change and international variables Explaining Algeria’s transition: the international connection The external context of the Algerian transition The external–internal linkages of the transition Islamism and democracy: international perceptions From partners to allies: the integration of authoritarian Algeria in the international system Conclusion

   Bibliography    Index

1 9 41 73 89 123 148 180 193 207

Acknowledgements

The Algerian events between 1988 and 1992 were testimony to the political vitality of the country more than twenty-five years after independence. The need and the desire for change remain just as powerful more than sixteen years after a promising process of democratisation was ended with a military coup in January 1992. This is not only true of Algeria, but for much of the Arab world where genuine democratic reform is largely absent and where the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq have further undermined the credibility of established democracies and demeaned the very concept of democracy itself. The years between 1988 and 1992 saw Algeria experiment with political pluralism and the Algerian people engaged in this with enthusiasm. This book investigates the origin of these political changes, analyses the process of democratisation and offers an explanation for the failure of democracy to consolidate in light of the external context surrounding the transition. It is often argued that transitions are purely domestic affairs, but neglecting the influence that powerful economic and political forces exercise at international level is methodologically unsound and factually wrong. No polity is completely isolated in the globalised world we live in. Analysing how international forces and actors operate, directly and indirectly, in the international system could provide a better understanding of past political phenomena in order to design better policies for the future. Over 150,000 people lost their lives during the Algerian civil war but we have few images or pictures of it, as if a war not shown on television is not a war at all. This research hopes to make a small contribution to understanding how such a dramatic loss of lives could happen.

acknowledgements

This research originates from my Ph.D. thesis, which I completed in 2004. I am indebted to a significant number of people who supported me during both the writing of the thesis and the transformation of it into this book. First of all I am indebted to the staff of the Department of Political Science at Trinity College Dublin for their help and encouragement to carry on with a thesis on a topic not much analysed. I offer my thanks in particular to my supervisor Ken Benoit, who read many drafts of this manuscript and patiently gave me useful advice. I would also like to acknowledge the helpful comments that Fred Halliday and Ron Hill made during my Ph.D. viva. Throughout my time in Trinity College I was lucky to enjoy the company of many friends, particularly Eoin O’Malley, Raj Chari (and la familia), Caroline O’Flanagan, Jane O’Mahony, Ronan Murphy, Fiachra Kennedy, Lucy Mansergh, Pat Lyons, Susanna Pearce, Maura Conway, Karen Devine, Patrick Bernhagen, Matt Kerby, Eric Shea, Mamar Merzouk, Victoria Bruce, Liam Weeks and Shiera El-Malik. A special note of thanks goes to Nat O’Connor who painstakingly read the manuscript and corrected my grammar. I am also indebted to all my current colleagues in the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University for their constant support. I am particularly indebted to Robert Elgie who allowed me a six-month research leave to finish the book. I am also very grateful to a number of colleagues who, throughout the years, offered helpful comments and advice: John Entelis at Fordham University, Lise Garon at Université de Laval, Michael Willis at Oxford University, Frédéric Volpi at St Andrews University, Vincent Durac at University College Dublin, Jeff Haynes at London Metropolitan University, Michelle Pace at the University of Birmingham, and Hakim Darbouche at the University of Liverpool. I also learned quite a bit from all of my students who were patient enough to listen to me ramble on about democratisation in the Arab world and who stopped me regularly to offer their insights. I am obviously much indebted to those who were kind enough to give me the time to ask them way too many questions about Algeria. Some asked me to omit their names and I gladly oblige. Regarding the others, I wish to thank Djiallal Malti, Paul Marie de la Gorce, Michel Rocard and Robert

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Neumann. My appreciation goes also to the personnel of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris and of the Library at the Institut de Recherches et d’ Etudes sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman in Aix-en-Provence where I spent a considerable amount of time in the summer of 2002 and the winter of 2006. Many thanks also to the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Trinity College and Dublin City University for funding provided during my research. I also acknowledge the help and patience of the editorial team at Manchester University Press. Finally, I would like to thank the Italian football team for winning the 2006 World Cup in Germany. I doubt any of them will read this book, but their success on the pitch provided much happiness to the author during the early stages of writing. None of this would have been achieved without the unwavering support of my wife Séverine, and my family in Italy, Roberta, Pietro, Tania and Alice. This book is dedicated to the memory of my father Luigi, who unfortunately was not able to see this project ­completed. Damascus, Syria

Preface

The Middle East and North Africa represent today ‘the epicentre of world crisis’ (Hinnebusch, 2003: 1) and constitute the most problematic area for international peace and stability. Scholars and policy-makers alike have identified the absence of democratic regimes in the region as the main cause for such instability. The failure of democracy to take hold in the Arab world is therefore widely perceived to be the root cause of international conflicts, economic stagnation and political violence. While such causal mechanism may be over simplistic (Dalacoura, 2005), it nevertheless correctly points to some sort of contemporary Arab ‘exceptionalism’ when it comes to the establishment of democratic governance. Such ‘exceptionalism’ however should not be confused with political, social or economic immobility, as the impact of global forces has over time considerably changed the landscape of Arab polities. In fact, up until the end of the 1980s there was nothing exceptional in the authoritarian nature of Arab regimes when compared to other regions of the world and many of the same dynamics of change that characterised most of the globe in the 1980s and early 1990s had an influence on the Middle East and North Africa as well. Thus, even before the sweeping changes in Eastern Europe took place, it was in the Arab world, notably in Tunisia and Algeria, where the third wave of democratisation seemed to find a renewed impetus. Few doubt that the significant political developments taking place in the Arab world in the late 1980s and early 1990s were partly the product of wider international forces operating at systemic level, but most analyses focused on domestic dynamics to explain those developments. Thus, the decisive impact of the international dimension in explaining such changes and the mechanisms



preface

through which external factors operated were overlooked at the time. However, recent developments in the literature on transitions (Yilmaz, 2002; Cavatorta, 2004 and 2005) and the theoretical contributions of globalisation studies have shown how crucial the international dimension can be in shaping domestic institutional, political and economic arrangements. This is particularly the case in the Middle East and North Africa, a volatile region where shared identities, the legacy of colonial rule, international conflicts and the interference of powerful external actors are extremely significant. This study examines in detail the failed Algerian transition to democracy by focusing on the surrounding international environment and how it influenced such transition. As such, this research, while concerned with the political, economic and social developments Algeria has been through since the mid-1980s, is a study of how international factors are an important part of transitology and how their inclusion into explanations of regime change can offer useful academic insights for a more comprehensive understanding of such processes. In addition, a more in-depth analysis of the Algerian case can inform both contemporary academic and policy-making issues related to the debate on democratisation and democracy promotion in the Middle East and North Africa. The progressive integration of Algeria into the international system and its acceptance as a legitimate political, economic and strategic partner is also examined because the international dimension partly explains the persistence of authoritarianism in the region since Algeria’s integration has strengthened authoritarian rule in the country rather than weakening it. In particular, an investigation of the Algerian case can shed light on the role and the influence of political Islam in international politics. Fifteen years before Hamas’s victory in the Palestinian elections of January 2006 (Hroub, 2006; Chehab, 2007) generated an academic and political storm of controversy, the Algerian Front Islamique de Salut (FIS) had won the first round of the Algerian legislative elections and was poised to take power through the ballot box. This was the first time that an Islamist party had been allowed to compete in free and fair elections in the Arab world, but a military coup prevented it from taking advantage of its electoral victory. The way in which the

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international community and Algerian political actors handled such a victory set the trend for how the relations between authoritarian Arab regimes, representatives of political Islam, liberal-minded reformers and powerful external actors were to be conducted in the future. All actors across the Arab world still refer to the ‘Algerian scenario’ and draw their own lessons from it. Almost twenty years after the Algerian liberalisation and the rise to electoral prominence of an Islamist party, the issue of how to deal with political Islam has become even more central to both academic work and policy-making. This book broadly examines Algerian political developments in the context of the international environment. Chapter 1 gives a brief account of the failed Algerian transition and identifies the main issues that arise from it. Chapter 2 outlines the research question and deals with the shortcomings of the literature on transitions to democracy. It presents a summary of explanations for the failed transition based on the pre-eminence of domestic factors and challenges the validity of such explanations due to their isolation from the wider international context. Chapter 3 provides a theoretical framework for understanding the Algerian transition based on international variables. Specifically, it is argued that there are two important dimensions along which international variables have an impact on the actions and choices of domestic actors. The first dimension is the economic basis of the state, the second is its geostrategic location. Chapter 4 looks at the external environment at the time of the transition, while Chapter 5 examines in more detail the linkages between domestic and international variables providing a dynamic explanation of their mutual influences. It argues that the amount of resources and the strategies of actions available to domestic actors are decisively dependent upon international variables and shift accordingly throughout the volatile periods of liberalisation and democratisation. Chapter 6 deals with the crucial issue of international perceptions of political Islam and Islamist movements, focusing on the role of the FIS in the political process. It teases out the different interpretations of the FIS activities and declarations, looking specifically at the impact they had on rival domestic and international actors. Chapter 7 examines the process of integration of post-1992 Algeria, an ­ostensibly authoritarian

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regime, into the international political and economic system and analyses Algeria’s role as a regional provider of stability and an ally in the war on terror. Chapter 8 draws theoretical conclusions about the influence of the international dimension in processes of regime change and regime survival.

1 Introduction: Algeria’s failed process of democratisation

Algeria’s failed transition In October 1988 Algeria experienced a seemingly sudden explosion of street violence triggered by economic and social discontent. People protested against the economic reforms the government had introduced and for a few days chaos reigned in the country. These riots were to be a turning point because they provided the opportunity for President Chadli and for the soft-liners within the regime to introduce significant political reforms resulting in an attempt to turn the country into a fully-fledged democratic state which would embrace economic liberalism (Quandt, 1998; Malti, 1999). For a few days during the month of October, the country was at a standstill due to anti-government demonstrations being held in all major cities in an explosion of generalised ras le bol. It was the biggest crisis the regime had faced since independence. Many ordinary Algerians, but the youth in particular, took to the streets and unleashed their frustration on government buildings, state-owned shops and various symbols of the regime. There were also calls for the resignation of President Chadli and for reforms that would put the country back on the course of development. The government responded to the demonstrations by calling on the Army to restore order. The Army’s intervention led to numerous deaths (some commentators put the figure at 500, others at more than 1,000) and the harsh repression seemed to strongly signal that the ruling elites were not ready to release their grip on power. However, in a rather surprising twist, the riots proved to be the beginning of a far-reaching liberalisation process. The origin and the events surrounding the riots were not as



the international dimension of the algerian transition

straightforward as it first appeared and a number of divergent explanations exist for their occurrence. Some suggested that the demonstrations and the following crackdown had been organised by conservative elements within the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) to unsettle President Chadli and undermine the economic reformers within the party and the government. Others claim that the riots had been planned to undermine the conservatives within the FLN who opposed the market-orientated reforms of the president (Bouandel, 2003). Others still claim that the riots were far from being a ‘lightning in a blue sky, but [were] the outcome of an explosive political, economic and social situation’ (Charef, 1989: 73) from genuinely concerned citizens that had been simmering since at least the summer. These views obviously clash, but what is certain is that ‘different groups – students, trade unionists, Communists and Islamists – exploited the unrest to demand substantial political reform and the dismantling of the state apparatus which allowed a tiny elite and the military to abuse Algeria in the name of the people’ (Thomson, 2000: 235–6). Thus, despite the intervention of the Army and to the surprise of many, demands for change were quite swiftly met. President Chadli announced shortly after the crackdown that radical reforms were not only necessary, but that they were already being drawn up. Chadli had hinted at the necessity of wide-ranging changes in a speech to party members just a month before the riots and he pressed ahead with his programme (Chadli, 1988).1 A new constitution was quickly drafted and took effect in February 1989. It contained numerous liberal features and its most significant aspect was the provision for the introduction of multi-party politics. The FLN ceased to be the only legal party and Algerians were permitted to form new political movements and apply for legal recognition. The government allowed the registration of most of those applying and among them was the FIS. Thus began the Algerian process of political liberalisation. For nearly three years, Algeria experienced the most open period of political freedom in its history. New political parties were formed, long-time exiled politicians came back, the press was free, civil society became very active and, crucially, local and legislative elections were held and fought quite fairly. However, the process of democratisation failed

introduction

to consolidate and the democratic experiment came to an end in January 1992 when the Army, traditionally the real wielder of power behind the scenes, staged a ‘constitutional’ coup d’état to prevent the FIS from taking control of the government following their victory in the first round of the parliamentary elections held in December 1991. Following the intervention and the creation of an unelected executive, a major crackdown on the FIS began, which in time led to a bitter civil conflict between the armed forces and Islamist armed groups. Since the beginning of the armed conflict in the spring of 1992, over 150,000 people have been killed during what Stone (1997) called the ‘agony of Algeria’. While the state was able over time to reassert its authority and defeat the insurgents, the country has been unable to revert back to a truly democratising process and it remains an authoritarian state, where the Army and the intelligence services still dominate both political and economic life behind the cover of civilian rule. Some scholars argue that the current Bouteflika presidency has been able to wrestle considerable power away from military figures (Mortimer, 2006), but others consider this ‘retreat’ of the Army only a façade change and claim that ‘Bouteflika is a fake civilian. He is a creation of the Military’ (Benchicou, 2004: 20). At the time, the Algerian transition did not really make the headlines for a number of reasons. First of all, the world was paying more attention to changes taking place in the Soviet Union, which had much greater global significance. Secondly, Algeria had been a rather closed country and there were few experts who could elaborate on the changes occurring there. Finally, Algeria belonged to an Arab world perceived in the West to be always in a state of turmoil and immune anyway to the third wave of democratisation. The Algerian political developments over the last two decades are, however, significant in so far as the country was a microcosm of all the issues that are at the forefront of international politics today. This study is therefore preoccupied with understanding a country and a conflict, which have been largely ignored until very recently, because they can provide some useful insights on today’s major debates in international politics. Moreover, when analysed, the Algerian transition and the ensuing conflict have been widely misrepresented. In fact, neglect has been a trait of most





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media coverage, but the policy community also has a biased and superficial understanding of this failed transition. In his book on Algeria, French historian Benjamin Stora (2001) pointed out that there was only one picture of the conflict that toured the world and was immediately recognisable: a woman with an empty look in her eyes crying for the death of family members. The picture of this ‘modern Madonna’ was published in 1997, five years after the beginning of the civil war. More than ten years after the publication of the picture, the country is still engulfed in political violence, authoritarian rule and depressing social conditions. This lack of attention to the transition and the conflict, to their origins and to their development has led some reputed scholars and analysts to explain it along the following lines: ‘Algeria has been torn apart by political violence emanating from radical Islamist groups bent on overthrowing the secular, military-backed government’ (Do Ceu Pinto, 1998). Such a point of departure for the analysis of the Algerian crisis, although containing some elements of truth, is nevertheless misleading. A simplification of the conflict in these terms indicates a lack of understanding of its origin, it prevents us from making informed choices about viable solutions and accepts without questions the biased interpretation of the Algerian government. In addition, it has a negative influence on how we can understand and deal with similar issues in other contexts. Looking at Algeria through the prism of regime change and through the identification of rational actors participating in a highly complex game for political power is more conducive to understanding the country’s failures than relying on simplistic explanations of ‘religious fundamentalists versus secular republicans’. Some scholars reject this approach and claim that Algeria is not a ‘democratisation problem’ (Leca, 1998), but this research will instead assume that the Algerian problem is indeed illustrative of a failed transition. In addition, it will argue that Algeria is instrumental in highlighting some of the shortcomings of the literature on transitions. In particular, transitology has refrained from dealing convincingly with the dynamics that exist between the domestic and the international spheres when accounting for the outcomes of processes of democratisation. With respect to this shortcoming, this study will link concepts from

introduction

international relations to the analytical tools of transitology. The choice of using the transition literature in combination with the international relations one is not uncontroversial, but there is a trend in the scholarship pursuing precisely this objective (Haynes, 2003). Algeria in comparative context: issues and lessons It is possible and necessary to see Algeria’s democratic experience in comparative terms with other countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). What emerges is not only the extent to which Algeria actually did democratise, but also the contemporaneous effort that a number of other countries in the MENA region made to satisfy demands for democratic governance. This seems to point to the presence of factors that all these countries needed to deal with and in particular to the profound changes taking place in the international system, ‘forcing’ them to adjust their domestic environment institutionally and economically. For the most part, these pro-democracy and pro-market economy reforms were nothing but cosmetic changes, devised as a strategy to readjust the grip of the ruling elites on the power they had. In this respect, Algeria was no different, as the initial reforms were intended as means to find renewed legitimacy for divided ruling elites. What sets Algeria apart is that these reforms quickly gathered substantial pace and led the country to become a ‘democracy’ for a few years. A quick overview of the political developments in other countries confirms that in most cases reforms failed to lead to a successful transition and the various regimes were able to survive, although in a modified form and relying on different constituencies (Schlumberger and Albrecht, 2004). In Morocco, the process of reforms initiated in 1993 by the late King Hassan II and later known as alternance is a failure and the King is still the principal decision maker (Cavatorta, 2007). In Tunisia, the transition lasted only two years, as Bin Ali, who had replaced the former ruler and who had promised a quick move towards democracy (Anderson, 1991), proceeded to hijack political power for himself and his cronies (Beau and Tuquoi, 1999). In Libya, Qadahafi introduced some reforms to give the impression of popular involvement





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in decision-making, but power stills rests with him and it is likely to be handed down to one of his sons (Vandewalle, 2006). The same can be said for both Egypt (Kassem, 2004) and Syria (Lesch, 2005). Saudi Arabia also is no exception to the trend and the creation of a Council to advise the King in the early 1990s following US and domestic pressure on the royal family did not signify any real democratic change (Basbous, 2004). It is interesting to note that the reassertion of authoritarian rule is in many ways linked to the Algerian developments and how political actors in the wider Arab world read them. Ruling regimes saw the events in Algeria as a reflection of what they might experience if liberalisation was to be pushed too far, while Islamists saw a confirmation of the appeal they might have on the masses. Algeria indirectly influenced how both sets of actors played the political game. Placing the country into comparative context reveals that Algeria is quite an ‘exceptional’ case for a number of reasons and deserves closer scrutiny. First of all, it was the first Arab country to attempt to go beyond liberalisation. Secondly, its degree of democratisation was the most substantial, leading the regime to stage ‘free and fair’ legislative elections. Thirdly, the Algerian elites were the first ones in the region to accept the risk of legalising an antagonistic and radical Islamist opposition. They may have done so in order to coopt it more easily or they may have done it in order to offset other players in the transitional game, but what remains is that they allowed an Islamist party to fully and openly partake in the political life of the country. Finally, the two electoral consultations that took place before the military coup were considered to be free and fair by most standards. The region has a strong tradition of rigged elections, but twice Algeria did not conform to the pattern and the elections produced a winner with a clear popular mandate to govern. The country is worth studying also because it is quite paradigmatic of the direct and indirect effects of an international system that was radically changing. The winding down of the Cold War had profound and obvious implications for the political actors and the countries directly involved in it, with all the readjustments that needed to be made in terms of national security, diplomatic relations and economic reforms. There were, however, significant ­ consequences for

introduction

all the regions of the globe and the Middle East and North Africa were no exception. The most significant development in this context was the acceleration of the worldwide democratising trend that had begun in the mid-1970s, which proved to be of enormous significance for Algeria and for its transition. The Algerian scenario As outlined above, when thinking about the opening up of the Algerian political system, it is difficult not to perceive the link with changes taking place outside the Arab world. Conversely, it is problematic not to look at the survival of authoritarianism in the MENA region without referring to the same international context (Ghalioun, 2004). It follows that taking into account the influence of the external environment could add valuable insights to explanations of transitions in the wider Arab world and, at the same time, it could provide better knowledge of the difficult relationship between political Islam and democracy, as the FIS democratic credibility was central to the perceptions and strategies put in place by the actors involved in the Algerian transitional game. There is very little doubt that much of the debate around the failed transition centres on this issue and this has implications for relations with political movements that found their legitimacy on Islam. A better understanding of this past experience may lead to the adoption of better strategies for democratisation in the current environment. Finally, the Algerian case has profound implications for and is instrumental in understanding issues concerning the promotion of democracy abroad. There is very little doubt that democracy is ‘triumphant’ in ideological terms in the post-Cold War period; it is a universalised value. The liberal version of it is particularly dominant and its proponents do not seem to see any alternative to it; democracy is either liberal or is not democracy. In the case of Arab countries the argument may not be so simple because how does one promote democracy when the potential beneficiary of democratic change is a political actor whose democratic credibility is at best questionable and whose liberal beliefs are almost nonexistent? This question has profound consequences for how





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we deal with current authoritarian Arab countries. Today, the contention of many Western governments is that in most Arab countries we see signs of democracy developing and taking hold because democracy is indeed universal and the MENA region will not be an exception to the trend. But is this really the case or is Claude Ake (1997: 282) correct when he points out: ‘if democracy is being universalised, it is only because it has been trivialised to the point that it is no longer threatening to power elites around the world, who may now enjoy democratic legitimacy without the notorious inconveniences of practising democracy?’ In other words, are the democratic developments of Algeria and the Arab world real or are they simply façade changes that suit the interests of both domestic elites and the international community? An in-depth examination of the Algerian transition, its ultimate failure and the post-1992 authoritarian turn in the context of the pressures coming from the external environment will hopefully provide an answer. Notes 1

For the details of his speech, see Dossiers et Documents, ‘L’Algérie à l’heure des choix’, Maghreb-Machrek, n. 122, October–December 1988.

2 Regime change and international variables

The literature on transitions to democracy emphasises three distinct clusters of explanations for their occurrence and development. The first is what we can call the ‘preconditions of democracy’, whereby countries will transit to democracy when specific economic or social conditions are satisfied. The second is preoccupied with the ‘political culture’ of the country under investigation. While the emphasis on political culture has been increasingly discredited, when it comes to analyses of the Arab world, it reasserts its strength quite forcefully. The third relies on explanations purely based on the path-dependent game between domestic actors. This chapter analyses the shortcomings of these three exclusive clusters of explanations and argues that the literature should take into much greater account the influence of international variables. While the chapter examines the preconditions of democracy and the political culture arguments, much more emphasis is placed on the political bargaining. This is due to the fact that the literature stressing the relevance of preconditions and political culture does not carry the same explanatory power as it used to. The chapter then examines in some detail the growing literature linking regime change to the international dimension through a dynamic relationship with domestic actors and offers an innovative framework through which transitions can be better understood. There is comparatively little work on the external constraints, incentives and disincentives to democratisation and it is this gap that needs to be filled. Preconditions for democracy The idea that countries attempting to transform their political system from authoritarianism to democracy have to

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rely on a number of pre-existing conditions in order to start their transition is still quite widespread. These prerequisites include a vibrant civil society, a specific level of economic development, an uncontested national unity, and/or a range of satisfactory social and economic indicators such as per capita income or rate of urbanisation. The first condition for a successful transition is held to be ‘national unity’. Sadiki (2002: 497–8) argues that ‘the conventional wisdom within development and democratisation theory has traditionally insisted on social and political, cultural, ethnic cohesiveness and unity as prerequisites for reproducible stability and democracy’. Rustow (1970: 350) claimed that his model rested precisely on the concept of national unity by which he meant that ‘the vast majority of the citizens in a democracy-to-be must have no doubt or mental reservations as to which political community they belong to’. However Sadiki (2002) convincingly points out that the vital precondition of national unity may in fact hamper the possibility of democracy taking root, because ruling elites in post-colonial societies interpret the concept of national unity very narrowly and use it to ‘engender hegemony and singularity’ (2002: 504). Thus, far from guaranteeing that democracy would benefit from this precondition, the imperative of maintaining national unity makes it possible for many post-colonial regimes to see an emerging plural civil society and a divided political field as a threat that needs to be countered rather than an opportunity to build multiple compatible identities and democratic institutions. It follows that democratic reforms are resisted precisely because of the perceived threat they pose to national unity, which then becomes a precondition for the continuation of authoritarianism. This pattern can be seen in Algeria, where national unity, rather than favouring a democratising dynamic, undermines it, as it does not permit the creation of alternative centres of allegiance from the ones the regime put in place and through which it justifies its own legitimacy in the name of representing ‘all the people’. The mythical unity displayed in the war of liberation against the French was carried forward into independent Algeria and invested in the military apparatus and in the FLN, which solidified it in the name of national unity to produce a self-legitimising and exclusivist

regime change and international variables

discourse. The symbol of that unity, the Army, felt that an Islamist government would endanger it by transforming the identity of the country and was therefore opposed to the FIS. In many ways, the mythology around national unity in postcolonial societies makes democratisation more difficult because democracy becomes a synonym for divisions. In addition to national unity, other preconditions are at times used to explain the timing and development of transitions. For instance, Lipset (1959; 1983; 1994) systematised the relationship between democracy and economic development. From his work, it emerges that wealth, industrialisation, urbanisation and education are all positively linked to democracy. Thus, it was postulated that authoritarian regimes would democratise once the above mentioned socio-economic indicators reached a specific point. In a study attempting to determine how strong the regularity between democracy and wealth is, Londregan and Poole (1996: 3) claim that ‘income has a small but statistically significant democratising effect’. However, such are the limitations of their study in terms of control variables and sampling that the results may not be so clear-cut. In addition, it is always difficult to establish whether economic success leads to democracy and a vibrant civil society or vice versa (Karl, 1990). This type of analysis applied to Algeria carries little explanatory power, as the income, education levels and urbanisation all increased dramatically post-independence, but never led to political change. Zoubir (1995: 113) claims ‘that a genuine opportunity for democratisation was missed in 1976’, but the failure to democratise at this very favourable time when socio-economic indicators were good is due to the bias against change when an authoritarian regime is performing well, invalidating therefore the claim that the increasing wealth and the expansion of the middle class inevitably lead to political pluralism. In fact, Abdelaziz Testas (2002) comes to the opposite conclusion from the one drawn by Londregan and Poole when investigating the relationships between income and democracy in Algeria. Testas argues that it is the dramatic fall in income of the mid-1980s that permitted the opening up of the political space and Martinez (1998) adds that the rise in income throughout the 1990s permitted the ruling elites not only to defeat the insurgents through an increase in the resources available for

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the conflict, but to secure the authoritarian nature of the system through redistributive policies aimed at reclaiming legitimacy and consensus. This entirely contradicts the deterministic argument about the positive relationship between increasing wealth and democracy. Sadiki (1997) had already found that it was the collapse of the d¹ˉmuqratyat alˉ˛ khbuz (democracy of bread) that led to political openings in the Arab world and not the improvement of socio-economic conditions. In addition, levels of education and urbanisation did not seem to have an impact in the Algerian case. It is usually held that the rising levels of education and the access, in particular, to third-level education for vast sections of the population positively contribute to increased demands for democratisation. In some ways this was true in Algeria as well, where the FIS exploited the frustration of ‘technocrats’ with university degrees to make demands for change by attracting them within the party’s ranks. However, such demands were only partially met and were eventually discarded when the military coup took place. There is therefore no deterministic linkage between levels of education and democratisation because the demands of the well-educated can be ignored, repressed or accommodated by the authoritarian regime. Levels of urbanisation are also deemed an important precondition for democratisation and Algeria had a significant level of urbanisation by the late 1980s, but such levels were not sufficient to bring about democracy, although they favoured the rise of democratic demands. An active and vibrant civil society is also said to be conducive to democratic change. This view became particularly important in the early days of the Eastern European transitions when democratisation seemed to be the outcome of the organisational efforts of civil society groups autonomous from the regime. However, there are strong doubts that emerge from a more in-depth analysis of both the theoretical concept of civil society and its practical application and influence. First of all, the very notion of civil society is far too contested and normative to be effective in explaining political phenomena (Encarnacion, 2006). Secondly, some scholars contend that the role of civil society in the processes of democratisation in Eastern Europe was overestimated (Carothers, 1999/2000; Tempest, 1997). More recently and probably more importantly, doubts are emerging about the

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positive impact of an active civil society in authoritarian contexts (Jamal, 2007). Thus, while there is no doubt that an active civil society contributes to the sustainability of democracy in democratic polities, Jamal argues that the dynamics of civil society under authoritarianism are entirely different. She finds that in authoritarian contexts pro-regime associations benefit vastly in material and legitimacy terms from the access they have to the regime. This increases social capital among members because significant results are obtained, but we do not witness the second-order outcomes usually witnessed in established democracies: support for democratic institutions and civic engagement. In fact, it would be counterproductive for pro-regime associations to develop support for democratic institutions as they would stand to lose out on benefits if access to decision-makers and donors were regulated through democratic norms and procedures. The other side of the equation sees anti-regime associations on the losing side, as their anti-regime stance stops them from obtaining benefits because they have no clientelistic access. Social capital is lower in these organisations, but support for democratic institutions and the level of civic engagement are much higher among members because democratic institutions would level the playing field and they would benefit from it. These findings go some way in disproving the widely held assumption that a strong civil society and high levels of social capital necessarily lead to democratisation. In the case of Algeria, an autonomous civil society did not really exist before democratisation if we exclude the FIS network of activities and organisations, and therefore civil society activism, which would be different anyway in an authoritarian context, did not seem to have much impact on the Algerian effort to democratise. Paradoxically, it was then precisely the secular and liberal civil society that had emerged during liberalisation that called quite strongly for the Army to intervene. The explanations based on the preconditions suffer from severe shortcomings, particularly due to the marginalisation of the role of agency and the over-reliance on structural trends and forces. In the case of Algeria, the focus on preconditions is not helpful in explaining why the authoritarian regime collapsed when it did or what were the causal mechanisms that triggered its demise or the subsequent attempt to liberalise the system.

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Political culture: Islam and democracy Accounts of complex political phenomena relying on political culture have been losing ground in the social sciences for a number of years. However, when it comes to the Arab world, political culture linked to religious beliefs continues to enjoy a considerable degree of popularity in explaining political behaviour and institutions. Islam as a system of beliefs and code for social and political behaviour is perceived to be highly inimical to the criteria and the requirements of a truly democratic polity. As Crystal (1994: 277) put it, ‘the conventional wisdom [is] that authoritarianism is the necessary outgrowth of Arab or Islamic traditions’. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, the linkage between Islam, violence and absence of democracy has found new vigour. In particular, the perceived inability of Islam to come to terms with liberal-democracy is often associated with the absence of secularism, which is the founding stone of liberal democracy. When state and religion cannot be separated, some form of authoritarian rule will be the outcome because religious authority will inevitably prevail since it is derived from an infallible God (Lewis, 2002; Karatnycky, 2002). According to Lewis there is an inherent and ‘natural’ undemocratic element within Islam that does not allow democracy to take root because a religion that has not been dissected by the Enlightenment is unable to question itself and remains authoritarian in its outlook and in its conception of how a society should be run. Furthermore, Islam is deeply political and it is often assumed that it requires political quietism for the good of the unity of the community of believers. Other major religions are very much concerned with individual salvation and the after-life and are not ‘interested’ in the political wellbeing of the faithful (Armstrong, 2001). Islam, on the contrary, ‘sacralises’ history and ‘the political wellbeing of the Muslim community is a matter of supreme importance’ (Armstrong, 2001: xi). Given the extreme politicisation of Islam, religious teachings become central for political organisation. It follows that the inability to see the will of the people as supreme, because only God is supreme, undermines the very foundation of a democratic polity. In addition, the presence of

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political movements in the Arab world deriving their ideology from divine revelation further complicates matters, as religion itself becomes a terrain of contestation for the correct interpretation of the word of God and, by extension, for the allegiance of the faithful masses. Analysing political institutions through ‘Islamic culture’ leads us to conceive of the vast majority of Arab citizens in two contradictory and ultimately irreconcilable ways, invalidating the explanatory power of the variable chosen. On the one hand, Arab citizens are conceived as being politically ‘quiet’ because Islam seemingly requires them to accept the rulers that Allah provides for them without discussion, rendering them silent in the face of authoritarianism so as not to upset the unity of the umma. On the other hand, they are also conceived of as being supporters of revolutionary change in the name of Islam and through the activism of radical Islamist movements, which challenge current rulers in the name of a different type of authoritarian rule, one with heavy religious undertones. In all cases and quite illogically Islam is seen to be leading to authoritarianism. In an overview of the reasons for the lack of democracy in the Arab world, Gambill (2003) is critical of the argument about political culture decisively conditioning state-society relations and empirical studies demonstrate that the absence of democracy is not linked to religious beliefs because democracy can be established in Muslim-majority countries (Stepan and Robertson, 2003). If anything, the problem of democracy seems to be an Arab one and it is Arab political culture, and specifically on its tribalism and sectarianism, that many focus on to explain authoritarian rule. Gambill however also takes issue with the concept of a specific antidemocratic Arab political culture, which privileges sectarian ties and therefore prevents the concept of citizenship from taking hold in society. Quoting Barakat, Gambill claims that ‘most Arab governments have deliberately cultivated religious, sectarian, and tribal orientations in order to legitimise their authority’ and it is this deliberate device which then undermines the notion of citizenship. This means that the casual mechanism is reversed and it is the absence of democracy that reinforces tribal links and sectarianism because rulers employ them to solidify their position. Furthermore, it is also plausible to argue that ­economic failures and the

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inability of the state to provide personal security, as is the case in post-Saddam Iraq, strengthen primordial ties even more because individuals have a powerful incentive to use them to satisfy their primary needs. There are also a number of Muslim thinkers and Islamist political movements that deny the universality of democracy and generally abhor this system of governance. They strongly argue that democracy, in so far as it allows ultimate sovereignty to the people, is not only incompatible with the main tenets of Islam, but that it is the very opposite of what Islam stands for. Gilles Kepel (2000) identifies in Sayyid Qutb, Abu’l’A’la Mawdudi and Ruhollah Khomeini the three modern radical Islamist thinkers who have been outspoken critics of democracy and who strived to conceive of and create an alternative political system. Sayyid Qutb is probably one of the most influential Islamist thinkers of the twentieth century and he is the intellectual point of reference for many Islamist movements, although ‘Qutb’s significance is defined less in terms of originality than of impact’ (Euben, 1999: 54). In his writings, it clearly emerges that democracy has very negative connotations. The reason for Qutb’s opposition to democracy is the fact that democracy puts forth the ‘idea of the sovereignty of the people, a philosophical foundation which according to Qutb diametrically opposes the philosophy of Islam, which is based on the concept of hakimiyyat allah, the sovereignty of God’ (Goddard, 2002). Qutb’s views on democracy are very clear as are the ones that Mawdudi and Khomeini also offer. A vision of a monolithic Islam, excluding any other form of authority that is not divine, characterises Qutb’s ideology and informs his thinking about democracy, which becomes an illegitimate form of rule. Qutb and the other radical scholars, however, represent only a selected view of democracy and cannot be cited as representative of the entire Islamic philosophical production about democracy. In fact, there are many other thinkers in the Muslim world who argue that democracy and Islam are not only compatible, but even inseparable. The very same religion and the very same sacred texts are cited to arrive at radically different conclusions. These scholars and ideologues point out that Islam is far from being a monolith and that it can accommodate many different perspectives and,

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more importantly, is open to multiple interpretations with the passing of time and the changing of society. For instance Abbas Mahmud Al’-Aqqad makes a rather convincing argument about the compatibility of Islam and democracy because of Islam’s strong tradition of consensus. This concept of ijma (a principle whereby if the Islamic community agrees on a particular point of law this becomes legally binding for all Muslims) is used in Al’-Aqqad’s thinking as ‘the perfect justification or precedent in Islam for elective democracy: the community decides who is to be the ruler – by consensus’ (Goddard, 2002: 7). Other concepts exist within Islam that can be used to promote and sustain democracy in opposition to the anti-democratic views of Qutb and other radicals. Thus, democracy and democratisation can be justified in ‘religious’ terms, as the Iranian philosopher Soroush argues (Wright, 2001). From this brief discussion of the philosophical relationship between Islam and democracy, it emerges quite clearly that it is impossible to determine the ‘true’ essence of Islam and of the actors that use it for political purposes. A definitive correct interpretation of religious teachings for political struggles does not and cannot exist because it is the product of the surrounding environment. Esposito (2002: 144) is correct when pointing out that ‘Islam continues today to lend itself to multiple interpretations of government; it is used to support limited democracy and dictatorship, republicanism and monarchy’. Arguing that Islam and its incompatibility with democracy is a powerful explanatory variable for the absence of democracy is misleading because it simply triggers an endless, and ultimately fruitless, debate about the true nature of Islam, when in fact such true nature cannot be defined. Interpretation of religious teachings for political purposes is in fact dependent on the surrounding social, political and economic circumstances of those who decide to interpret them. This applies also to political parties and movements that describe themselves as Islamist. While their ideology should be taken seriously (Browers, 2005), it should not be forgotten that they do not have the monopoly on the political interpretations of religious teachings. Thus, their true nature cannot be exactly pinned down and their ‘essence’ should be judged according to the activities they undertake and the choices they make. Thus, the absence of

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democracy has much more to do with the distribution of capabilities and resources between the social actors competing for political power than with the political ethos of Islam. In this context, the utilisation of primordial links to generate resources and support for one’s political activism also becomes important and goes to the detriment of other types of ties that would be better suited to build a democratic polity. In the case of Algeria specifically, the defeat of the regime ultimately did not materialise because the conflict was not really about Islam and its true nature, but about resources and how they influenced the struggle for power. When it comes to the Algerian Islamists, the decision to form a political party and to exploit the openings on offer was partly derived from the ideological influence that the Islamist thinker Malek Bennabi had on the movement (Walsh, 2007). Bennabi was a severe critic of the Algerian post-colonial political and economic development, arguing that liberal Islamism was the solution to the country’s problems, which he envisaged would sooner or later engulf Algeria. His influence on many young Islamist activists who then became prominent FIS members is very important because he argued that the best method to challenge the FLN was to adopt a political platform based on democracy and the empowerment of individuals within an Islamist context. The FIS largely adopted Bennabi’s ideological legacy and from the very beginning of the transition the party opted for democratic means of struggle. Thus, if anything, what emerges in the Algerian case is that Islam, in the party’s ideology, was closely connected to the concept of democracy and nationalism not to authoritarian rule and to Islamist internationalism. It seems therefore that the party and its political culture had democratic undertones, which should have been a significant asset in the transition process. It was ultimately not the case because political culture might not be as important as political games and resources. The domestic actors model Since the seminal study of O’Donnell and Schmitter (1986), most studies of transitions focus on the stages of the process of change and the political and social actors ‘playing the

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game of transition’. Thus, democratisation should be understood as a historical process, where ‘a variety of actors with different followings, preferences, calculations, ­resources and time horizons come to the fore during [its different] stages’ (Karl, 1990: 5). For instance, it is argued that ‘there is no transition whose beginning is not the consequence of important divisions within the authoritarian regime itself’ (O’Donnell and Schmitter, 1986: 19). Following from these divisions a number of scenarios can occur according to the legitimacy and material resources available to the different players. A confident regime for instance might be able to firmly control the process of liberalisation and steer the transition towards its most preferred outcome, which would simply lead to cosmetic changes, not to a radical systemic transformation. A process of liberalisation might however see the unexpected emergence of a strong opposition, with which the regime will be forced to negotiate its own dismissal. What is important to note is that there are a number of different types of interactions, and therefore of final outcomes, among all the actors involved, who depend on the availability of resources at their disposal to arrive at their most preferred outcome. The game of transition then largely depends on the choices that the different actors make at specific moments in time and how these choices affect the other players and the game overall. Thus, processes of democratisation are path-dependent and domestic actors play a central and exclusive role in them. It is within the context of this path-dependent and actorled model of transition that the process of failed democratisation in Algeria has been largely analysed, with scholars pointing to different moments, actors and events as the key ones in explaining the failure of the whole process. For instance, Mohand Salah Tahi puts President Chadli at the centre of his analysis of the transition (Tahi, 1992). He argues that the 1988 riots showed Chadli how discredited the FLN really was in the eyes of the majority of the population. He attempted at first to reform the party, but when the task proved to be too difficult, Chadli decided to ‘ditch’ the FLN and allowed the formation of new political parties. Ditching the FLN and opening up the political arena to competition was part of a twofold strategy: ‘to enlarge the basis of ­support

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for government policies by bringing in the parties into an alliance with the authorities and to create a rival but limited source of power that would neutralise FLN opponents of the President’ (Tahi, 1992: 398). The domestic actor model claims that, following the initial liberalisation, a dynamic of change was unleashed and different sections of the establishment began to reposition themselves according to this changed reality. In turn, liberalisation also had an impact on the growing opposition movements, which also began to think strategically about their position in the game and the one occupied by potential rivals and allies. When it comes to the ruling elites, key groups within them had different strategies and objectives. There are numerous accounts of the internal battles over the issue of what path should be followed and which moves enacted. Tahi accounts for the development of the transition by focusing on the clash within the FLN and on the inner politics of the party. In particular, attention is placed on the split between Hamrouche, who hoped to reform the party and lead his government to successfully reform the economy, and Ghozali, who instead wanted to weaken the FLN in order to gather support for his own career (Tahi, 1992: 404). Many other accounts are based on personal experiences of former ministers, generals and actors with decision-making power. One such example is Ghazi Hidouci’s work (1995). His account focuses entirely on domestic factors and identifies internal divisions among the ruling elites as the key variable that explains the whole process of transition and its failure. In particular, he details the power struggle between the Hamrouche government, of which he was a member and which President Chadli supported, and the Army. According to Hidouci the transition process cannot be understood except in the context of this constant power struggle. When the country faced its worst crisis since independence, in 1988, the elites agreed that some sort of political liberalisation was needed if the country was not to collapse into complete chaos at a time of economic crisis. There was also widespread agreement that the problems the country was facing were mostly economic and therefore intervention was needed to reform the economy in order to reclaim political legitimacy. The idea was that economic improvements would feed into the political game and steer it towards a compromise that

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all political actors could live with. The Hamrouche government, staffed with neo-liberal minded reformers, aimed to guide the country out of a planned economy towards a market economy. Hidouci argues that at this point the principal actors within the regime fell out, as the reforms were beginning to impinge on the privileges of the generals and those associated with them, who had profited for years from their position by extracting substantial economic benefits through corrupt networks within the state bureaucracy. For many of them, the real enemy was therefore not the FIS, but the Hamrouche government and the president because they intended to put a stop to these abuses, derived principally from the distribution of oil rents. The transition then became the terrain where this battle about privileges was fought. Hidouci argues that the Army manipulated the FIS and the other political parties opposed to the reforms in order to de-legitimise Hamrouche and make him fail in his reformist effort. Thus, to protect its privileges, the Army used the elections to get rid of the government and then used the coup to get rid of the FIS. Hichem Aboud (2002) largely shares this interpretation of events, although he is sceptical about Chadli’s real degree of support for Hamrouche given his involvement in such corrupt networks. A very different reading exists, however, and General Khaled Nezzar (1999), one of the executors of the military coup of January 1992, gives an entirely different personal account of the transition. Nezzar had been in agreement with Chadli over the necessity to reform the country, but the opening up of the political system had allowed an obscurantiste movement to enter politics. According to him, Chadli and the Hamrouche government wanted to manipulate the popularity of the FIS to enter into an alliance with it and survive into the new political system. The main point of Nezzar’s argument concerning the transition is that the Army was the only democratic institution in the country, or at least the only institution that acted according to the Constitution. The military intervention was therefore the necessary means of preserving the democratic liberties of the previous years from the diabolical pact between Chadli, the Hamrouche government and the FIS. Nezzar argues that the FIS leadership had been shored up willingly in order to make it a powerful ally of the presidency. In this respect, the ideological

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convergence on the content of the market-oriented reforms is an argument which Nezzar utilises to accuse Hamrouche, Chadli and the FIS of colluding to achieve a power-sharing agreement. Nezzar’s assertion has some supporters in the academic community. Henry and Springborg (2001: 115) claim: ‘the Algerian reformers had one tremendous potential source of support. They enjoyed the tacit blessings of the FIS’. The FIS had an economic doctrine that called for market reforms very similar to the ones that Hidouci was attempting to implement (al Ahnaf, Botiveau and Fregosi, 1991) and while it was publicly critical of their effects on the masses, it also drew benefits from their implementation. For instance, once in power, the bulk of the reforms would have been adopted and the party would not have had to deal with the social consequences of actions that they silently approved of. In addition, dismantling corrupt networks was also a FIS priority and on that point the Islamists and Hamrouche spoke the same language. According to Nezzar, the agreement between Chadli, Hamrouche and the FIS leadership would have allowed the FIS to implement regressive social measures to the detriment of the entire Algerian society, while Chadli would remain president and Hamrouche would run the economy. In his book, Nezzar introduces the chapter on the necessity for military intervention to disrupt the elections with the following question and answer: ‘What held Chadli, his Prime Minister and the Islamic movement represented by the FIS of Abassi and Belhadj together? Power-sharing’ (Nezzar, 1999: 173). Other accounts exist from analysts not directly involved. William Quandt (1998) provides one of the best examples. The thrust of his argument is that decision-making by political actors is what drives a transition process: ‘without accepting the notion that individual volition is everything, one still needs to be wary of over-determined explanations of politics that ignore human choice’ (1998: 7). This means analysing the strategies and objectives of the different actors. More specifically, it is important to identify the ‘errors’ they made when explaining the failed Algerian transition. Robert Mortimer (1996) focuses his attention on three sets of actors, notably the Army, the FIS and the ‘democratic’ parties, and highlights how the lack of a pact among these forces wrecked the process of democratisation. Zoubir (1995) ­ summarises

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very effectively all the main tenets of the domestic model of transition and points to very specific reasons why the transition was initiated and why it failed. There are three aspects to the initiation of the transition that Zoubir underlines. First of all, the process of liberalisation was the product of the October 1988 riots. Secondly, the reforms became central to the power struggle within the regime. Finally, ‘the reforms were intended to provide a “democratic” façade for the old state … and were not meant to usher in a new genuinely democratic one’ (1995: 117). Once again, the dynamics of liberalisation are analysed as part of the power struggle within the regime and Zoubir identifies the key moment as being the legalisation of the FIS. The legalisation of the FIS was the pinnacle of the internal dispute among the ruling elites, as they all hoped they would be able to manipulate it for their own ends. The whole process is then interpreted as an internal dispute where numerous actors participated and which ultimately failed to deliver because ‘democratisation was initiated in an undemocratic fashion and because of the absence of a democratic political culture at all levels’ (1995: 134). To explain the failure, Zoubir combines the domestic model that explains how and why liberalising reforms were initiated, and how the different domestic actors played the game with a lack of proper democratic requisites within Algerian society. All these accounts are both interesting and to a certain extent valid, but they have some severe shortcomings. The personal accounts provide very useful inside information, but are largely biased because the protagonist reads events in the context of its own position in the game. For instance, very few believe that General Nezzar carried out a military coup because of his democratic convictions. Scholarly accounts such as Mortimer’s rely on the dichotomy between the FIS and the so-called democratic parties. Such sharp distinction is however misleading, as the FIS proved its democratic credentials in practice through its participation in the elections and wanted the outcome respected, while a number of the so-called ‘democratic parties’ pushed for the Army to intervene. Explanations of events that are partially based on the erroneous distinction between Islamists and democrats are flawed because they focus on a priori ideological labelling of the actors involved and not on the path-dependent game

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itself where actors can be influenced as much by rational strategic thinking as by ideology (Cavatorta, 2007). Zoubir’s focus on the un-democratic nature of the initial liberalisation stage is also misplaced because it neglects the fact that very few authoritarian regimes initiate a transition because they are genuinely converted to democracy. Rather, democratisation, particularly in the current international context, is perceived to be the best strategy to maintain power or, at least, to survive in a new system. It is then the forces unleashed by the opening that determine the final outcome. When it comes to the issue of the absence of a political pact, Salamé (1994: 2) argues that the ‘absence of such an understanding has sometimes proven fatal to a new experiment: the Algerian case is there to demonstrate that the electoral process is easily reversible when viewed as irremediably detrimental to some significant social or political [actor]’, but concentrating on the absence of a political pact in Algeria might also not lead to a satisfactory explanation for the failure of democratisation. While it is true that ‘pacts are prone to facilitate the introduction of democratic rules because they limit the stakes for select elite actors by guaranteeing them a role in future arrangements through consensus or compromise agreements’ (Hamann, 1997: 110), their importance should not be overemphasised. For instance, pacts can be reneged on if one of the actors has sufficient resources to do so and the case of Tunisia in the early 1990s is quite instructive (Beau and Tuquoi, 1999; Anderson, 1991). The pact served the short-term interests of the new president, who solidified his position and, once firmly in control of the political process, later failed to implement what had been agreed. From this brief overview of how the domestic actor model has been applied to Algeria, it emerges that the exclusive focus on internal factors is rather limiting. While it is extremely important to analyse in detail the strategies and the choices of the domestic constituencies involved in the transition, it is also worth remembering that their preferences were not fixed nor were their strategies for action. Most of the accounts mentioned rarely consider the issue of resources available to the actors playing the game and rely instead on their ‘grand designs’. The amount of resources to play the game is not fixed, but it can shift quite considerably

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throughout the transition depending on what other actors do, including external ones. In turn, these shifts have an impact on strategies. Transitions do not occur in a vacuum and actors’ resources can be increased or decreased through their changing relationships with external providers of both material and moral resources. This leads actors to play the game differently, affecting their relationships and, eventually, the outcome of the game itself. In conclusion, the identification of the relevant domestic actors and their interactions, together with an analysis of both goals and strategies to achieve those goals, solves the problem of over-determinism and puts human agency centre stage. However, domestic actors should not be isolated from their external environment. Focusing on their actions is significant only if these actions take into account how external variables influence their strategies, objectives and, more importantly, the distribution of resources. Pollack (2002: 306) agrees with the problems one encounters by relying too strongly on the functionalist school. He argues: ‘the structural framework influencing the decisions actors make must also be taken into consideration, since the actors are notably influenced by this framework and cannot be understood without it. However, if the transition of political, economic, judicial and social structures is to be explained, it again becomes clear that a mere structural explanation is also insufficient and that recourse to the actions of actors and agencies is also unavoidable.’ Agency and structure should be seen in a dynamic relation. As Oliver Schlumberger (2000: 126) states, ‘the actor versus structure dichotomy has meanwhile given way to a more moderate debate; structures are recognised as constraints to the options of actors, while at the same time the importance of strategic actors within the limits of a given socio-economic context is accepted’. This study subscribes to this analytical framework. International variables The external environment was never accorded primacy as a key causal mechanism in studies of transition, which privileged endogenous variables. There are both compelling

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theoretical and practical/methodological reasons for this. In theoretical terms, it is difficult to clearly define what the ‘international context’ actually is. Without a specific ­definition, it becomes complicated to use it as a variable. The definitional difficulties derive from the number of diverging interpretations that can be attached to it. Furthermore, even if a definition were agreed upon, it would be complicated to establish causal mechanisms between the international context and the effects it provokes at domestic level. This is because, formally, only domestic actors are in charge of the transition process. It is domestic actors who have the legitimacy to change the institutional rules, to negotiate with each other and, eventually, to establish new political arrangements. Finally, the pace of change and the uncertainty surrounding the process are very important factors and if domestic actors can barely keep up with these problems and adjust their strategies consequently, it is believed that distant external factors cannot influence them to any significant degree. Practical difficulties compound the theoretical problems. Even if it were possible to establish a theoretically valid link between a properly defined international context and the actions domestic actors undertake, gathering the evidence is problematic. If the international context is defined loosely as ‘the forces acting at the international level and pressurising domestic actors into specific choices or behaviour’, the evidence for this might not emerge at all. We would not really know how decisions are made and, even through extensive interviews with domestic actors, they might be reluctant to admit that their choices, actions or strategies were not fully autonomous. Alternatively, we could assume that these choices are partly the product of the international context because the domestic actors take this variable on board without fully being aware of it. While this may be a way out of the problem, it is also an overly deterministic assumption that would not have evidence to back it up. If the international context is more narrowly defined as ‘the actions and policies of specific international actors’, the problem of causality is reduced, but the gathering of evidence remains a difficult task. Diplomacy takes place mostly out of the public eye; it is often secret and undocumented. Furthermore, nationstates are not the only external influence, as a ­multiplicity of actors and levels of exchange exist. Finally, the movement

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of ideas or technological developments may also be relevant, but cannot be easily operationalised as causal variables. In the case of Eastern Europe for example, the consequences of Gorbachev’s liberalising policies, the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the communist ideology are all identified as starting points for the regime changes that took place in the late 1980s across the globe. However, scholars studying these transitions do not concentrate on these elements to explain the development and outcome of democratic transitions and prefer to focus on domestic political aspects. For instance, it has been accepted quite as a matter of fact that the reforms taking place in the Soviet Union liberated a range of domestic actors in Eastern Europe from powerful constraints, but very few scholars actually attempted to dwell on the theoretical implications that such an important event could raise about international–national linkages. The international dimension was treated as a trigger and then largely forgotten about. Recent works on democratisation are challenging the centrality of domestic factors and emphasise the decisive role of external variables. The interaction between the domestic and the international realms of politics has been a constant theme throughout the literature of political science, but since the early 1990s it has gathered new pace. These studies are largely preoccupied with the construction of bridges between international relations and comparative politics, particularly in the current context of globalisation. Questions concerning the influence of international factors on the domestic political and economic structure of countries, or the impact of domestic variables on the conduct of international politics, have occupied scholars for quite some time. Thus, there is a scholarly tradition that tends to move away from explanation of political phenomena simply in terms of ‘structure and culture of the underlying society’ and attempts to find causal links that stress the ‘impact of international factors on internal political structure and process’ (Almond, 1989: 238), although there are very few studies that have dealt with the ways in which international factors impinge on regime change, with the exception of outright military invasion. Over the years, international variables were being interpreted simply as having a facilitating role in cases of successful transition, as having no impact in cases

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of failed transition or as a catalyst to the initiation of some of the transitions. Finally, when the international context was brought in more systematically, it was deemed to have a significant impact only for a limited time during a specific stage of the transition and not throughout it. Such secondary treatment is to be found in the extensive examinations of the democratisation of Southern Europe (Whitehead, 1996), Latin America (Remmer, 1986) and Africa (Bratton and Vandewalle, 1992). Hurrell (1996: 146) claims that ‘relevant approaches in the international affairs literature have nowhere dwelt as such on the question of regime change or transition’ and apart from Opello’s work on Portugal (1991) and Tovias’s study of Spain (1984), there is very little evidence of the pioneering scholars of democratisation treating the international dimension as central to regime change. Schmitter (1996: 27) admitted that, ‘one of the most confident assertions in the O’Donnell-Schmitter concluding volume to the Transitions from Authoritarian Rule project was that domestic factors play a predominant role in the transition. Not only does this fly in the face of a substantial literature … but it also seems to clash with some obvious facts surrounding the more recent transitions that have occurred in Eastern Europe’. This finding is confirmed in Whitehead’s work (1986: 31), although he later refined his early assumption and introduced the notion of ‘democracy through convergence’, admitting that ‘closer examination of southern European experiences indicates that there is often a significant international input, and that the internal-external boundary can be highly permeable’ (Whitehead, 1996: 273). With its emphasis on democratic governance, the European Union acts as a powerful constraining framework on domestic actors who wish to join the Union in order to enjoy economic benefits, but overall there is a theoretical unwillingness to construct a model that would really challenge the conventional wisdom of regime change and treat the role of international factors as crucial. In his book The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, Huntington (1991) lists a number of international variables that were identified as the main sources of change in the domestic decision-making environment. The idea is that international trends and policy shifts of the main international players are capable of gen-

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erating ­‘domestic’ outcomes in third countries. Specifically, Huntington listed five changes that ‘seem[ed] to have played significant roles in bringing about the third wave transitions in the countries where they occurred and when they occurred’ (1991: 45). These changes made their influence felt in countries with radically different domestic political arrangements and across three continents. From his study, it is quite evident that international variables were the source of domestic regime change. Shin agrees with this assumption (Shin, 1994: 153). The starting point of the analysis is, then, the international environment, but Huntington does not take his framework to the logical conclusion and, instead, reverts to explaining the development and outcome of transitions according to the traditional domestic-centred approach. The failure of Huntington’s analysis lies in the refusal to systematise how international factors might not simply be triggers that domestic actors contend with at the beginning of the transition, but powerful forces that may have a decisive impact throughout the whole process by affecting how domestic actors constantly reassess the resources available and the costs and benefits of their actions in light of international pressures, changes and reactions to their stances. Geoffrey Pridham (1991) introduced the notion of penetrated systems or systemic penetration in his attempt to deal with the international dimension. The logic behind the application of this notion is that regimes in transition are facing uncertainty and domestic actors may be tempted to seek either legitimacy or support from outside sources. If the country in transition is therefore important due to its geo-strategic or economic position, external penetration becomes a ‘formative influence on the new system’ (1991: 11). This notion of systemic penetration is useful, as it is a stronger concept than the normal permeation that affects every political system, but it fails to capture how the international context may be a decisive influence throughout the whole transitional period, from its initiation to its conclusion. Thus, a concept introduced to deal with the issue of external variables seems to be working solely at the time of regime consolidation and is unable to deal with pressures that might take place at a different stage of the transition. In his analysis, Pridham also deals with the influence of the ­international economy, which ‘may acquire an indirect

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influence both over the pre-transition phase as well as the transition process itself’ (1991: 14). However, he points out that this influence is at best indirect and there are other variables that are much more crucial, namely the policy choices and strategies of the domestic actors. Another significant contribution to this aspect of transitions to democracy has been made by Douglas Chalmers (1993). In his work on Latin America, Chalmers introduced the concept of ‘internationally based domestic actors’. This notion implies that political systems are not closed and exclusively domestic, but ‘include internationally based actors as normal parts of the system, not actors external to it’. These actors fully participate in the political life of the country and make decisions about local issues. This concept underlines the importance of analysing internationally-based actors, which have multiplied over the years thanks to the expansion of global trade and politics. The usefulness of the concept lies in the fact that it considers as international actors a multitude of entities that display autonomous behaviour and not only nation-states. These actors enjoy both access and influence in the domestic political system and use them to shape the development and the outcome of transitions. This notion of internationally-based domestic actors adds to the domestic scene other actors with their own autonomous strategies, who compete/negotiate with the domestic actors. Chalmers refers specifically to economic actors, in particular international financial institutions. Their activities are analysed very closely, but in a rather exclusive manner and the problem is therefore that their activism does not exhaust the field of ‘the international environment’. In his work on the Brazilian transition, Andrew Hurrell seems to have come closer to outlining a comprehensive theoretical explanation of transitions, incorporating different aspects of the international dimension. The usefulness of Hurrell’s model of interaction is two-fold. First of all, it includes most of the variables that had been previously studied separately. The second merit of the model is that it abandons the division between actor-led and structureled explanations. The last point is particularly important. Hurrell’s work is a very useful starting point, but the relationship between the categories employed needs to be both strengthened and deepened. The model lacks a systematic

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and more coherent link with the larger literature of international relations, where there are concepts and analytical tools that are conducive to a deeper understanding of how the different forces actually work. The absence of such a connection can be partly responsible for the ‘poor’ results that Hurrell’s model obtained when applied to the case of Brazil. In fact, while finding that ‘the broader international context has played a much greater role than is often acknowledged’ (Hurrell, 1996: 170), Hurrell agrees with Diamond and Linz (1989) in concluding that domestic factors are much more central to explanations of regime change in Latin America. Hakan Yilmaz (2002) introduced the international relations literature in his analysis and his work is very relevant for a number of reasons. First of all, the major objective of his study is precisely the ‘construct[ion of] an open model of democratic change, which accounts for the roles played by international factors in shaping the strategic calculations and policy preferences of the government and opposition actors in their struggles to prevent or promote democratic reforms’ (2002: 67). The second important contribution of Yilmaz’s work is the attempt to use theories of international relations to have a better grasp of the functioning of international variables in the domestic setting. In order to do this, he uses notions drawn from World Systems Theory and argues that the position of states in the international system has a decisive influence on how the transition will be played out. Yilmaz focuses his attention on the issue of repression versus toleration. This is one of the key problems facing countries in transition. At some point, the authoritarian leadership will inevitably be faced with the dilemma of continuing on the road of democratisation or reverting to authoritarian rule. Rational Actor Theory postulates that to make this decision, the regime will have to weigh carefully the costs and the benefits of each choice. To arrive at such a decision, the leadership will obviously try to measure the strength of the opposition and the support for it among the population. It will also consider how threatening the opposition’s arrival in power would be for the privileges and interests of the ruling elites. This is particularly true in countries where the army, and therefore the commanding officers, may be prosecuted for previous ‘crimes’ against the people. Yilmaz argues that

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this decision is not simply domestic, but it is also internationally based. Thus, two variables are introduced: the expected external costs of suppression and toleration. These two variables are functions of the position of the country in the international system and therefore of the attitude of the greater powers in the system towards it. If the leadership expects to be punished through sanctions, exclusion from international organisations, aid cuts or increased support for the opposition as a result of reverting to authoritarian rule, the costs of tolerating the democratic changes become much lower. Conversely, if the international community is perceived to be inimical to further democratic change, it is the costs of repression that are lowered. Yilmaz’s analysis is a very solid building block, but there are problems with his model as well. First of all, there is what could be defined as the ‘timing problem’. Yilmaz does not really apply his model throughout the whole transitional process and fails to capture the complexity of it by focusing only on the moment in time when the regime has to decide whether to tolerate or suppress the opposition. The transition game is not determined simply at the time of this choice between repression and continuation of reforms, but it has a number of different stages when international factors are at work. Secondly, Yilmaz seems to assume that international variables have an influence only on the regime, while the international dimension has also an influence on the opposition actors and their calculations. A third difficulty is the ‘issue problem’. Yilmaz focuses on an aspect that makes the transition seem like a clear-cut decision in the hands of the government once it has determined the effects of its actions with respect to the opposition and the international actors. While there is some truth in the claim that it is a key decision to make, it is not the only one where international actors have an impact. Equally important is, for instance, the initial decision to open up the system and the role international factors may have in ‘forcing’ regimes to do so. Finally, there is the ‘theory problem’ and World Systems Theory may not be the best choice. The first reason is that it focuses too strongly on nation-states and their actions, disregarding the existence and the likely impact of other international actors. While World Systems Theory might not per se necessarily exclude the existence of a multitude of actors on the international scene,

regime change and international variables

Yilmaz concentrates too strongly on nation-states and their policies. Furthermore, World Systems Theory’s distinction between peripheral, semi-peripheral and core states does not capture the complexity of the international system. To conclude, it emerges that a number of scholars greatly contributed to the development of the study of transitions with international variables at their core. However, for the vast majority of them, the proper locus of analysis remains the domestic sphere and specifically an actor-led explanation of the transition. Nevertheless, there are significant contributions that are made to the potential construction of a theoretical framework incorporating the decisive role of external variables. The most important theoretical development in this strand of studies on democratisations is the need to ‘import’ some concepts from the literature of international relations. At first, there seemed to be a certain reluctance to ‘contaminate’ the field of transitology with theories of international relations and this partly explains why the study of the external environment has not been systematic, depending on specific geo-strategic characteristics of the country under scrutiny. Whitehead, Pridham, Hurrell and Chalmers all deal with the international environment, but mostly limit their theoretical analysis to the period of consolidation and conclude that the international context cannot be a central explanatory variable. Huntington’s work is relevant, but he limits the use of international variables to the early stage of the transition and then relies exclusively on the domestic actor model to explain it. Yilmaz’s approach is rather different and he fully accepts the necessity of drawing from theories and concepts from IR theories. Regime change and international variables The marginalisation of the international dimension gives rise to a number of specific problems. First of all, political and economic changes within societies are never carried out in total isolation. Not only are these changes part of larger trends that can be observed at the international level, the so called structure-led changes, but there are also ‘neighbouring states with an interest in the outcome [as well as] great powers further afield who tend to become involved’ (Segal,

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1991: 31), the actor-led changes. Furthermore, states are not the only actors that may have an interest and a role to play. Other actors include multinational companies, political parties, ideological movements, international civil society groups and international organisations. Secondly, transitions influence each other and there are connections that need to be explored in more detail. The international system as such, rather than specific countries, may have considerable influence. The regional clustering of transitions and the almost synchronised timing suggest that similar patterns might exist. For instance, most countries in the Arab world went through similar processes of political and economic liberalisation at the same historical juncture in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Generally speaking, the exclusive focus on domestic factors fails to deal with the complexities of modern societies, which are shaped by significant external dynamics influencing economic and political behaviour. While it is certainly true that the inclusion of day-to-day political struggles among domestic actors is essential to any analysis of regime change, it is also important to recognise that these domestic actors are not cut off from the international realm and in fact have profound direct and indirect linkages with it. What has been so far unexplored is the degree to which the international context affects the domestic distribution of power and resources among key local actors. In an increasingly interdependent world, international pressures can affect the cost and benefit calculations of domestic actors and therefore modify their incentive structures, with consequences on the timing, development and outcome of the transition. International pressures do not always have to be conscious and direct political moves, but can also be the result of trends of political and social developments or the outcome of specific events with unintended consequences. When it comes to the domestic actors involved in the transition, their choices and strategies constantly adapt to the changing international circumstances which they also contribute to shape. Not only that, but some of the choices they make may actually be forced on them for lack of alternatives. In their work on state-formation in developing countries, Wendt and Barnett (1993) argue convincingly that ruling elites are very limited in the policy choices because of

regime change and international variables

their dependence on the international system. This might be true during regime change. Significantly, this study assumes that that the international variables that may have triggered the transition can change and therefore ‘turn’ against a positive outcome because of the feedback flow that domestic developments provide. International variables were largely understood as having a facilitating and positive effect on democratisation, omitting the possibility that, at times, the international environment might actually work against democratisation taking place. This theoretical framework abandons the inherently normative understanding of the effects of the international dimension on the success of democratisation and assumes that such effects on processes of regime change are per se neutral and can therefore also lead to negative outcomes such as the return to authoritarian rule. International factors cannot only be conceived as being a facilitator; they can also be a ‘negator’ depending on the consequences that the domestic outcome might have on the stability of the international system and on the interests of the great powers. Focusing the attention on a failed transition can provide useful insights on how transitions develop. This leads to another difference from previous work, as this study makes a more extensive use of concepts derived from international relations to make sense of how international variables influence domestic actors. It is widely recognised that the process of democratisation is like a game where different actors have diverging strategies and interests and Karl makes the case for studying ‘strategic calculations, unfolding processes, and sequential patterns that are involved in moving from one type of political regime to another’ (Karl, 1990: 5). Domestic actors all have diverging goals concerning the outcome and attempt to play the game by maximising their gains. With this in mind, their strategies and the results they can obtain depend on the amount of resources and power they can count on, but the actor-led model can only work if mediated through the understanding of constraints derived from the structure, which is partly responsible for the distribution of resources. There are therefore two parts to this: on the one hand, the game the domestic actors play takes place in an environment where information is not perfect and where mistakes occur,

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and on the other hand, the players act under the assumption that they know what they want to achieve and that they can adapt their strategies to changing circumstances, including those of an international nature. Karl (1990: 6) states that ‘the dynamics of the transition revolve around strategic interactions and tentative arrangements between actors with uncertain power resources aimed at defining who will be legitimately entitled to play in the political game’. According to the theory, external pressures can modify the structure of actors’ incentives and the distribution of power and resources among them. Thus, external pressures affect the timing, the development and the outcome of the transition. As discussed earlier in this chapter, it should be noted that the international dimension can fall into both the category of actors and that of structure depending on which scholar is using the variable. This problem of categorisation can be solved by arguing that the external environment can fall into two categories because it does have elements of both. On the one hand, the external environment is represented by international actors of a different nature who act strategically, much like domestic actors. On the other hand, it is also a combination of systemic forces which make it more like a structure that generates pressures that all actors, both domestic and international, have to deal with. The claim that strategic calculations, policy preferences and choices of the domestic actors are affected by this is quite uncontroversial at this stage, but without taking into account the international environment it would be very problematic to arrive at a convincing explanation of what happens during the transition game. The novel elements are in the timing of these external influences, in the theoretical possibility that international influences can differ in nature at different stages, and in that international influences could have a negative impact on processes of democratisation. Thus, the international element could be the variable that seals the fate of any transition. If the outcome of democratisation is likely to generate a regime that will conform to international expectations, standards and interests, it will have more chances to survive, as it will enjoy external support. If instead the outcome is likely to generate a non-conformist regime, the external environment will be less welcoming and therefore it will encourage some domestic forces

regime change and international variables

to take a different route that will ensure conformity. If the theoretical framework is valid, it follows that it is possible to analyse transitions by integrating these external pressures. At this point there are two dimensions one should consider that could determine the influence of international factors. Such dimensions will be explored in detail in Chapter 3, but they are briefly analysed here to provide the previous theoretical discussion with better specifications. It is hypothesised that a country’s role and position in the international system have a bearing on its domestic political system. Following on from Segal’s analysis (1991) on the relationship between international relations and democratic transitions, these dimensions are central to the framework under construction and to the explanation of the Algerian case. The first dimension is the extent to which the country is integrated in the international economic system and what position it occupies. The level of economic development of a country has been used to analyse at which stage of economic development a country under an authoritarian regime was ready to break with it, but it is equally important to stress that the initiation of liberalisation may be due to external forces that pressure the country to conform to an internationally-validated economic system if it is to extract benefits from it. The level of integration into the economic system makes a country more or less prone to being penetrated by outside forces and renders it more or less susceptible to changes taking place in the external environment as a whole or to the policy changes of a specific international actor. It is conceivable to assume that countries which are highly anchored to a single international market will be much more sensitive to changes taking place within that market, as it affects the entire domestic economy and the distributive policies of the government. The model of the rentier state is still useful in this context (Beblawi and Luciani, 1987), particularly because of its effects on the political system. The inherent characteristics of rentierism render the state very dependent on the external environment. If the resources for the state budget tend to come from a single source of revenue, it follows that hydrocarbons-exporting countries are subject to the fluctuations of the market, over which they have little control.

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The second dimension, along which we should determine the extent of the impact of international variables on domestic actors, is the position of the country in the international system in terms of its geopolitical environment. An analysis of the geopolitical surroundings of the country in transition is one of the keys to understanding how external actors may be involved, directly or indirectly, in the calculations and strategies of domestic actors. This involvement is not simply limited to what Yilmaz (2002: 67) describes as ‘the expected external costs of suppression and toleration in a democracypromotion environment’, but it involves many levels, such as ideology, culture and perceived threats/benefits from the transition for a range of international actors. Different actors in any given region may be affected by changes taking place in a neighbouring country and this leads to a formulation of policies and actions that aim at influencing the type of changes taking place in order to try to shape the most preferred outcome. In addition, there are issues of direct and structural pressure. Direct external pressure has to do with concrete, specific policies that external actors implement to influence the process and the domestic actors. From this, it follows that the issue of access to domestic actors is relevant. Structural external pressures also have considerable impact in that they determine the menu of choices available to those formally in charge of the transition. The international system offers a specific model of democratisation and offers a specific role in the system to the country in question. This affects the development and the outcome of the process, as it limits the choices available to domestic actors. Both types of pressure work at the same time and interact with each other. Explanations taking into account international variables should include a ‘feedback flow’. Domestic actors are not simply reactive to international variables, but attempt to influence them in order to extract benefits and improve their position. The decisions they take have repercussions at international level and re-shape the policies and shift the positions of international actors and forces. Thus, the external–internal links are not unidirectional. However, it should still be kept in mind that there might be severe imbalances in the relationships that exist. The more powerful parties have more means to influence other actors and, in the

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r­ elationships between developed and developing countries or in the relationships between international financial institutions and local bureaucrats, the balance is heavily tipped in favour of the international actors. In conclusion, there are very strong reasons for placing the international dimension centre stage when it comes to processes of democratisation and this is an emerging trend in the literature because explanations based on domestic variables are no longer satisfactory. This is particularly true for the Arab world, where the influence of external actors and forces constitutes a fundamental element in the persistence of authoritarianism (Ghalioun, 2004). When it comes to the Algerian case, the near total exclusion of international factors in explaining the failure of the transition is quite puzzling for a number of reasons. First of all, Algeria was never a totally isolated country; it entertained a close relationship with France, had important military links with the Soviet Union and was very active on the ‘third world’ scene (Malley, 1996), enjoying a considerable degree of prestige in the Arab world. In addition, Algeria’s economy was heavily connected to and integrated into the wider world market. The production and export of natural resources made Algeria a very significant player for nation-states’ strategic interests and private economic interests in two ways. On the one hand, the export of hydrocarbons made Algeria heavily susceptible to fluctuations in the international oil and gas markets. On the other hand, Algeria, using the cash from the sale of oil and gas, was a net importer of turn-key factories, technology and agricultural products and represented a significant market for a number of foreign private and public companies. Finally, the country was a major player in international organisations. It is therefore surprising that the country did not and still does not warrant much more attention in terms of its relations with the international system and the impact this might have had on domestic politics. It is true that there are works examining Algeria and the international environment, including studies on how the international community reacted to the intervention of the military during the 1992 elections (Zoubir and Bouandel, 1998), how the international community could help in solving the political conflict (Rich, 1998), how France, the US and/or Europe dealt with the ­instability

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following the beginning of the civil war (Roberts, 1995; Mortimer, 1995; Bonora-Waisman, 2003) and how domestic actors attempted to influence the perceptions and strategies of external agents (Roberts, 1998). Following the failure of the consolidation of democracy, the conflict between the authorities and the Islamic groups has also drawn attention for its strategic relevance in the context of the perceived global conflict between the West and Islam (Shirley, 1995). What is lacking, however, is a careful and systematic analysis providing an understanding of how the external environment influenced and perceived domestic forces prior, during and after the transition, leading Algeria to be now completely integrated into the dominant political and economic system despite the authoritarian nature of its current regime.

3 Explaining Algeria’s transition: the international connection

This chapter has three main objectives. First of all it aims to construct a framework of transitions that includes international variables, using theoretical assumptions drawn from international relations theories. Such framework can also help understand the subsequent role that the country under examination will play in the international system. The second objective is to specify the components of this framework. In particular, it will focus on detailing the two fundamental dimensions briefly explored in Chapter 2. The two dimensions along which countries should be categorised take into account both the economic and political-strategic aspects of the international system. Finally, the chapter will illustrate the hypotheses generated and outline the implications that derive from them. The set of hypotheses will be examined in some detail and it will be specified what evidence is needed to support or to falsify them. One of the major problems in the literature on democratisation and its use of international relations theory is its over-reliance on structural economics, particularly when it comes to the Arab world (Hamarneh, 2000; Moutadayene, 2001). What should be analysed instead are the international economic and the geostrategic dimensions together. Thus, here the focus is on the interaction between structural factors and path-dependent decision-making, which means taking tools of analysis from different theories of international relations and relating them to processes of regime change. In fact, it is important to emphasise here again that, just as domestic factors do not work in total isolation and autonomy, neither does the international context. The external and the internal are connected at a number of different levels and through a network of actors that renders it almost

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i­ mpossible to explain regime change by referring exclusively to one of the two. From the two dimensions, it is possible to derive a tentative typology of the variables at play that should be looked at. Each country is obviously different and has very specific traits that do not apply anywhere else in terms of political culture, geographic features and history, but these differences should not obscure overarching similarities derived from the fact that all countries are part of the same international environment. In general terms, it means that it is important to know where a country fits in the international economic and political system and this depends on the type of state that is involved, what functions it has in the international economy and where it is strategically and ‘diplomatically’ placed. Determining where the country is inserted in the international system is vital to understanding how domestic actors and institutions are conditioned in their strategies and their decision-making abilities. The two dimensions The first dimension that should be considered is the extent to which the country is integrated in the international economic system and what position it occupies within it. Identifying the way in which states are configured within the world economy does not imply the acceptance of the existence of a world system with a defined division of labour among states, but simply calls for the recognition of the way in which states have different resources and economic models and they participate in the world economy according to their capacities, abilities and, more relevantly, resources. In a highly interdependent economic system, it is very difficult for any country to be isolated from the global economy and be able to pursue policies independently from the constraints of the international economic system without suffering negative consequences for domestic development. The seemingly neutral notion of interdependence captures today the relations that have been formed over the course of centuries among nation-states in the economic realm. The concept of interdependence is particularly interesting because it clarifies how events originating outside a country’s

the international connection

borders may have a deep impact on it. The problem with the concept is that it presupposes a degree of equality in the relationships it creates. While it is fair to assume this exists between the European Union and the United States, it is hardly the case in the relations between developed and developing countries. In the latter case, it is probably better to utilise the concept of dependence. This is a particular problem that liberal theories face when attempting to explain international economics. In theory, the elimination of trade barriers, the opening up of markets and the possibility to freely move goods and capital should bring about widespread prosperity, but there are two very significant problems with this approach. The first is that the theory assumes that the playing field is level (enter the economics notion of ceteris paribus), while this is obviously not the case. The playing field is not and it is unlikely to ever become level because this economic theory excludes politics from its assumptions. Countries that push the hardest for opening up trade and for further liberalisation are the countries that have the most to gain from it, precisely because they are sufficiently powerful to protect their own economies and markets. It follows that poorer countries, with wide open markets and little political influence, find themselves competing with much stronger protected economies. There are of course exceptions to this trend, but they are not numerous. The second problem is that the theory of comparative advantages postulates that every country has ‘something’ to offer and can specialise into doing so, but this defies reality. In many cases, countries have similar ‘advantages’ to offer and by competing against each other, they inevitably drive down their costs of production. By doing so they attempt to undercut the competition in a race towards the bottom that leaves them vulnerable and further impoverished. Far from producing widespread wealth, increased liberalism seems to be expanding the gap between rich and poor countries and, at the same time, widening the gap between rich and poor in every society (Scott, 2001). Furthermore, the existence of international financial institutions, with their own agendas and their interests, compounds the unequal economic relations in the modern economy. Institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have a primary role in attempting to further

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integrate the economies of developing countries into the international system, and their actions have a significant domestic political impact. When such institutions intervene in developing countries to influence and even direct economic policy, they largely do not respond to and are not accountable to these countries, but are beholden to the interests of their largest shareholders and contributors. It follows that their actions seem to respond more to the needs of the developed world, because it is developed countries that control such institutions thanks to very detailed internal regulations allocating voting rights (Woods, 2001). A developing country can ignore the policy recommendations of these institutions or can attempt to stall reforms, but it does so at the risk of being excluded from the few benefits of the international trading system. Finally, the role of multinationals should not be overlooked, as they can be richer and more powerful than most developing countries. Susan Strange affirms that ‘there has been a fundamental change in the nature of diplomacy. Governments must now bargain not only with other governments, but also with firms or enterprises, while firms now bargain both with governments and with one another’ (Strange, 1992: 1). From this, it follows that firms have the resources and the ability to influence transnational relations and to exercise pressure from without. In her piece, Strange is particularly interested in looking at how their bargaining power forces states, particularly developing countries, to compete against one another by submitting to increasingly favourable conditions for firms deciding whether to relocate on their territory. Thus, the transnational firm is a powerful player on the international scene. This type of actor has its own interests to defend and promote, and it has its own resources available to ensure that it is, at the very least, listened to (Rowlands, 2001). The current debate on globalisation and its effects helps to highlight some of the issues covered here, particularly the relationship between the nation-state, international constraints and domestic policy-making power. Among the challenges that the nation-state faces in the current context of economic globalisation, the most significant one is a severe restriction on independent economic policy-­making (King and Kendall, 2004). The requirements of the world market

the international connection

dictate the economic priorities of the different countries and policy-makers need to heed these requirements if the economy is to thrive. While this should not necessarily lead one to assume that the state as an entity is ending, its role has certainly been significantly modified and some aspects of autonomy have been taken away. The degree to which states have been stripped of this autonomy largely depend on their power and ability to dictate the requirements of the global market and while no state on its own can control the process of globalisation, some states can exercise some, while others have no control at all. Some scholars argue that this is beneficial in the long term for all states participating in the global economy (Bhagwati, 2002) and therefore developing countries should embrace neo-­liberalism, while others claim that ‘the introduction of neo-liberal capitalism does not bring forth overall economic growth and prosperity’ (Zemni and Bogaert, 2007: 2) and therefore any country’s participation should be renegotiated. Irrespective, however, of the perceived costs and benefits of introducing the reforms necessary to play the game of economic globalisation, what emerges is that an increasing number of states have to take part because the economic structure in places forces this type of behaviour. Those developing states that choose to opt out find a hostile international environment and face domestic difficulties. The implication for a country undergoing regime change is that this powerful structural pull towards adopting very specific economic reforms in order to conform to the requirements of the global economy tends to direct it towards the constitution of a set of institutions and rules that permit the easy insertion of the country into the global economy. In many ways, the international economic system consigns developing countries to perform certain economic functions within it, and this internationally-sanctioned economic position has a constraining influence on domestic decision-making processes, which are far from being fully autonomous. This means that the level of integration into the economic system makes a country more or less prone to be penetrated by outside forces and renders it more or less susceptible to changes taking place in the external environment or to specific policy changes that international actors implement.

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Once the economic position is determined, it becomes clearer which country is more or less prone to feel the effects of changes at the international level. It is precisely for this reason that it is crucial that any explanation of transition ‘economically locates’ the type of country under examination. The assumption is that countries that are highly anchored to a single international market and highly dependent on the export of one commodity will be particularly sensitive to shifts taking place within that market. The result will be that international changes will have dramatic effects on the entire domestic economy. Individually, single-export developing countries have very little control over international markets and currency fluctuations. Thus, they will be much more prone to be penetrated than more developed economies. It should be highlighted that the choice of concentrating exports on one commodity is formally made through domestic decision-making processes and it is argued that the problems deriving from this choice are due to internal mismanagement or poor economic policy-making. While there is some substance to this argument, it should be noted that the ‘resource curse’ often precedes political independence. Even after formal independence, it is extremely difficult to break with past economic practices and, in trade terms, political independence does not mean economic autonomy. Singleexport countries certainly suffer from domestic mismanagement, but the so-called strategic choice of only exporting one commodity reflects the weight of past experiences and the maintenance of established patterns of trade, which influenced state-building. This is also true for oil-­exporting countries, and despite the creation of the Organisation of Petrol Exporting Countries (OPEC), Hartshorn (1996: 6) states ‘how much more effective an oil embargo imposed by importing governments could be than anything exporting governments could try’. This is because their economies are not sufficiently diversified and would not be able to withstand an embargo of importing governments. This testifies to the extreme volatility of the international market and the inability of these countries to break away from a developing model almost exclusively focused on the exploitation of natural resources. According to El-Erian (1996: 41), ‘in terms of trade, [these mineral fuels] are fifteen times more volatile

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than those of the entire set of developing countries’. When looking at countries in transition, it should be of primary importance to identify which type of state we are examining in economic terms in order to establish the links that it has with the international economic system, which incentives or disincentives it may be subjected to and which constraints affect domestic policy-making. The second dimension along which one should determine the extent of the impact of international variables on domestic actors is the position of the country in terms of its geopolitical environment. An analysis of the geopolitical and geostrategic surroundings of a country is the key to understanding how external actors may be involved, directly or indirectly, in the calculations and strategies of domestic actors. Furthermore, systemic changes might see once peripheral regions become pivotal in the new order and vice versa. Regime change thus does not simply affect domestic politics, but has profound international consequences. A new government borne out of the end of authoritarian rule may behave very differently from the previous regime and potentially affect the interests of its neighbours and of a range of international actors. The assumption is that the position of a country in the international political system has considerable impact on the perceptions and interests of external actors, which in turn will have an interest in any type of political and governmental change that might occur. The more a country occupies a prominent strategic position, the stronger the interest in it will be. A number of actors will want to influence the country towards their most preferred outcome and this influence on domestic actors should be analysed as being ‘neutral’ with respect to the final outcome of the transition. Traditionally, the literature on transition emphasises the pro-democratic influence of the international environment, which is supposed to facilitate domestic actors in their choice for democracy. This view presupposes the existence of an environment where the leading actors, state and non-state, promote democracy in the system. However, the contention here is that democracy promotion is context-dependent (Cavatorta, 2001) and that democratic outcomes are not necessarily good for stability (Turner, 2006). Liberal democracies dominate the international system

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in all of its aspects and claim that the expansion of the area of democratic peace is not only a foreign policy priority, but also the best strategy to ensure international peace and stability. However, such claims, when it comes to the specific policy promotion of democracy, hide the fact that national interests, the quest for security, the exploitative nature of the international economic system, and the rise of non-state actors are still of primary importance in international politics. The promotion of democracy by western governments, by international organisations and even by multinationals has always to contend with the geopolitical reality within which all these actors operate. Geopolitics is an important dimension of democratisation and helps explain the reasons behind the contradictory policies deriving from democracy promotion. The geographical position of a country determines the environment within which it will trade; its demography will have a bearing on economic and social development, and the natural resources it possesses or lacks will have an effect on its economics. In turn, all this has consequences for the policies that will be undertaken, and at the same time it has profound consequences for how external actors will behave. Any analysis of regime change should take into account the geopolitical environment and should not assume that a democracy-enhancing environment is in operation without seriously considering that democracy promotion can take the back seat when other considerations prevail. A useful analytical tool to understand such issues in practice is the concept of ‘pivotal’ state, an old notion adapted to the post-Cold War era. A pivotal state is defined as ‘a hot spot that could not only determine the fate of its region but also affect international stability’ (Chase, Hill and Kennedy, 1996: 33). The concept is used to denote the importance of certain nation-states with respect to the dominant actors in the system and their interests. While pivotal states are such only in the ‘eye of the beholders’, it should be highlighted that it is important to identify which states the leading actors in the system consider to be pivotal. Dramatic changes within a pivotal state are therefore monitored with much greater attention and attempts are made to influence the outcome of domestic struggles for control of the government. It follows that there are nation-states that are more important

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than others for their potential capacity to affect regional and international stability. This geostrategic dimension is very much state-centred and US-orientated, but it is possible to argue that leading European countries and the European Union also recognise the importance of pivotal states. In the current international system, both Burma and North Korea represent pivotal states for China. After having analysed separately both the economic and geostrategic dimensions, it is now possible to collapse them together. The combination of the two dimensions should be the focus of the analysis. It should be at the centre of an open framework of democratisation that does not simplistically assume that the external environment is about the promotion of democracy because the leading actors state that it is the case, but in a more nuanced environment. In this environment, other priorities also exist such as regional and international stability, which an authoritarian regime rather than a democratic one can at times best guarantee. The other point that should be emphasised is that this interaction with the external context forces choices onto domestic ­ actors. While the latter remain formally in charge, the conditions under which they operate are not entirely of their own making. For the analysis of Algeria, it is useful to look at rentierism and the geopolitics of the Mediterranean to further specify how the two dimensions work. Rentierism ‘A rentier state is defined as any state that receives a substantial portion of its income in the form of external rents’ (Shambayati, 1994: 308). According to Brynen (1992), rentier states have very specific characteristics that distinguish them from other developing countries. First of all, ‘they are extremely dependent on the export of a single resource, far more so than the general dependence of third-world economies on primary products and exports’ (Brynen, 1992: 70). Second, the rent that is accumulated is the outcome of a considerable gap between the costs of production and the price on the market. This means that when the price on the international market is high, the rents are substantial and

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vice versa. Thirdly, the oil industry does not generate much domestic employment and the vast majority of the population is really supported through the earnings of this industry. Finally, ‘the financial resources required for government allocation are not generated primarily by domestic taxation but rather are directly acquired from externally generated rents’ (1992: 71). To these four features, a fifth one can be added; most rentier states depend on the technology, investments and expertise of oil multinationals, which bring to bear considerable pressure on these states and which are very much involved in the politics of these regimes. These features have significant political implications and help explain state–society relations in many petroleum­exporting states. First of all, rentier states do not seem to need popular mobilisation for economic production. Developing states usually need to mobilise the population around an official discourse in order to motivate the masses to take part in the developmental effort. For rentier states, mobilisation of the masses is far from necessary and this makes the elites less sensitive to political pressures coming from below thanks to their financial autonomy. Second, a rentier state owes its legitimacy to an informal pact with the population, whereby economic benefits are provided in exchange for popular acquiescence. In the Middle East and North Africa this informal pact is known -˛ as the d¹-muqratiyyat al-khubz (Sadiki, 1997). According to Luciani (1994: 132), ‘whenever a state is in a position to buy consensus by distributing goods, services and income in ­exchange for little or nothing, it does not need democratic legitimation’. Thirdly, the patronage system that is instituted to distribute the rents is detrimental to the development of an autonomous civil society and creates corrupt networks for distribution of profits. Given that the only real economic activity in the country is inextricably linked to oil production and sale, there is very little room for an independent and vocal civil society to develop. The bourgeoisie of the rentier-state does not mobilise around the values of democracy because their economic benefits are derived from the state even when they operate in the private sector. It is through links with the regime and corrupt patronage that the entrepreneurial class is able to conduct profitable business.

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Finally, there is the problem of ‘no taxation, no representation’. One of the main forces behind the demand for democratic control of government had, historically, to do with the demand for control on how the taxes levied on the general population were allocated by the central authority. No proper state building can take place without a fiscal policy and ultimately it is this policy that generates pressures from below for control of the revenues raised through taxes. The great bulk of the activities that most modern states carry out are financed through taxation, but in rentier states this is not the case, as government spending is almost entirely financed through external rents. Superficially, it might seem that the levels of taxation in rentier states are similar to those found in other countries, but on closer inspection it emerges that ‘whereas direct taxes on individual incomes are typically some 10 per cent of GDP in Europe, in the MENA they tend to be much less’ (Henry and Springborg, 2001: 78). This means that demands for accountability cannot be particularly strong. Thus, the political realm is to a large extent the ‘product’ of these economic arrangements and Larbi Sadiki (1997: 134) emphasises that ‘petrodollars have endowed the Arab state with an independent resource to cement and reproduce itself … [and that] petrodollars have enabled power holders to assert their authority by expanding state involvement in all socio-economic spheres’. The isolation from the masses due to rents shields the ruling elite from popular pressure. It is fair to highlight that there are a number of critics of rentierism, who do not subscribe to the theoretical expectations. Some highlight that rentier states are very different from each other and therefore experience different dynamics when it comes to the distribution of oil resources (Garon, 1994). Others question the validity of the ‘no taxation, no representation’ applicability, particularly when examined in historical perspective (Herb, 2005). According to this literature, it is therefore not true that rentierism always promotes the political quietism of the masses and by implication sustains the absence of democracy. However, rentierism is still a powerful explanation for the persistence of authoritarian rule and the ‘resource curse’ is still very much valid (Dauderstädt and Schildberg, 2006), otherwise it would be extremely difficult to explain why so few rentier countries

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are genuinely democratic. What emerge as the most important traits of a rentier state are the extent of the dependency and the changing prices. The dependency on the international market of hydrocarbons renders rentier states very susceptible to market fluctuations because they have very little control over prices and these fluctuations strongly influence the amount of revenues available to their governments. In turn, the amount of revenues from hydrocarbons has a profound impact on society in general, as their distribution is a key political tool. The oscillations in the amount of revenues available from rents has significant political consequences and Okruhlik (1999) argues that the emergence of opposition in rentier states is indeed likely, particularly when rents diminish. Much as in Okruhlik’s argument, Luciani recognises that a fiscal crisis in the rentier state quickly generates pressures for political change, as the informal pact has been broken. Once a regime has built most of its political legitimacy around the provision of social and economic goods, it is very difficult for it to remain legitimate if these benefits fail to continue. Conversely, when oil prices are high and revenues considerable, the rentier state can revert back to the unspoken social pact and survive unchallenged. To conclude, the position of a country in the international economic system is of primary importance if we are to understand how the external environment can have an impact on its domestic political decision-making. When it comes to the Arab world, rentierism is a useful category, as ‘the strength and relative domestic autonomy of the Arab state stems from dependence on external oil revenue’ (Sadiki, 1997: 134). The geopolitics of the Mediterranean The second dimension is preoccupied with identifying the geopolitical and geostrategic environment. Geopolitics has been on the wane for some time, but it can provide useful insights into how the surrounding environment stimulates, perceives and treats changes taking place in neighbouring countries. Any country is subject to geopolitical constraints and ‘location, distance, and the distribution of resources have

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significant influences on international relations’ (Braden and Shelly, 2000: 5). Thus states’ foreign policies need to be analysed to see how they may influence the origin, development and ending of a transition. This does not mean that states are the only protagonists of international politics and so the interests of non-state actors will also be examined. In the case of Algeria, the focus should be on the Mediterranean. The single greatest factor in determining the regional foreign policies of Mediterranean countries is the assumption that the Mediterranean represents a fracture zone. Anderson and French (1994: 9) argue that countries in the region accept ‘the existence of a global North-South fracture zone, which is perhaps most clearly demarcated as a boundary down the centre of the Mediterranean’. The differences in demography, governance, resources and level of economic development between the two sides of the Mediterranean are even starker today. This geographic divide has multiple dimensions, which in turn impinge on the policies to be implemented. Thus, geopolitical factors are relevant in narrowing the policy options open to the states in the area. In the case of the Mediterranean, there is no doubt that its ‘strategic location as a funnel for major oil routes’ (King, 1998: 118) makes the area a region of vital importance for numerous countries and today, with the ‘war on terror’, the countries on the southern bank have acquired increased significance. This North–South separation has a number of aspects. First of all, the strategic importance of the region in terms of energy resources gains even more relevance when the economic development of beneficiaries is compared to the poor domestic economic situation of the exporting states. In the current context of scarcity and increased competition for energy resources, the oil and gas producing countries become very important actors. Secondly, Maghreb countries in particular are geographically constrained by the Sahara desert to look to southern Europe for trade, migration opportunities and political recognition. This geography renders them heavily dependent on Europe and United States, both global actors, for trade, legitimacy and cooperation. Thirdly, demographic data reinforce the economic divide. As the population of southern Europe decreases, Maghreb demography is still on the rise. Birth rates are high, the population is young but

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prospects for employment and social advancement are bleak due to harsh economic difficulties. With scarce employment opportunities, migration is for many the only way out of a desperate economic situation. For those who stay behind, the attraction of political radicalism increases. Finally, the Mediterranean represents a profound cultural divide due to the presence of Islam, Christianity and Secularism. There are deeply rooted fears about a Western cultural takeover in Arab countries and this fear is reciprocated in the West where Islam is perceived as inimical to Western values. In addition, the fear of Islamist movements coming to power in the region has been a preoccupation for Western policy­makers since the Iranian revolution of 1979. The geopolitics of the region has therefore had a considerable impact on how prominent Mediterranean states, and the US as a global power, think about their security and on how they attempt to pursue their national interests. On one bank, the countries of southern Europe and also the United States have a very restricted vision of what stability and security are and how they should be achieved. On the other bank, there are authoritarian leaders who govern countries that are economically weak and socially atomised. The main objective of the ruling elites is to remain solidly in power and enjoy the benefits of globalisation, while the vast majority of the population struggles to eke out a decent existence. The European Union, through the Euro-Med Partnership and the European Neighbourhood Policy, is rhetorically committed to improve the social, political and economic conditions of the countries on the southern bank, but such policies so far failed to deliver (Youngs, 2003; Echague and Youngs, 2005) because the EU seems to be more interested in security, stability and advancement of its own economic interests than in change. Current authoritarian leaders guarantee such stability and influence to the EU countries, which have little interest in promoting democratisation and equitable economic exchanges. The current war on terror simply reinforced the ties with such regimes (Del Sarto and Schumacher, 2005), as European countries need their intelligence and repressive services to fight radical Islamism. When it comes to the United States, the area has always represented a primary interest due its strategic location in terms of access to natural resources and more recently for the role that radical Islam

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plays in it. It is not a coincidence that Algeria has been defined as pivotal state, whose fate is of extreme relevance to US policy-makers (Quandt, 1998). Twenty years after the beginning of the Algerian transition, the region remains even more vital for the United States and the Middle East and North Africa represent the most significant area of political, military and economic engagement for the United States. In conclusion, Algeria and its neighbours always had geostrategic relevance for the United States when the country was locked in the Cold War, but their significance increased considerably after the end of the Cold War due to the emergence of political Islam and to the war on terror begun in 2001. In more general terms, this discussion about the geopolitics of the Mediterranean points to the existence of a ‘differentiation’ among nation-states in terms of their international importance, at least in the eyes of the leading actors in the system. It follows that domestic developments in these countries will inevitably attract more attention than events in countries with little strategic significance. It follows that external actors promote policies aimed at influencing developments in these key countries in order to arrive at an outcome that would strengthen their interests. While the preceding discussion points to the predominance of state actors as the primary players, this does not exclude non-state actors from playing the same type of game. For instance, the Mediterranean is a ‘priority’ for many hydrocarbon multinationals, which have invested heavily in the region. Specifically, Algeria and Libya have large areas of territory that have not been thoroughly explored and that could yield massive discoveries of oil and gas reserves, as recent exploration work conducted by British Petroleum (BP) demonstrated.1 As highlighted by John Imle Jr. (1999: 266), ‘global energy companies tend to be among the first foreign investors in a country or region’ and this is certainly the case in the Mediterranean. The enormous needs for natural resources of India and China has heightened the stakes for companies in the oil and gas market and increased the strategic importance of countries with potentially vast untapped sources. What is true for multinationals could also be true for other non-state actors and movements. The southern bank of the Mediterranean, with the exception of Egypt, had never been

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considered a hotbed of fundamentalism, but the penetration of radical Islam in Algeria, and subsequently in Morocco and Tunisia, changed this perception. Radical Islam is, to a certain degree, an international ideological movement that crosses traditional state boundaries and is considered today the greatest threat to international peace and stability. The al-Qaeda brand has arrived in the Maghreb and is internationalising issues and struggles which sectors of the population are sensitive to. The variables Having outlined the reasons why the international economic and the geopolitical dimensions should be taken into account and having placed them at the centre of the explanation, it should be detailed which specific variables are at play in such a framework. The model identifies three types of variables. Within each variable, there is then a sub-set of more specific propositions. The first type of variable is ‘external shocks’, meaning fortuitous events that take place at international level and that influence the domestic actors by forcing them to re-­­evaluate their position, their resources and their role. While the process is explained through path-dependency and the focus is on agents, agency cannot be entirely separated from structure. External shocks are the ‘context’ within which decision-making takes place. Such shocks are beyond the control of the country under scrutiny and can be seen as triggers of choices and strategies that would have not been undertaken without their occurrence. These events may take place along one of the two dimensions previously outlined. The second variable is the ‘direct active policies’ of international actors that have an interest in the country and, specifically, an interest in the regime and policies that the regime adopts. These external actors are not only other states. There are non-state actors operating on the international stage and they are both autonomous and independent from state actors. The third variable is ‘larger trends’ in the international system, constraining the timing and the type of development of political changes. Some have labelled this the zeitgeist or

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the spirit of the times. While it is a difficult concept to operationalise, it is possible to identify trends in international politics that are prevalent at different times. We can look at these factors as concentric circles of pressure. Larger trends are long-term and remain reasonably constant and therefore difficult to avoid. However, this does not mean that the fate of a transition is determined by these structural trends, as external shocks can lead the country in a different direction. In the end it is actors, domestic and international, who make choices. Within each variable, there are sub-variables that will be outlined. External shocks Looking at the category of ‘external shocks’ it emerges that there were five separate events that were beyond the control of countries across the globe in the years of and following the Algerian transition. The first of these events were the massive decreases of the price of oil and gas on international markets in 1985/86 and the drastic changes in the value of the US dollar. This, coupled with the debt crisis of many developing countries in the late 1980s, had very profound repercussions on the international economic system. The consequences of this economic crisis at the global level touched a number of realms. First of all, it triggered a massive reduction in revenues for all petroleum-exporting countries across the globe. Just as the increase in the price of oil in the 1970s had radically modified the domestic structure of society in these countries, leading to rapid and chaotic economic modernisation, the decrease in oil revenues affected their distributive capabilities. Secondly, the problem of the external debt became a serious addendum to an already difficult situation. When it first appeared, the problem of the debt did not immediately touch oil-exporting countries, but the crisis soon caught up with them as well and by the mid-1980s rentier states were experiencing the full severity of the downturn. At the time, the ‘developmental paradigm stress[ed] economic liberalisation, especially free trade and privatisation’ (Najem, 2001: 51). Defaulting countries had to contend with the influence of such paradigm to exit the crisis and ‘structural adjustment came to be synonymous with economic reform during the 1980s, bec[oming] the only acceptable ­strategy of

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development according to the international financial institutions that were to dominate the economic policy of the developing world’ (Walton and Seddon, 1994). This external shock is at the root of many of the domestic changes that were implemented in the late 1980s and in the early 1990s with the significant involvement of international financial institutions. While the Washington consensus is no longer the sole guiding principle for economic reform, most of its aspects retain their validity in a globalised world, particularly when it comes to attracting foreign investment through fiscal incentives and budget tightening. The political implications of adjustment programmes were far-reaching and it is accepted that one of the most important consequences of austerity measures was the explosion of widespread, violent protest riots. Walton and Ragin (1990) were able to show that the occurrence and severity of riots depended on two factors: over-urbanisation and the extent of international involvement in the domestic economy. The imposition of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) resulted in increasing inequalities within states, leading to social and political upheaval. A second important ‘external shock’ that marked the 1980s and the following decades was the victory of the Afghan guerrillas in their war against the Soviet Army. In Western countries, the withdrawal of the Soviets from Afghanistan was presented as a resounding success for Western policies and it was identified as one of the key victories that allowed the West to ‘win’ the Cold War. The support for the Afghani fighters consisted of military training, financial aid and supply of weaponry. According to Parenti (2002: 11), ‘from 1979 to 1992 the US channelled a minimally estimated three billion dollars to the various Mujaideen factions fighting the Soviets … The Saudi dynasty sent an equal amount while additional aid flowed from China, Iran, assorted Islamic charities, drug-running operations, privatised CIA funding sources and various Arab millionaires.’ One of the side effects of the victory of the guerrillas against the Soviets was the increasing confidence of radical Islamism. In fact, the war in Afghanistan represented a turning point for radical Islamists in a number of ways. First of all, the Afghan cause, framed in terms of jihad, provided a boost for Islam-based political action at a time when other ideologies, imported

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from the West, had failed. The tribes fighting the Soviets were very different from one another and held quite distinct beliefs and traditions, but they had Islam in common. From very early on, the war was therefore transformed into a defensive jihad, which would become attractive to radical Islamist militants across the Muslim world. The United States and Britain, together with their Arab allies in the region, were keen on exploiting this card, as they rightly believed that it would be a popular mobilising cause. One of the reasons why the war was internationalised was obviously strategic and had to do with attempting to hurt the Soviet Union. Muslim states also had a compelling reason for sponsoring the Afghans and playing up the Islamic card. Within their territory they were facing increasing political opposition to their rule by Islamist militants and they were happy to provide them with an outlet for dissent by sending them to Afghanistan to fight (Cooley, 2002). Their contribution would also be a testimony to their Islamic character and legitimacy. These radical militants formed a sort of international brigade and they became increasingly politicised. It is on these international militants that the attention should be focused, as some would become the protagonists of radical Islamism in the following decades. According to Ahmed Rashid (1999: 6), ‘with the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistani’s ISI (Secret Services) … 35,000 Muslim radicals from 40 Islamic countries joined Afghanistan’s fight between 1982 and 1992. Tens of thousands more came to study in Pakistani madrasahs. Eventually more than 100,000 foreign Muslim radicals were directly influenced by the Afghan Jihad.’ Instead of seeing the defeat of the Soviets as the final nail in the coffin of Communism, Islamists began to believe that it was the stepping-stone for a truly international Islamist movement that would spread across the Muslim world and change it profoundly, starting in their home countries. The domestic political consequences in Muslim countries of the victory in Afghanistan had not been greatly analysed before the attacks on New York and Washington DC in 2001, but they are considerable. Attention should be precisely on the domestic consequences of the return of many radical fighters. Not only did the political project of radical Islamism through violent jihad seem victorious, but individuals

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i­ nvolved in the victory were the living proof that change was possible in their home countries as well. A third external shock that impinged on world affairs in the early 1990s was the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent UN-sanctioned and US-led intervention against Iraq. This event had repercussions at a number of levels. First of all, it seemed to confirm that a new era in international politics had been entered, whereby the international community would finally be capable of applying in practice the concept of collective security centred on the role of the UN. Secondly, it demonstrated that the collapse of the Soviet Union had emboldened the United States. Despite showing a willingness to work through multilateral institutions, the Gulf War of 1991 showed that the United States was the only remaining superpower. At the time, the participation in the war effort of a number of Arab countries in alliance with the US and with the international community as a whole obscured its problematic consequences in the wider Muslim world. Far from seeing the war as the legitimate means to reestablish the inviolability of the principle of sovereignty, the vast majority of Muslims and in particular of Arabs did not subscribe to the war with the same enthusiasm as their rulers. The ‘Arab street’ was generally opposed to the display of force of the United States and the war increased the already deep chasm between rulers and masses in most Arab countries. The war, for instance, shook the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to its foundations, generating widespread opposition to the ruling family and legitimising the stance of opponents like Osama Bin Laden (Basbous, 2004). Very few across the Muslim world actually sympathised with the plight of the Kuwaiti rulers, while others were incensed at the thought that Saudi Arabia hosted on its territory the US Army. Both power-holders and opposition movements in the region felt very deeply the shock waves of the preparation for the conflict and the conflict itself. The fourth external shock was the end of the Cold War itself, which led to a worldwide rethinking of international and domestic politics. When discussing the relevance of such an event for the Middle East, Ehteshami (2003: 54) argues: ‘it was the sudden disruption of the bipolar Cold War international system which proved to be the biggest dislocating force for regional systems in general and the Middle East

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and North Africa (MENA) region in particular’. While some scholars (Karsh, 1997) disagree on the importance generally given to the end of the Cold War, it should be clearly stated that actors felt as if the changes were massive and acted accordingly. Ehteshami (2003: 54) again points out that: ‘up to that point [the end of the Cold War] all regional actors had customarily set their national and international clocks by the Cold War; now, virtually overnight, that point of reference had disappeared’. All political actors, state and nonstate, had to readjust their policies and strategies after 1989 and such an event did not go unnoticed in the region. The fifth external shock took place on September 11, 2001 and, while it occurred years after the end of the transition in Algeria, it represents a fundamental turning point for western policy-making with significant repercussion at domestic level for Arab countries. The policies of the United States following the attacks had and still have a dramatic effect on how regimes and opposition actors operate domestically. On the one hand, ruling regimes have adopted a policy of increasing rapprochement to the United States in order to secure their survival and have a free hand in dealing with dissent. On the other hand, opposition actors, particularly Islamist groups, have become even more active and couple their anti-regime rhetoric with an increasingly anti-Western one. The upshot of such confrontation between Islamists and rulers is that the pro-democracy rhetoric of the United States and the European Union is disregarded in practice, leading them to strengthen authoritarian regimes to the detriment of genuine political openings. Direct active policies There are numerous actors active on the international stage and through their policies they attempt to shape political outcomes. The first relevant policy that emerges from the period leading up to and after the end of the Cold War is the promotion of democracy on the part of Western governments. The active promotion of democracy has been one of the most important instruments of US foreign policy since President Carter’s administration and it was exemplified by his refusal to save the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua in 1978/79. However, it was the Reagan years that coincided

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with the elevation of democracy promotion to the top of the American foreign policy agenda. It was believed that democratic governance in developing countries would ultimately be in the interest of the United States because it was the best answer to communism. The policy was certainly riddled with contradictions and problems (Chomsky, 1996), but it is undeniable that it put a certain amount of pressure on allied authoritarian regimes as the case of El Salvador demonstrates. It can certainly be argued that the promotion of democracy was nothing but a classic instrument of foreign policy designed to defend and promote interests rather than a principled policy, but it nevertheless had the effect of rhetorically de-legitimising authoritarian rule and permitting US support for political actors with democratic credentials to the detriment of authoritarian dictators when the wider geostrategic environment allowed for it. The corollary of this policy was that democratising countries would receive aid from the US, while those continuing to remain authoritarian would not be included. This put a tremendous amount of pressure on leaderships around the globe, particularly after the end of the Cold War when there was no other pole to turn to in order to counter US dominance. Allison and Beschel (1992: 82) put forth the argument that ‘the evidence suggests that in fact the United States has promoted democracy and is promoting democracy’. In a recent contribution to the debate Carothers (2007) affirms that the US significantly contributed to democratisation in Eastern Europe and Latin America by delivering both material and political aid to countries undergoing a democratic transformation. The US State Department took a leading role in the implementation of this strategy in particular through USAID, but the political impulse came from the White House where the liberal idea of democratic peace held sway. The US democracy promotion strategies in Eastern Europe and Latin America proved to be quite effective, particularly when coupled with European efforts. The emphasis on the necessity of democracy and democratisation, if anything, has increased after September 11th as the launch of the Middle East Initiative demonstrates. Again, the pro-democracy measures taken generate considerable controversy, but they have an impact on those subjected to them because they help to make

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a­ uthoritarian rule less legitimate. The European Union has been very active in promoting ­ democracy both within and outside Europe. At the time of the fall of communism, the then EC was already involved in promoting the growth of civil society in the region and during the transitions it supported the democratising actors. The most powerful instrument for the strategy was the offer of membership to all the Eastern European countries once their transition completed. Outside Europe, where the prize of membership to the EU is not available, democracy promotion strategies have been less effective, but they have nevertheless been an integral part of normative Europe’s efforts to stabilise the international system. It is worth mentioning that democracy and human rights constitute fundamental pillars of the EuroMediterranean partnership and of other trade agreements with third countries. The EU Commission is very active in this respect and while democratisation policies are contradictory they are nonetheless awarded significant funds and political legitimacy. A second active policy that some state and non-state actors promoted over the last three decades is the use of Islam as a tool for political struggle. Islam was widely used as an element of unification in the colonial struggle and has continued to play a political role since then with alternate fortunes. After independence, Western-style nationalism became more prominent, but some countries combined their nationalist legitimacy with a religious one. Saudi Arabian leaders, for instance, justify their rule on the basis of political legitimacy granted by religious leaders (Basbous, 2004). The political use of Islam came dramatically to the fore during the Iranian Revolution. The clearest attempt to use Islam for political gains in third countries is Iran’s foreign policy in Khomeini’s time when the theocratic regime seized on its religious linkages with Lebanese Shi’ia to build Hezbollah from scratch. To this day the organisation nominally recognises the leader of Iran as its own (Nasr, 2007). The victory of Shi’ia Muslims in Iran was feared in the Sunni world, particularly in the rich Gulf States and Iraq where a large Shi’ia population lives. Thanks to their petrodollars, they put in place a vast and efficient network to counter Iranian influence and sponsor movements across the Muslim world that would be closer to their interpretation of Islam. This policy of promoting

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Saudi-style Islam reached its peak during the 1980s when the Gulf States contributed to the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan and financed all sorts of political and charitable movements across the Arab world. It emerges that there are two different, but linked, types of actors involved in the promotion of political Islam. On the one level, there is a transnational movement that promotes political Islam as an ideological project across the Middle East. This movement is far from being unified, it comprises many different strands and operates across boundaries and influences national politics. While it should be recognised that ‘most connections between Islamist movements across state boundaries are of a cultural, social and political nature’ (Dalacoura, 2001: 238), they contribute to the growth of these movements, which refer to and learn from each others’ tactics and ideas, applying them to their own domestic context. This is true for all strands of Islamism, from the al-Qaeda inspired one to the one the Egyptian Brothers promote. In a study of transnational religious activity with specific references to Islam, Haynes (2001: 157) argues that ‘global networks of religious activists exist who communicate with each other, feed off each other’s ideas, collectively develop religious ideologies with political significance, perhaps aid each other with funds and, in effect, form trans-national groups whose main intellectual referent derives from religious dogma’. On another level, the promotion of political Islam does not seem to be an entirely autonomous phenomenon and ‘we can observe that the trans-national Islamist movement often becomes the tool of Islamist states, especially Iran and Saudi Arabia’ (Dalacoura, 2001: 240). Thus, it emerges that Islamist groups can have both independence of action and face constraints from their patrons. Ultimately however, the vast majority of Islamist groups are concerned with issues of power within the nation-state they operate in and cannot be considered simply an instrument of states. Most groups, in order to have domestic legitimacy, have gained a sphere of autonomy from their foreign patron if they have one. In addition, states can quickly lose control over a movement once it is created. A number of western countries, notably the United States, played a role in indirectly promoting radical Sunni Islamism during the Cold War to counter Soviet expansionism and the ­revolutionary

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appeal of Iran, but quickly changed their policies once the Soviet threat was eliminated and Iran successfully contained. In the early years of the 1990s, radical Islamism had taken the place of the old enemy and by the time Samuel Huntington (1993) published his famous piece The Clash of Civilisations?, Bernard Lewis (1990) had already evoked the danger of ‘Muslim rage’. Far from accepting the legitimacy and the role of Islamic movements, the US and European countries began to see them as a threat to their own interests at the cost of undermining their own pro-democracy promotion policies. Salla (1997: 729) argued that ‘the rise of political Islam as a force in global politics has led to numerous depictions of it as a threat to the continued dominance of Western liberal democratic norms in shaping the political, economic, social and cultural life in vast regions of the planet’. The perception that political Islam, irrespective of the forms it takes and methods it adopts, constitutes a threat is even stronger after the events of September 11th. Thus, the necessity to protect countries from the rise of Islamism is still paramount for western policy-makers and very few voices contend that it might be necessary to come to an appreciation of the value that these movements might have, particularly when they declare themselves ready to play the democratic game. This policy of exclusion and containment of Islamists has profound effects on the game that these movements play within their specific domestic contexts. It is also important to examine the actions of transnational companies (TNCs). Their political and economic role is particularly relevant in developing countries and it is necessary to analyse how transnational companies try to defend or increase their privileges in the domestic structure of countries through the pressure they put on domestic policy-makers. In oil-rich countries, their role is all the more significant. There are numerous documented cases of foreign companies dictating political behaviour to domestic elites in order to obtain special treatment and benefits influencing the political system. Such interference is at times direct and at times dependent on structural power to which states have to heed. For instance, the New York Times2 recently reported that banana importer Chiquita used a paramilitary group to ensure the protection of its plantation and distribution networks in Colombia. It is unclear whether the national government

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was aware of this or not, but what emerges is that the corporation was able to act autonomously on the very sensitive issue of the provision of security. The actions of Chiquita recall of similar ones undertaken by United Fruit Company in Guatemala in the 1950s. In the energy sector also we have examples of similar behaviour in countries such as Nigeria and Ecuador. The arrival of multinational corporations in developing countries usually sees the establishment of close links between the business executives and the political elites. Finally, there are the policies of international financial institutions and their effects on domestic politics. These actors have their own agendas, preferences and interests. Institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund all implement policies directed at serving their own interests and the effects of the policies they implement are substantial. Furthermore, these organisations are not simply instruments in the hands of stronger states, although it should be accepted that stronger states in the system have more policy input. These institutions are to a large extent autonomous. During the 1980s and early 1990s they have been responsible for the implementation of many structural adjustments programmes and the overseeing of measures destined to profoundly transform the economies of developing countries, but they also have had a more political role. The type and degree of access these organisations have to domestic policy-makers, the power they have over the domestic economy and the political conditions they are able to attach to or detach from rescue packages point in the direction of the relevant role that they have in shaping domestic outcomes. In the case of the IMF for instance, a country accepting the Fund’s intervention will benefit from it partly because it is seen as sending the ‘right signal’ to the global financial community (Vreeland, 2004: 8). This gives considerable power to IMF officials and allows them to have a significant say in how the country’s economic affairs are run. Larger trends The most influential trend of the last three decades has been the wane of socialism as an alternative model of political, economic and social organisation and the increasing attraction of the alternative capitalist liberal-democratic model of

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government and economic organisation. The strength of the socialist ideology was not only due to the presence of the Soviet Union as a pole of political influence on world affairs, but was the product of the promise of rapid economic advancement while permitting the ruling elites to control the country from a centralised authority. This combination is what led many post-colonial societies to espouse socialism. Algeria was not different and it proceeded to enshrine socialist principles in its constitution after independence although these principles were adapted to local circumstances and given an Islamic makeover in order to make them more acceptable. By the mid-1980s however, socialism ceased to be appealing due to its inability to continue to deliver on its promises. The Soviet Union and all the other socialist countries struggled under the weight of economic backwardness, corruption, and political authoritarianism. Socialist ideology was very much on the wane across the globe, as the profound political and economic reforms taking place within the Soviet Union were proving, while the other major global actor in the socialist world, the People’s Republic of China, had been rapidly changing as well, having increasingly adopted market-oriented reforms in order to ensure economic growth. In the liberal-democratic world as well, profound changes were affecting socialist and communist parties and by the end of the 1980s many of these parties dropped their socialist ideology and mutated into social-democratic parties. The repercussions of this trend were substantial for the developing countries that had adopted socialism as their guiding principle. The decreasing appeal of socialism as a mobilising ideology and the poor economic results it generated meant that liberal democracy with capitalism was the only game in town. This ‘victory’ was symbolised through the demise of the Soviet Union, but the defeat of socialism had first and foremost taken place at the level of ideas. The collapse of the Soviet Union was simply an indicator of the profound crisis of an ideology that had attracted a huge following throughout the years with the promise of equality, justice and real ‘democracy’. This does not necessarily mean that Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ argument is fully validated in its emphasis of liberal democracy and capitalism as the ‘natural’ political, economic and social order, but it indicates that for many

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policy-makers during the 1980s and 1990s, the menu of policy options was restricted to simply one choice. Even today, socialism does not hold much sway any longer in most developing countries and the Venezuelan version of it does not quite resemble what Marx had in mind. The collapse of socialism as an ideological project provides an important constraint for actors involved in processes of democratisation because it considerably restricts the options they can take at times of regime change. Hypotheses For each of the sub-variables outlined in the previous sections it is possible to formulate hypotheses to be tested in the Algerian case and identify the specific elements that help to explain the failure of the Algerian transition and the current integration of the country into the international system. The first hypothesis relates to the massive decrease in the price of oil and gas, which, together with the changes in the value of the dollar, triggered a very substantial reduction in government revenues. The hypothesis is that this decrease in revenues forced the Algerian government to open up the political space to defuse the situation. The scale and the timing of the rioting coincided with the period of most dramatic economic difficulties in the history of the country. Past crises were managed successfully without having to resort to liberalisation strategies and therefore it is contended that it was the severity of this particular moment that forced the ruling elites to choose the path of liberalisation. Without such a crisis or, more specifically, without such severe effects, the power holders would have chosen a different strategy and coped with the increasing social unrest in a different manner. The hypothesis is therefore that radical shifts in the world market of oil and gas had a direct impact on the decision to attempt to change the political system. In order to support this hypothesis, it will be necessary to compare briefly the effects of this oil counter-shock in countries similarly dependent on oil revenues and account for the transformation they did or did not experience. The second hypothesis derives from the consequences of the war in Afghanistan and it has two different dimensions. The first dimension is political and the second is

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­ rganisational. On the first dimension it is legitimate to hyo pothesise that the victory against the Soviet invasion gave a tremendous political and ideological boost to the Islamic cause. Although political Islam had been on the rise for some time in the region and in Algeria as well, the victory in Afghanistan provided the necessary evidence that the organisation of society according to Islam was indeed possible and within reach. This event had consequences in Algeria where the Islamic movement was beginning to make its first steps after being legalised. Its ideological stance and its call to Islam as the solution to all problems had a model of militant commitment to look at. On the organisational dimension, it should be highlighted that among the ‘international’ combatants in Afghanistan some were Algerian. They had gone back to their home country and begun proselytising. Their organisational abilities and their example were one of the reasons behind the success of the Islamic Front and provided an international connection for the movement. Without the victory in Afghanistan, the Islamic movement might have not received the boost it did and might have not spread so quickly, given that the only other successful ­takeover of power had been carried out in Shi’ia Iran. This hypothesis would be confirmed if there were sufficient evidence to show that the Islamic Front in Algeria did refer to the victorious war in Afghanistan to gather electoral support and if some of its key cadres were veterans of the war and had an influential role within the movement. The third hypothesis is concerned with the effects of the Gulf crisis, spanning from the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait to the defeat of the Iraqi army. During this time, the shock waves of the crisis had a significant impact on a wide range of actors. It is assumed that for Algerian politics this impact was equally strong and had a considerable influence in changing the distribution of power and resources, and therefore the objectives and strategies, of those involved in the game of transition. When the Gulf crisis broke out, the process of democratisation had already begun, the Islamic Front had won the June 1990 local elections and the power holders had already sensed their political de-legitimisation. The hypothesis is that the Gulf War had the following effects. First of all, it accelerated the process of de-legitimisation of the power holders because the ruling elites were unable to successfully

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carve out a position that would satisfy both the US-led coalition and ordinary Algerians. Secondly, it is assumed that the crisis strengthened the power and convictions of the Islamic Front following the massive spontaneous popular support for Iraq. Thanks to the crisis, FIS found itself even more convinced that the Islamic card and anti-Western sentiment were assets that could now increasingly be used to demand more concessions from the regime. Finally and crucially, the crisis had a profound impact on Western policy-makers, who became even more worried about a FIS electoral takeover in Algeria due to its perceived anti-Western agenda. The fourth hypothesis postulates that the end of the Cold War was very significant in leading the ruling elites to abandon socialist economics, to look for a new relationship with the United States and Europe and ultimately to re-model the domestic political and economic structures to satisfy the coming New World Order. At the same time, the end of the Cold War had an impact on the Islamist galaxy, confirming to the leaders of these movements that socialism had been a tragic mistake all along and that the real answer to the country’s difficulties was in following the ‘straight path of Islam’. In order to confirm this hypothesis, it is necessary to gather evidence pointing to market-oriented economic reforms during the period of Soviet decline and pointing to strategic changes in the relations of Algeria with the Soviet Union and the United States. Furthermore, evidence is needed to show that the end of the Cold War confirmed the ideological correctness of the Algerian Islamists’ position. Looking at Western countries’ democracy-promotion policy, the hypothesis is that such a stance influenced the Algerian power holders in their decision to democratise. While a process of liberalisation is usually started in order to preserve power rather than instigated to promote real change, part of this effort to preserve the regime through a re-legitimising phase involving popular consent is necessary to adapt to international pressures. Survival depends as much on the ability to guide the opening up of the political system as it depends on the need to find international support in order to gain the country a new position in a changing system where democracy is a foreign policy priority for the most powerful actors in the system. Regarding the hypothesis deriving from the expansion of

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political Islam as an instrument of foreign policy, it is necessary to find evidence that links the Islamic Front to external sources of influence. If this link can be made, it means that a key domestic actor’s strength may be the result of an external action. The focus should be in particular on financial aid, training of cadres and Islamic scholars. The assumption behind the necessity for Western countries to oppose the expansion of political Islam and the fear of seeing Islamic movements coming to power leads to the hypothesis that in the case of Algeria they attempted to stop the FIS coming to power by supporting the domestic actors who had the most to lose from the victory of the FIS. The analysis should focus on the most important actors in the region: the United States and France. If states have interests and objectives they want to achieve, so do other international actors. Both transnational companies and international financial institutions have goals and strategies. The hypothesis is that through the access they enjoyed, they were able to convey their most preferred outcomes to the ruling elites before and throughout the whole transition. On the one hand, international organisations may have provided policy-makers with a framework of necessary economic reforms that had a strong although indirect impact on the direction the country was taking. In this context, it is important to highlight that economic choices have an impact on the political environment, by redistributing resources among actors. On the other hand, transnational companies have a relevant stake in the political outcome of the transition. The hypothesis here is that the most preferred outcome for TNCs was obtaining more and better contracts to operate freely in the country to maximise their profits. It follows that they probably feared radical changes would be brought about by a new political force and determined that support needed to be given to the current power holders who were embracing market-oriented reforms aimed at attracting even more foreign direct investment. The end of the socialist ideology and the international victory of liberal-democracy as the seemingly best mode of political governance provided the wider context within which actors had to operate. The hypothesis is that both larger trends affected domestic decision-making directly, as actors came to realise that they were operating in a more

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r­ estrictive ideological environment. Policies following discredited ideologies and supporting winning ones followed from this consideration. Finally, the war on terror provides the necessary resources for the authoritarian regime to remain in power unchallenged because key international actors are opposed to a renegotiation of the current political pact if this means running the risk of having to contend with emerging political forces opposed to their policies in the region. All these hypotheses cannot be neatly separated from one another, but it is possible to look for evidence supporting or disproving the claims made. In addition, it should be recognised that they do not all ‘act’ at the same time nor have the same degree of intensity. This is because one of the most important innovations of this project is to look at international variables throughout the duration of the transition and not to consider them simply as triggers. It follows that their impact may change over the course of the game, while at a certain moment a particular variable may intervene to influence and change the incentive structure of the main actors. Furthermore, some of them may seem in conflict with others, while some may mutually reinforce each other. This is because there are multiple levels of policy-making and therefore of influence, and at the same time there are multiple external actors with their different agendas and objectives. Strategies therefore may combine or collide, but they are all intended to modify perceptions and behaviour at the domestic level. Finally, it should be mentioned that these variables at work are ‘different’ at different stages of the transition. Notes 1

In a recent overview of the oil and gas sector conducted by the UK government, it emerges that ‘Algeria has been identified as a high priority market for the oil and gas sector’ in terms of investment. See www. tradepartners.gov.uk/oilandgas/algeria/profile/overview/shtml. 2  New York Times, 14 November 2007.

4 The external context of the Algerian transition

Before analysing whether the hypotheses outlined in Chapter 3 are confirmed by the evidence gathered, it is necessary to describe in greater detail the external environment with which Algeria had to contend before, during and after its problematic transition. The external environment Huntington’s study (1991: 45) of why so many countries democratised or attempted to do so at a particular moment sees ‘the unprecedented global economic growth of the 1960s’ as central. In Algeria however, the timing of the process of liberalisation coincided with a significant internationallydriven crisis of its rentier state model, which had a profound impact on its economic structures. After independence, following the policy advice of French economists, Algeria chose a socialist model of development built around three fundamental priorities: 1 the priority of accumulation of capital over consumption; 2 the priority of industrialisation over agriculture and; 3 the priority of developing capital equipment over consumer goods (Dadsi and Doukali, 1994: 36). The adoption of such a model was possible because the country could count on vast natural resources and from the very first four-year economic plan, priority was placed on hydrocarbons production and on ‘industrialising industries’, as investing heavily in the hydrocarbons sector would allow Algeria to finance its own industrial development. The idea was that oil and gas revenues would be the basis for

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the ­ creation of a strong industrial base, which would then take the leading role in securing growth. For this reason, the insertion of the country in the oil and gas world market was one of the post-independence imperatives for the ruling elites. The revenues accumulated from this swift insertion gave the illusion that the oil and gas revenues would keep the project of rapid and effective industrialisation on course. At the time, it was recognised that the rent would eventually come to an end and it was therefore necessary to build industries as quickly as possible. The illusion of economic independence, however, was built on a contradiction: the revenues from hydrocarbons had to be expanded and went to the detriment of diversification and good management of the industries acquired abroad. Thus the country became increasingly dependent on ‘events’ and markets outside its own control, as Algeria’s growth was almost entirely made dependent on revenues from hydrocarbons. The revenues generated permitted Algeria to build a substantial net of social protection and to undertake programmes of rapid industrialisation by acquiring technology and turnkey manufacturing companies, but there was no long-term planning and reliance on foreign technology and expertise increased. This strategy, although useful in the short term to create employment and allow for the output of indigenous products, made the country even more dependent on foreign interests. The technology and the skills involved in the setting up of these manufacturing companies was of foreign provenance and this linked the country, in a subservient position, to the international economy. Algeria’s impressive growth reached its peak in the 1970s, when the unexpected oil price hikes contributed to filling the coffers of the state. The advantages gained through skyrocketing prices of natural resources strengthened the short-term political legitimacy of the government, and the large hydrocarbons revenues were a blessing for the Algerian state, as it was able to hide the mismanagement of the economy, the poor results of the policy of rapid socialist industrialisation and the decline of agriculture. From a political point of view, and contrary to the expectation that a rising professional class puts pressure on authoritarian governments to democratise, businessmen in the limited private sector and the educated middle-classes were quite easily co-opted; ‘businessmen, instead of ­ becoming

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vigorous proponents of free markets, end[ed] up as crony capitalists, making profits because of their connections to those in power’ (Quandt, 1998: 120). From this, it follows that rentier-states, even imperfect ones such as Algeria, depend for their political legitimacy largely on their ability to deliver economically and according to Pierre Claverie (1994: 151), ‘Algeria was a society entirely organised by and for the redistribution, controlled but widespread, of the oil rent.’ The smooth running of the Algerian economy was, and still is, strictly linked to the revenues in foreign currency that the regime can earn through the export of oil and gas. The oil shocks of the 1970s filled Algerian coffers, but did not encourage the regime to think about alternative strategies of development during those good times. This is certainly due to domestic political choices linked to the privileges and benefits associated with the hydrocarbon sector, but it also has to do with international economic pressures. Algeria supplied natural resources and was kept in that role by not being allowed to export or produce much of anything else due to very restrictive quotas and tariffs set up to protect the markets of developed countries. In addition, the quality and costs of Algerian industrial production were unattractive. Thus, the regime was taken aback when the price of oil fell dramatically in 1986 and had to act quickly, almost in a panic, to confront the crisis. According to Khennas and Mekideche (1995: 76), ‘the drop in the price of oil in 1986 translated itself into a brutal regression of the value of exports, from 13.5 billion US dollars in 1985 to 9.6 billion US dollars both in 1986 and 1987’, while Sereni (1992: 225) affirms that ‘the addition of the oil shock and the dollar effect represent from the beginning of 1985 to mid 1991 a drop in revenues in foreign currency of about 80 percent’. At the political level, the oil price collapse and the subsequent economic crisis had a significant impact on different political actors, which were forced to deal with a transformed structure of incentives. Crucially, the ruling elites, although internally divided on the extent of the political and economic reforms to be undertaken, took the opportunity of the recession to legitimise them (Garon, 1994: 34). Thus, there is a strong link between the internationally driven crisis and the tentative liberal economic reforms initiated in the mid-1980s. In turn, the necessity to face the

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c­ risis by reforming the system reinforced the influence of the international environment on the process of political transition through the indirect influence of neo-liberal economic ideals and through the entry on the Algerian scene of powerful international financial institutions. Domestically, the counter-shock permitted the economic reformers to have more input in policy-making to the detriment of the more conservative elements still favourable to a socialist planned economy. President Chadli and the Hamrouche government stepped up free market reforms in 1989 and upon his appointment as Prime Minister, Hamrouche declared to the Jeune Afrique: ‘my plan is going to transport the whole Algerian society from one system to the other’ (1989: 40). The role that international organisations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund played in assisting Hamrouche was central (Hadjadj, 2001: 83–4). Hamrouche himself made no secret of the fact that some of his ministerial appointments were made with the intention of pleasing the international community (1989: 41). All this indicates that certain sectors of Algerian elites believed that it was necessary to engage with the international community and, more specifically, to take into account that the world was rapidly changing and the survival of the country depended on its ability to integrate this new order built around neoliberal economic reforms. In fact, a group of reformers existed within the senior bureaucracy that met informally and periodically to discuss the possibility of reforming the ailing economy, but they were only allowed to have a real influence on the government after the oil counter-shock. The pace and intensity of the Hamrouche-sponsored reforms, which had begun under the good auspices of the international community, in turn affected the ongoing process of liberalisation and vice versa. From a strictly economic point of view, the reformers, once in government, worked to transform the legislative and institutional framework in order to put in place an environment more conducive to the workings of a free market. Georges Corm (1993) distinguishes two phases of this process: before and after the February 1989 Constitution. During the first phase, the most significant achievement was the transformation of the agricultural sector with the abandonment of collective farming and the re-introduction of the

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right to own land. In addition, there was also the relaxation of the licensing system for import and export activities. While this may seem a minor reform, its effects are quite relevant given that the monopoly of the state on external trade was effectively broken. After the adoption of the new Constitution in 1989, reforms accelerated to include elimination of price subsidies, autonomy for the Central Bank, liberalisation of foreign investments, and new laws on currency and credit. When it comes to the all-important hydrocarbons sector, it must be noted that ‘the government ha[d] put a high priority on attracting involvement by international oil companies’ (Entelis, 1999: 22). While the Algerian government did not enter into official negotiations with international financial institutions, the reformers had already begun unofficial talks with IMF executives on the scale of reforms to undertake, leading Algeria to ‘faire du FMI sans le FMI’ (Soudan, 1989: 26). However, the increasing economic difficulties and the ongoing political process of liberalisation forced the reformers to have official contacts with international financial institutions starting in May 1989. Crucially, Algeria also changed its policies towards foreign investors in order to encourage them to set up business in the country. However, the only field of genuine interest for foreign investors was at the time the hydrocarbon sector and a series of accords were signed between Société Nationale pour la Recherche, la Production, le Transport, la Transformation, et la Commercialisation des Hydrocarbures (SONATRACH) and foreign companies between 1986 and 1992. In December 1991 a new law was passed concerning hydrocarbon investment in the country,1 which was favourable to foreign companies (Entelis, 1999). These changes did not improve the socio-economic conditions of large sectors of the population. On the contrary they seemed to make the situation worse. Since independence, Algeria had enjoyed high rates of growth, but, more importantly, the whole population seemed to benefit from economic development. From 1967 to the end of 1984, the number of jobs created through ambitious programmes of development stood at over 2 million, while inflation remained lower than pay increases thanks to price subsidies. Not only could Algerians easily find a job and enjoy high rates of consumption, they could also benefit from free

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health care, free education and social housing paid through hydrocarbons revenues. In addition, the money coming back to the country from migrants in France contributed to the elevation of the purchasing power of all sections of the population. The cumbersome bureaucracy, the monopoly of the state on external trade and periodic shortages of certain products were tolerated in the belief that social mobility was possible and that there were plentiful jobs. All this changed from 1986 onward as the crisis and the reforms put in place to deal with it had a disastrous effect on living standards in a very short period of time. The abandonment of the policy of price subsidies pushed inflation up, and the galloping rate of inflation was coupled with growing unemployment, which in 1990 officially peaked at 25 per cent. To make matters worse, unemployment massively affected a great number of university graduates, leading to both frustration and political radicalisation. The rise in unemployment was accompanied by a decreasing availability of housing, aggravating the social situation. As the crisis continued, two more phenomena made their appearance. First, the middle class began to feel the pinch of the crisis and, secondly, Algerians began to notice that a new class of nouveaux riches was emerging and flaunting their money without embarrassment. To conclude, ‘between September 1989 and September 1992, the logic of reform and adjustment – devaluation of the dinar, complete price liberalisation, diminution of the debt of public enterprises – prevail[ed] and weigh[ed] heavily on prices and unemployment without any positive effect for the economy due, in particular, to external financial constraints’ (Benachenou, 1993: 37). At the political level, the issue of economic reforms was an integral part of the transition to democracy, influencing the domestic actors and their strategies. According to most scholars, the FIS gained strength during these difficult economic times because it spoke for the underprivileged in Algerian society. In fact, Labat (1995) argues that the FIS was not so much a political party, but rather a very large social movement capable of attracting support for its stance on economic and social issues. It is not surprising that many Algerians came to know the FIS through the party’s charitable operations. The FIS’s proximity to people’s real needs was in sharp contrast to the government’s distance from the

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difficulties of the population. At the same time, the ruling elite were divided on the pace and scale of reforms with different clans using them to advance their claims and their agenda. However one trend is constant during the transitional period: Western powers were concerned with the rise of the FIS, as they came to believe the party threatened their economic interests. Algeria is the most important supplier of gas and oil in the region and its exports are central to the economic development of all southern European countries. In addition, Algeria is the United States’s most important commercial partner in the liquefied gas sector. Algeria also has the potential to further develop its capacity to extract and export both oil and gas. All this explains the key position Algeria occupies in the geo-economic game. The role played by Algeria’s foreign debt in determining and driving Western policies towards the country should also be highlighted. At the beginning of 1990 France was owed 4.1 billion US dollars, Japan 3.6 billion, USA and Canada were owed a combined 2.8 billion US dollars, the United Kingdom 1.6 billion and Italy 1.4 billion (Goumeziane, 1994). Governments had a very powerful lever they could use, but were not the only actor with stakes in Algeria. Foreign oil companies had as much interest and input in both economic and political reforms as foreign governments did. All this played a crucial part in the transitional period, as it was feared that the FIS would jeopardise entrenched relationships and interests. This is particularly true of foreign investment in the hydrocarbons sector. The state-owned SONATRACH had concluded a number of contracts with a number of multinationals, which obtained favourable conditions thanks to a corrupt network of political patronage that would enrich those Algerians in key administrative positions. The danger of losing their grip on vast natural resources due to the policies the FIS would implement once in power made many in the business and diplomatic circles very sceptical about supporting democratic reform. The FIS was at the time denouncing the fact that Algeria had not fulfilled its revolutionary role after independence and that the new international economic order it supported never came about. An Islamic Algeria would take up that role, according to the FIS propaganda. The FIS was largely in favour of

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liberal ­economics, but it also maintained that relationships with other countries should be based on equality and the international economic system should not be rigged in favour of the West. Breaking the corrupt network existing between Western and Algerian elites was the key to using Algerian wealth in natural resources for the population and not simply for the benefit of the few. Fairer rules in the economic game in the hydrocarbon sector would have also meant diminishing profits for the oil multinationals. France in particular had more difficulties than other countries in accepting that democracy in Algeria might bring to power an Islamist party with strong anti-French attitudes. The economic integration of Algeria with France is due to historical factors dating back to the colonial experience and, despite the fierce nationalism of Algerian elite in the postindependence period, it has never ceased to be the undercurrent of the relationship between the two countries. As Lucille Provost (1996: 39) points out, ‘under the cover of self determined development, the country inserted itself in a dependent economic position with respect to the former colonial power and other Western countries’. The economic reforms of the Hamrouche government seemed to threaten the privileges of the corrupt elite and therefore favour the FIS’s programme for change. For some, France refrained from helping the reformers achieve their ultimate goal, as fullscale democratisation would have likely entailed a renegotiating of the privileges France enjoyed. Massive changes in government personnel and in the management of stateowned enterprises with the FIS in power would have endangered the old ties between Paris and Algiers. According to Malti (Author interview, 2001), ‘far from being traditional political relations between nation-states, the relationships are about economic co-operation and political networking’. The United States did not have the same level of economic interest in the country as France, but they had also become one of Algeria’s leading trade partners and foreign investors. In 1990, the United States exported goods and merchandise for a total value of 948 million US dollars and, more importantly, American oil multinationals had been welcomed as partners and investors in the hydrocarbons sector. US companies were not the only ones to take advantage of the economic openings and up to twenty foreign companies signed

the external context

lucrative contracts with SONATRACH from June 1987 until December 1992 (Goumeziane, 1994: 46). This was the international economic context before and during the transition. The programme of economic reforms and the stance of Western countries towards these reforms are also important elements to analyse in order to understand how the process of democratisation determined the strategies and choices of the different domestic actors. The economic dependency of Algeria in the post-independence period, with all the benefits it entailed for the Algerian elite and French actors, is central to understanding the reasons why France was sceptical about the far-reaching reforms of Hamrouche and their political repercussions. The preferred outcome for France would have been the liberalisation of the Algerian economy accompanied by the retention of the old elite and the old network system. Through the process of democratisation, and due to the popularity of the Islamic Front, French policy-makers feared that many changes would occur both in terms of personnel replacement and in terms of policies. These changes would have been an inconvenience and the FIS contends that pressure was applied to derail democratisation while pursuing the objective of a more encompassing inclusion of Algeria and its natural resources into the world economy (Author interview, 2002). The replacement of Algerian elites would have had negative consequences for French–Algerian relationships. On the Algerian side, there was resistance to the Hamrouche programme for many of the same reasons. Those who were in key positions were threatened by the extent of the economic and political reforms. They acted with their foreign counterparts to boycott the political liberalisation by raising the spectre of the FIS and hijacked the economic liberalisation in their favour. As Ghazi Hidouci (1995) states, ‘all those who benefited from the planned economy in terms of power, privileges and profits mistrusted the economic liberalisation’. The political factors The relevance of the international economic context has to be integrated with a description of the international political environment. At the most general level we find the ­political

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and ideological implications of the collapse of socialism and the end of the Cold War. From a geopolitical point of view, this ‘traumatic’ event led to a redistribution of power on the international stage with the United States emerging as the sole superpower. From an ideological point of view, the theory of the ‘end of history’ (Fukuyama, 1989) seemed to finally be realised. Algeria could not be immune to these changes because of its nominal socialist ethos. Throughout the 1980s, the socialist ideology was weakening considerably in both economic and political terms and the reformist policies Gorbachev implemented had a huge impact on the demise of socialism. Algeria did not escape this trend and as a nominally Arab socialist country (Pratt, 2007), it suffered from the consequences of the impending demise of socialism. As one of the leaders of the ‘non-aligned’ movement that had chosen a political and economic model of development based on the Soviet mould, Algeria could not escape the new debate about socialism, democracy and free market. While it is true that the ruling elites simply paid lip service to socialism and those ‘who made policy functioned in increasing isolation from public opinion’ (Reudy, 2005: 209), the population had been to a certain extent socialised into the socialist discourse of equality and progress and wanted the achievement of both. When it became clear that the demise of socialism was going to be the inevitable by-product of the changes in the Soviet Union, Algeria needed to overtly embrace a different set of beliefs and structures. The indication from Algeria in the 1980s was that Chadli and his entourage had begun to slowly ‘thaw’ the system, moving away from the rigidity of socialism, particularly in the economic field. By the end of the decade, the contemporary and intertwined ascent of liberal democratic values and the loss of socialism’s prestige meant that the Algerian elites had to find a new ideological framework to justify their rule and had to adopt a different economic model in order to reap the benefits of an increasingly globalised world. Furthermore, Western enthusiasm surrounding the crumbling of the Eastern Bloc had a double effect on Algeria. Firstly, it made it possible for the Algerian elites to justify the programme of liberal economic reforms they were undertaking in terms of adapting to a changed international environment. Secondly, Western powers believed

the external context

that the necessity to support authoritarian regimes for strategic reasons was now absent and they would not be as keen on supporting them as they had been in the past. If Algeria had remained authoritarian, this could have been detrimental to the elite’s position and privileges. During his visit to Washington in 1985, Chadli had already begun to express the importance of strengthening ties with the United States and declared that ‘beyond existing trade relations there is, in the development of our national economy, considerable potential for multifaceted cooperation between our countries’.2 In addition he paid tribute to the American values that had emerged from the American Revolution, implying that the Algerian Revolution would go through similar developments. Thus, throughout the whole transition process, the ruling elites attempted to ‘recycle’ themselves as the new democrats of Algeria, but became increasingly discredited and, conversely, enhanced the credibility of the opposition parties, including the FIS. The latter, in particular, had been very critical of the ‘socialist’ direction of the country after independence and its older leaders claimed that the revolution, which was an Islamic project of political and social renewal, had been hijacked through the importation of foreign doctrines. According to the FIS, the ruling elites were now using another ‘foreign’ ideology to re-legitimise their rule. To summarise, in a rapidly changing international environment, where Western countries were both victorious and confident of their ‘superior’ system of government, Algeria had to adapt its domestic political and economic institutions in order to survive and benefit from the changes that had taken place. The realisation that Western support would now be ‘the only game in town’ convinced the elite to become ‘liberal democrats’, but their blatant opportunism undermined their credibility. In contrast, the FIS played on its purity to gather support. The timing of the Algerian transition is also intimately connected to the 1991 Gulf War. While Western countries did not feel the effects of this war at home due to the ‘clarity’ of its moral purpose and to the brevity of the conflict, this event was traumatic for the Arab world and had significant short-term and long-term domestic repercussions. Far from the sympathy for their plight found in Western countries, the rulers of Kuwait enjoyed very little sympathy in Arab

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public opinion. Their wealth, their privileges, their flaunting and their harsh treatment of Arab guest-workers made them objects of contempt rather than admiration. In addition, the unwillingness of the United States to come to a peaceful compromise to resolve the crisis convinced many that a new imperialist age had begun and that Arabs would be on the receiving end of it. The US-led war against Saddam Hussein put most Arab regimes in a very difficult position because they supported the US actions while their populations were quite pro-Saddam. The war had a significant impact in Algeria, but it had different repercussions for the government, the population and the opposition parties involved at the time in the transition process. In general it can be argued that the Gulf crisis ‘considerably inflamed the passions within which Algerian politics took place’ (Mortimer, 1991: 587). The Algerian government, together with thirteen other member states of the Arab League, condemned the invasion of Kuwait, but worked to avoid an internationalisation of the crisis that would have likely led to war and major divisions among Arab states (Grimaud, 1991). Algerian diplomacy offered its services to peacefully solve the crisis, but a last-ditch effort before the expiration of the Bush ultimatum in January 1991 failed. During the ensuing military operations, the Algerian government progressively hardened its stance against the West, but failed to convince the population of its real opposition to the war, as it did not take any measure susceptible to interpretation in the West as being pro-Saddam. Both Leveau (1994) and Labat (1995) claim that the Gulf War unsettled the informal and unofficial pact of non-aggression between the FIS and the Chadli presidency and undermined the possibility of a smooth transition by radicalising both sides. The leadership of the FIS was at first at odds on how to react to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the Saudi response to it. It is claimed that the FIS had been receiving funds from Saudi Arabia to carry out its political and social activities and it was reluctant to fully support Saddam Hussein given that the Saudis were greatly opposed to him. However, given the popular mood, the FIS quickly found itself at the helm of street demonstrations that were clearly pro-Saddam and anti-West. Strong popular and largely spontaneous support for Saddam encouraged the FIS leadership to ride the wave

the external context

and the party ‘channelled and exploited the urban masses’ dissatisfaction by ditching their previous prudent stance’ (Leveau, 1994: 184). The FIS saw the Gulf War as a major boost to its position within an Algerian society that found itself deeply at odds with Western actions. The FIS leadership exploited the Gulf War to further undermine the legitimacy of the government, and to have more bargaining chips to play at the negotiation table by arguing that they were the only movement really in touch with the population. The radicalisation of the FIS was not directed simply at the government, but also at the other opposition parties competing for political visibility. All other parties within the opposition were against the war and disagreed with Western policies in the region, but stopped short of making dramatic demands on the government to change its policy. In order to out-flank them in their opposition towards the war, the FIS instead radicalised its stance and began making very radical demands that gave the movement increased visibility. In a sense, the drawback of the FIS’s position was that it revealed its strong anti-Western feelings. According to Olivier Roy (1991: 71) ‘one of the geo-strategic consequences of the Gulf War in the longer term was the anti-Western radicalisation of fundamentalist movements’ and the FIS did not escape this process of radicalisation. From the point of view of the government, the Gulf War presented the opportunity to play a relevant role in negotiating a solution that would see Algeria return to being a central actor in international politics. A peaceful outcome of the crisis, if obtained thanks to the efforts of Algerian diplomacy, would have increased the international prestige of the President and would have made Algeria a privileged interlocutor between the West and the Arab world. Unfortunately the attempt failed and the government was caught between the need to be seen by the West as a reliable partner and the need to be seen as voicing the worries of the majority of the population. This dilemma was not solved and ‘the Gulf crisis revealed the cruel de­legitimisation of the Chadli government, ended the political apathy of the population and marked the end of the government foreign policy aimed at reinserting Algeria in the international system’ (Leveau, 1995: 20–1). The problems of the governing elite were compounded by the fact that, while trying to normalise relations with

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France, they were open to the accusation of collusion with the ‘enemy’, as France had chosen to stand by the United States. The forthcoming parliamentary elections were paramount in the mind of Chadli’s entourage and a FIS victory would have provoked either very radical change in terms of domestic and international politics or the intervention of the Army. The Gulf War and the reactions it provoked in the Arab world had a tremendous impact on the perceptions and policies of leading Western nation-states as well. Thus, both France and the United States began to review their attitude towards the FIS and the Algerian transitional game. Finally, the Algerian transition took place when political Islam was on the rise in the 1980s and early 1990s because of three interlinked occurrences: the Iranian revolution, the victory in Afghanistan and the evident failure of ideologies imported from the West. This rise of political Islam generated a set of domestic and international responses that affected the development and the outcome of the Algerian experiment with democracy because they coincided with the success of the FIS. The egalitarian aspect of Islam makes it a transnational tool for ideological mobilisation and despite the ‘national’ agenda most Islamist groups have, they also draw strength from international exchanges and events (Haynes, 2001). The resurgence of Islam as a political tool had begun in intellectual circles during the colonial period and had continued in the years after independence, but the early success of the secular post-colonial states relegated political Islam to the margins. During the 1970s, however, the economic and political failures of many regimes became evident and was followed by a return on the scene of militant Islamism. The inability of Western imported ideologies such as nationalism and socialism to maintain the promise of the project of modernisation led to social, political and economic demands being couched in the language of Islamism. In many cases, the mosque became the only place where opposition to government policies could be aired and Islam began to be used to mobilise the masses for political activism. Disaffection with the political establishment led to the Iranian revolution. While Iran was neither an Arab nor a Sunni country, the message of the Iranian revolution was clear: Islam could be and indeed should be the guide to political action to rid the country of

the external context

corrupt authoritarian leaders. While the Revolution was far from being the product of solely religious mobilisation, the religious hierarchy was able to present it as such and used it to implement its own ideology. The repercussions in the region were three-fold. Political movements that were undertaking political action against their own governments were energised in their activism because the Iranians had shown that it was possible to dislodge unwanted leaders, even when they could count on a powerful security apparatus and on the support of Western countries. Secondly, the new Iranian leadership set out to export its own revolution to undermine the Gulf States. Khomeini openly accused the Saudi rulers of having betrayed Islam and of having lost their religious legitimacy to guard the Holy Sites. This meant that the Saudis had to go on the ‘attack’ diplomatically across the Muslim world to re-establish their credibility. In order to do so they began to finance Islamist political movements and this money allowed many of these movements to effectively compete with governments in the provision of much needed social services (Kepel, 2000). The standing of these movements improved and their efficient charity work showed how poorly governments were faring in providing basic necessities to the population. The third consequence of the Iranian Revolution was to make Western states aware of the importance of Islam as a political instrument of mobilisation. On the one hand, Western states were afraid that the Iranian revolution would spread to other countries, threatening their allies in the region, and therefore began to see ‘religious fundamentalism’ as the enemy. On the other hand, the realisation that religion could be a mobilising factor led the US to try to use it in Cold War policy-making as an ally (Karam, 2004). The result of this was the ‘unholy’ alliance between Sunni radical Islam, Sunni authoritarian states and Western countries in the war in Afghanistan during the 1980s. While the strategy of backing such radicals contributed to the defeat of the Soviet Union, it also led to the emergence of a jihadi Islamism that saw itself as the answer to the political needs of the Arab world. Thus, the victory in Afghanistan constitutes the third occurrence that influenced domestic actors in Algeria, as the country felt the ‘blowback effects’ of the participation of thousands of young men in the war effort

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against the Soviets. Carlier (1995: 349) convincingly argues that ‘a considerable section of disenfranchised youth finds in the Iranian revolution and the resistance against communism in Afghanistan the way to connect the sense de combat of past generations with the exaltation of faith’, leading them towards Islamist political activism first and armed struggle later. It is time to turn now to a detailed analysis of how the international context relates to the hypotheses formulated in Chapter 3. Notes 1

2 

Law 91-21 of 4 December 1991 amends the 1986 Hydrocarbon Investment Law 86-14 of 19 August 1986. Journal Officiel de la Republique Algérienne Démocratique et Populaire. The English version of the statement can be found at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1079/is_v85/ai_3912993/pg_3. Accessed 16 December 2007.

5 The external–internal linkages of the ­transition

The external shocks: the economic recession The first element that needs to be analysed is the role played by the economic crisis of 1985–86 in ‘forcing’ the ruling elites to open up the system. It has been established that government revenues fell due to the oil counter-shock and this led to widespread impoverishment among the general population, which in turn led to the October 1988 riots. Due to the outbreak of violence the ruling elite decided to open up the political system. The question that should be asked is the following: did the externally driven downturn in the economy have a causal link to the decision to liberalise? In order to answer this question, it is necessary to take into account a number of elements. First of all, prior to the crisis in the mid-1980s, Algerian society had known a substantial degree of stability. Over the course of the decades, there were only two episodes that seemed to shake the regime. The first was the Berber Spring of 1980, which was dealt with quite swiftly, and a radical Islamist insurrection in 1983, similarly dealt with. The limitation of the Berber Spring was that it concerned the Berber ethnic and linguistic minority and never spread across the country. The Islamist armed rebellion did not enjoy the support of the population and was limited to a few fighters. The second element to take into consideration is that stability was maintained thanks to the expanding economy and to generous welfare provisions, which were the results of hydrocarbons rents (Benachenhou, 1999). The figures suggest an almost total dependency on oil and gas rents, with Aissaoui (2001: 13) pointing out that ‘by the end of the 1970s hydrocarbon revenues had reached the point of providing 95 percent of foreign income and 60

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percent of government fiscal receipts’. In addition by 1985, ‘the direct and indirect money transfers from Algerian workers abroad to their families at home constitute[d] 10 percent of income of all households’ (Benachenhou, 1999: 157). This external dependency was highly susceptible to fluctuations on the international marketplace. Aissaoui (2001: 13) argues that it ‘critically expos[ed] the national economy to the instability of world oil markets and aggravat[ed] the country’s vulnerability to external shocks’. The counter-shock of 1985–86 changed the course of Algerian development for a number of years, as ‘export earning from hydrocarbons fell to $7.3 billion in 1986 from a peak of $14.2 billion in 1981’ (Aissaoui, 2001: 15). It seems beyond dispute that the recession was the principal cause of the October 1988 riots, given that in a very short period of time, the country’s economy virtually collapsed. While previous mismanagement (Clement and Springborg, 2001) and rampant corruption are certainly to be blamed for the recession, the international hydrocarbons market is directly responsible for such a swift decline. Thus, it is not problematic to see the economic crisis as being externally driven. The establishment of a causal mechanism is however not clear-cut when it comes to linking the recession to the opening up of the political system because the political actors on the scene have diverging takes on the relevance of the crisis. The Islamic Salvation Front consistently held that the economic crisis was not crucial in determining political outcomes because the system was already doomed. In short, ‘given the fact that the regime never enjoyed either Islamic or electoral legitimacy, given that it enjoyed only a revolutionary legitimacy that went on the decline in the late 1970s, the collision course between the regime and society was set much before the mid-1980s’ (Author interview with FIS, Geneva, 2002). The FIS contends that it was the lack of political legitimacy rather than the economic crisis that led the ruling elites to try a new strategy of re-legitimisation. According to the FIS, the system had been failing for a long time and the impact of the crisis was almost incidental to an already pre-ordained development. In one FIS publication this sentiment emerges quite strongly: ‘aren’t the elites proud of occupying the mansions and the apartments left by [former French colonial rulers]? With independence, there

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was no break with the colonial State, just a transfer of competencies’ (El Ribat, 1998). Abassi Madani had already formulated this view in an interview with Slimane Zéghidour (1990: 180) when he claimed that ‘the Algerian state of 1962 did not correspond at all to the one dreamt of on November 1st, 1954, when we took up arms to create it: an independent state based on Islamic principles’. This deviation from the original project, and the transformation of Algeria into a secular, socialist state, are the reasons for all of Algeria’s ills, according to the FIS. The FIS’s stance, however, might derive from the fact they are reluctant to admit that they capitalised on an unprecedented economic crisis without which the regime could have held on to power just like it occurred in other rentier states, whose elites managed to defuse the crisis. Tehami (1999: 109) ironically highlights that ‘very few people took note of this serious [ideological] deviation before oil prices began plummeting’. Given that it was the regime who introduced political reforms, it is more useful to analyse the evidence from government circles. Chadli and some of his advisers had started introducing some pro-market reforms before the economic crisis fully hit Algeria, as he recognised the necessity to improve the economy. However, he had avoided talking about political reforms. There were no references to getting rid of the one-party political system nor was there any discussion about constitutional changes to allow for political pluralism. It was the riots that modified Chadli’s perspective because they demonstrated that there was no time to manage the painful economic reforms and an exit strategy was needed: democratisation. The desperate economic situation was the main factor behind Chadli’s decision to liberalise the political system, as the difficulties of implementing economic reforms were so overwhelming that a political outlet for popular discontent was needed. It is for this reason that government circles insist that without such a severe economic crisis there would have been no political opening. In this respect Algeria behaved no differently from the other petroleum-exporting countries. According to Sadiki (1997, 2000), processes of political liberalisation in the region started because of the economic recession and Algeria went as far as it did in terms of liberalisation because of the sheer severity of the crisis. Addi (1992b: 79), suggesting that

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the state of the economy is indeed a crucial variable, claims that ‘political Islam is popular because it promises to renew the redistributionist policies that oil revenues permitted during the 1960s and 1970s’. To conclude, it can be claimed that there is strong evidence to support the existence of a causal mechanism between the drop in oil prices and the severe economic recession (Testas, 2002), but the existence of a causal mechanism between the economic crisis and political liberalisation is more dubious because the economic system was poorly managed and rife with corruption and this had already significantly discredited the ruling elites. In this respect the recession was more of an accelerating factor rather than a causal one. After all, it has been pointed out that Algeria, like many other economies in the area, had structural deficiencies that the 1985/86 recession simply highlighted. In this context, the international economic crisis acted as a catalyst for problems the country was already experiencing. The external shocks: the victory of the Afghan mujahedeen The war in Afghanistan lasted for a decade and saw the military and ideological mobilisation of a number of radical Islamist groups and individuals throughout the Arab world, as many foreign fighters joined the ranks of the Afghan guerrillas. These foreign fighters went to Afghanistan to participate in a jihad against invaders who had desecrated Muslim soil and most Arab regimes encouraged thousands of young men to participate. Algeria was no different. The war in Afghanistan and militant Islamism became inextricably linked because of the practical necessity of uniting Afghan tribes that did not have much in common except Islam. The conflict however also attracted significant numbers of foreign fighters who believed it was their religious duty to go to participate. Islam-based political radicalism had been making a comeback since the late 1960s and Afghanistan proved to be the place where an extreme form of Sunni radicalism was forged in combat. Their engagement in war was aimed not only at helping the Afghanis get their country back, but it involved the construction of a new society that would spread across the Muslim world, replacing the

the external–internal linkages

current nationalist regimes in power. Once the liberation of Afghanistan was achieved, Islamic circles presented the victory as the triumph of radical Islamism and the prestige derived from fighting in Afghanistan reflected well on radical Islamist movements across the Arab world. From this it follows that in Algeria we should see two repercussions from the Afghan fallout. Firstly, we should see the ‘ideological boost’ from the war in Afghanistan translated into the political discourse of the FIS, which was created towards the very end of the war. Secondly, we should see returning Algerian ‘Afghan fighters’ involved in the movement itself, given that, according to Basbous (2003: 28), many of the returnees ‘were anxious to introduce changes within their own states, where there was real and tangible dissatisfaction and where they hoped to utilise their “Afghan” experience against their own governments’. On the first count, the FIS does not seem to have made any substantial references to the war in Afghanistan to underpin its ideological discourse. The war in Afghanistan was a distant event that held very little in common with the Algerian situation and the FIS was much more preoccupied with domestic issues. While some young men might have been superficially attracted and fascinated with the conflict and its inflammatory rhetoric, the language of Islamism in Algeria was adapted to underpin specific local socio-economic and political demands and not some sort of global Islamist transformation. When asked about the FIS priorities in case of electoral victory the leader of the FIS, Abassi Madani (Zéghidour, 1990: 184) was very clear: ‘these are the most pressing problems we need to solve for our people: housing, employment and [guaranteeing access to] basic necessities’. However, this does not mean that external events did not have any impact on the FIS ideology. Thus, while there is very limited direct ideological contamination between the FIS and other movements which were more radically involved with Afghanistan such as the Pakistani Islamists or the Egyptian al-Gama Islamiyya, ‘Khomeinism was able to exercise considerable appeal for Islamic movements in North Africa’ (Burgat, 1995: 128). This is both interesting and unexpected because Khomeini’s theories of governance were based on a very specific and innovative reading of Shiism. It was not however his political theories that influenced

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the FIS, but the similarities that some FIS ideologues perceived in the two situations, namely the ­attempt to remove a ­corrupt and inefficient regime backed up by the military and Western allies. On the importance of ‘Algerian Afghanis’ within the FIS, studies differ considerably. Séverine Labat (1995) argues that the FIS is purely a domestic movement rather than the product of foreign ideologies and excludes Algerian Afghanis from her typology of factions within the movement. She convincingly argues that the most prominent factions were the ‘Islamo-technocrats’, who wanted to replace the current corrupt elites and favoured an electoral strategy to get into power. In a subsequent study of FIS militants, Tehami (1999) offers a slightly different categorisation by including a group labelled ‘radicals’, but he also excludes the ‘Algerian Afghanis’ from his typology. Touati (1995) also argues that the reformist discourse of the diaz’aristes faction was the dominant one before the cancellation of elections. Basbous (2003), on the contrary, claims that within the party a group of ‘Algerian Afghanis’ had been able to gather substantial support and Kepel (2003: 96) suggests that the Algerian Afghanis played a prominent role in Algerian politics from 1989 onwards. The picture that emerges of the FIS from these studies is a one of a nebulous collection of personalities and factions with quite distinct beliefs sticking together with the simple intention of challenging the FLN. On the specific role of the Algerian Afghanis, Basbous’s claim regarding their importance is based on the fact that between 700 and 3,200 Algerians went to fight in Afghanistan.1 However, even taking into consideration the highest figure and speculating that all of them returned and became politically active within the FIS, the number is still too small to have a substantial effect, given that the FIS could count on a very large pool of members. Furthermore, the wider electorate did not seem to be too preoccupied with the issues of Islamic purity dear to the ‘Afghanis’ and was much more concerned with practical solutions to overwhelming social problems (Stora, 1990). In conclusion, it emerges that the ideological pull of the brand of radical Islam that had triumphed in Afghanistan was almost non-existent in Algeria before the cancellation of the electoral process. Not even through contacts with other more radical movements did the FIS acquire

the external–internal linkages

the same ideological discourse of the Islamists who fought the Soviets. Furthermore, the role of ex-combatants within the structures of the party was, at best, extremely limited if the background of the principal leaders is examined. This interpretation was and still is contested in government circles, because the regime tried to explain away the rise of the FIS and the subsequent armed struggle by referring to foreign interference. For instance, the former Algerian Ambassador to the US, Osman Bencherif (1995), claimed: ‘violence in Algeria was [not] triggered by the cancellation of elections in January 1992 … but violence rode on the wave of Islamist militancy brought into the country by veterans of the war in Afghanistan’. These claims however have a significant political bias and should be treated with scepticism. The FIS membership reflected much more relevant constituencies than the Algerian Afghanis such as the Islamo-technocrats led by Hachani, who was responsible for the FIS participation in the December 1991 elections despite the arrest of its two leaders six months before the ballot. Thus, there is therefore very little evidence to support the claim that the war in Afghanistan had consequences and repercussions on the Islamist movement in Algeria, although the issue of returnees was later much utilised in government circles to explain the conflict. The external shocks: the 1990/91 Gulf War The hypothesis under examination holds that the outbreak of the crisis, the diplomatic attempts to solve it peacefully and the subsequent Operation Desert Storm affected the distribution of power and resources in Algeria. If this is the case, we should find evidence of the three main actors (government, the FIS and the other parties) changing their strategies and their objectives throughout this phase of the transition due to the shifts in their own ‘mobilisable’ resources. When it comes to the FIS, it emerges clearly that the party benefited from its anti-Western stance. This is in line with developments elsewhere in the Arab world where Islamist groups benefited from their support for Iraq. Piscatori (1991: 11) highlights that ‘the leadership of the Islamic movement across the Muslim world faced a dilemma: on the one hand,

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sentiment from the rank and file of membership was clearly in favour of Saddam, yet, on the other hand, their very ­organisations were often financially dependent on the Gulf states’. The FIS, like most of the other movements, solved this dilemma by following the sentiment of the ‘Arab street’ because Saddam’s defiance of the West together with his anti-Israeli rhetoric made him admired throughout the region (Aburish, 2000). The FIS initially condemned the invasion of Kuwait, but once it became clear that the vast majority of the population was quite favourable to Iraq’s actions it changed its rhetoric. The turning point was the beginning of operation Desert Shield on 7 August 1990 and the arrival of US troops in Saudi Arabia (Zoubir, 1993). As Roberts (1991:140) also argues, ‘from that point on, the issue of Iraq’s aggression against a fellow Arab state was overshadowed by the issue of the massive Western military presence on Arab soil, and the way in which the military deployment had preempted a possible Arab solution to the crisis’. The FIS progressively radicalised its discourse and ‘once the war began, the FIS emerged as the most vociferous and militant supporter of Iraq’ (Roberts, 1991: 141). This position, although difficult to justify in ideological terms and in view of the FIS’s previously close links with the Gulf monarchies, increased the profile of the party. The FIS openly recognises this shift: ‘the FIS is a party that takes its electorate seriously, and had to make representations on behalf of its constituency and air its concerns. There is nothing strange about this. This is what representative politics is all about’ (Author interview with FIS, Geneva, 2002). This increase in bargaining power can be seen in the mobilisation capabilities of the party, which was able to organise mass demonstrations in favour of Iraq and put pressure on the government. The very high profile the party kept throughout the crisis substantially increased the ‘credibility resources’ of the movement when it came to negotiate with the Algerian regime on how to proceed with democratisation and shows its ability to internalise external events. To the good results obtained at the local elections in June 1990, the FIS could now add its ability to mobilise the masses on foreign policy issues, which gave the leadership leverage at the transition table. For their part, both the government and the other

the external–internal linkages

­ pposition parties, after the initial condemnation of Saddam’s o actions, tried to move towards the same positions that the vast majority of the population held. In doing so, they faced problems and constraints that the FIS did not have and it is precisely these constraints that diminished their legitimacy and therefore their bargaining resources. The government could not possibly go as far as the FIS. Amidst the economic crisis, the government was at the time dependent on credits and loans from France and the United States. Upsetting foreign lenders on the issue of Iraq would have been harmful. This does not mean that the President was supine. Chadli and his government attempted to mediate between the different sides in a pan-Arab context and rejected Western heavyhanded interventionism. Their failure is more a reflection of Saddam’s stubbornness, and the unchangeable US decision to go to war, than on the lack of effort. However, the inability to provide a solution did not work well with the domestic audience. Finally, once the coalition started the war, Chadli was even quite supportive of its actions (Viorst, 1997: 91), probably because he hoped for a very quick resolution. The FIS, conscious that it could gain political capital by riding on the crisis, made claims and demanded actions such as the setting up of volunteers’ camps trained by the Army to go and fight in Iraq, or the halting of oil supplies to the West (Labat, 1995: 112) that the government could not even consider, further exposing the ruling elites as pro-Western. The FIS’s populist stance paid off, while the government looked static and unresponsive to the electorate. The other opposition parties behaved in much the same way as the FIS and former exiled leader Ben Bella even outflanked the Islamic party by ‘taking a vigorously pro-Iraqi position on the traditional basis of pan-Arab solidarity and hostility to Western imperialism’ (Roberts, 1991: 141) before anyone else in Algeria. However, the opposition parties quickly lost momentum. There are two factors that help to explain this reversal of fortunes. First of all, most opposition parties held marches where the slogans were about peace and a peaceful solution to the crisis within a multilateral context. This position was progressively out of touch with the more militant pro-Iraqi positions displayed during the FIS marches and demonstrations in line with the growing intensity of the bombing of Iraq. It is interesting to note that as the crisis

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moved from the invasion of Kuwait to the Western presence on Arab soil, the idea that there was a US plot to control Arab lands took hold (Soudan and Gharbi, 1991), which required a stronger stance than simply calling out for peace. Secondly and paradoxically, the FIS spoke the same ‘language’ as Saddam, focusing on religious rhetoric and symbolism. Even if Saddam was a cynical user of the language of Islamism, his discourse had the same resonance as the political discourse of the FIS. This was not acceptable to many of the other opposition parties, which were largely secular. Thus, during the entire duration of the Gulf Crisis, it can be argued that the FIS was able to increase its resources, make more compelling demands on the government and become a leader in the transition game. The Gulf War provided the FIS with the opportunity to link the state of the Arab nation internationally with domestic concerns. This is in fact the key to the role that the Gulf Crisis had. While the war itself ceased to be a major element of direct mobilisation,2 its effects were more long-lasting in terms of domestic politics. The FIS did not really want to use the Gulf crisis as a major foreign policy issue, but was mainly preoccupied with turning the advantage it had gained on the issue into domestic gains (Zoubir, 1993). David Seddon (1991: 110) claims that ‘much of the impetus for the popular protest [on the Iraq issue] derived from dissatisfaction with domestic economic and social policies and deteriorating economic conditions’, but these conditions existed prior to the Gulf crisis. What the crisis did was to intensify the call for change by giving the spokespersons of such a call a much greater degree of bargaining power with the ruling elites. As General Khaled Nezzar indicated in his 1996 article for El Watan, ‘the high emotions within the Algerian population for the coalition’s bombing of Baghdad became a significant advantage for the FIS to try to militarise its militants with the excuse of a jihad in favour of Iraq’.3 At the same time, the government and the opposition parties further realised how little legitimacy they had compared to the Islamist movement and began to play the game differently as a result. Some claim that the clearest sign of the impact of the Gulf crisis can be found in the postponement of the legislative elections. Roberts for instance (1991: 131) summarises the fallout from the crisis thus: ‘[it] complicated the political situation by disrupting

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the pre-existing timetable for the protracted transition to democracy in Algeria, obliging the authorities to postpone the long-awaited elections for the National Popular Assembly’. The legislative elections should have been the foundation of the new political system that was being built at the time and the Gulf crisis forced the government and the other opposition parties to fear this ballot because it would have taken place at a time of high emotions, with the FIS in an extremely advantageous position, and neither the regime nor the other opposition parties could welcome this. Other analysts argue that the humiliating defeat of the Iraqi troops undermined the credibility of the Islamists, as the ‘war was too brief and the disaster too evident to allow [them] to make an impact externally and consolidate domestically’ (Soudan and Gharbi, 1991: 48), indicating that the postponement of the legislative elections was due to other factors and was not linked to the Gulf crisis. In conclusion it can be claimed that the FIS benefited from its position on the crisis and was able to mobilise popular support for Iraq, to increase its bargaining power and that it was not weakened by the end of the military operations in Iraq and maintained its ideological appeal intact. It is more difficult to clearly establish a direct link between the Gulf crisis and the postponement of the legislative elections because other domestic factors came into play during the summer of 1991, but it is undeniable that the aftershocks of the Gulf war helped the FIS to gather more strength and emboldened its actions. The Gulf crisis also influenced the attitudes of the great powers towards Algeria and the FIS in particular. The French government was finally convinced that the arrival in power of the Islamic Front would have been detrimental to French interests, particularly after the FIS leader Madani stated that ‘what is taking place in the Gulf is a new form of Crusade … [the conflict] has now become a Crusading war between Islam and its enemies’ (cited in Zoubir, 1993). These declarations deepened the already existing mistrust between the Islamists and France, as the FIS saw the war against Iraq through the prism of western imperialism and past French colonialism. According to a Mitterrand adviser, the French government already had tremendous reservations about the FIS for the anti-French policies it might implement (Interview, Paris, 2001) and reactions to the war confirmed such a view. In

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fact, following the FIS victory in the local elections in June 1990, French ministers commented on the result to the press by explicitly calling into question the FIS’s democratic credentials and by warning about potential security problems deriving from their victory in future elections. If anything, the repercussions of the Gulf War on Algerian politics dispelled these reservations. In addition, the Gulf War began to change American perceptions of its interests in Algeria and changes in policy followed swiftly. The United States had traditionally had poor relations with anti-imperialist Algeria. Moreover, Algeria had privileged military relations with the Soviet Union and this was not well perceived in Washington even though Algeria was an important commercial partner. For these reasons, the United States did not share the French preoccupation about the FIS when the party was founded. The commitment of the FIS to liberal economics and the opportunities that American companies might exploit in the region placed the United States in a good position if the FIS were to take power. In addition, the fear that Algeria might follow the path of revolutionary Iran drove the United States diplomacy to entertain relations with FIS representatives and it believed that it could ‘do business’ with the FIS. For American diplomacy, ‘the only real preoccupation [was] the stability of Arab and Muslim countries and not the type of regime in charge, particularly if they are sitting on billions of cube metres of gas, as Algeria is’ (Devoluy and Duteil, 1994: 123). However, American ambiguity towards the FIS began to disappear during the Gulf War because the crisis showed to American policy-makers that the FIS would likely challenge international stability. The FIS was poised to win the parliamentary elections to be held later in the year and Western governments, already worried about the future of their economic ties to Algeria, felt threatened by the FIS stance over the crisis in the Gulf because the party sounded very radical with its slogans of ‘death to the crusaders! Death to the Jews! Death to France, Great Britain and the USA!’4 It follows that, even in times of democracy promotion, ‘the hostile attitude of the FIS during Desert Storm contributes to explaining the moderate reaction of the United States to the cancellation of the parliamentary elections in January 1992’ (Mortimer, 1995: 4). Moussali (1998: 7) goes even further and argues that

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‘Washington … welcomed the Algerian government’s ironfist policies towards the Islamists and its suspension of the elections.’ Former Secretary of State James Baker seemed to confirm Moussali’s assertion in an interview given to the Middle East Quarterly in 1994, when he admitted that the Bush administration ‘pursued a policy of excluding the radical fundamentalists in Algeria, even as we recognised that this was somewhat at odds with our support of democracy’. Thus, the crisis was a major challenge to the transition and it partially contributed to its eventual demise if seen in combination with the effects it produced on external actors regarding the perceived threats coming from political Islam. There is therefore some evidence to suggest that that the crisis changed the distribution of power and leverage among the domestic actors and this in turn modified both expectations and strategies. Finally, the Gulf crisis generated a feedback effect that affected Western perceptions of the FIS and of the Algerian domestic game as whole, where the FIS was now unanimously perceived as a threat because of the party’s denunciation of the New World Order as a renewed colonialism coupled with the dehumanisation of Arabs. The external shocks: the end of the Cold War The end of the Cold War had a considerable impact on world affairs. When it comes to the issue of liberalisation in the Arab world, this event is often cited as an important catalyst for change because ‘the collapse of the Soviet Union … undermined a certain type of authoritarian-nationalist model’ (Hudson, 1995: 217). This factor was particularly relevant for Algeria, as the country had quite close links with the Soviet Union. These links were not codified in a formal alliance, but rested on military cooperation and some ideological proximity. The contention is that the end of the Cold War forced the Algerian ruling elite to respond to it by attempting to fit into the new international political and economic system that was being built around the United States’s uni-polarity. Therefore, there should be evidence of an Algerian realignment towards the United States immediately preceding and following the crisis of the Soviet Union, which loosely coincides with Gorbachev’s reforms.

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From an analysis of Algeria’s domestic and international policy shifts, it appears that the ruling elites were indeed seeking a re-alignment towards the West, as the crisis in the USSR became clearer during the 1980s. Domestically, market-oriented reforms were introduced to remedy the problems of central planning, and internationally, Algeria began to slowly move away from Soviet influence towards better relations with the US and France. The very first step in the direction of a new relationship with the US was the visit to Algeria by Vice-President George Bush in September 1983. Ait-Challal (2000: 171) claims that ‘after that visit, relations intensified and meetings multiplied’. For its part, the United States was clearly interested in having better relations with Algeria and ‘in view of Algeria’s increasing pragmatism in foreign policy, the US main objective was to encourage Algeria’s efforts at liberalising the economy’ (Zoubir, 2002:65). Building on Bush’s visit and on the increased economic contacts, the more difficult issue of military and security cooperation was tackled. Algeria was heavily dependent on the Soviet Union for military hardware and officer training, but with the failing of the Soviet system the Algerian ruling elites decided to improve military relations with the US and other Western countries. First of all ‘just as many officers [were] sent to military academies in the Soviet Union as [were] sent to France, the US and Great Britain’ (Devoluy and Duteil, 1994: 46). The United States military established a programme to welcome high-ranking Algerian officers to its academies, although it has to be admitted that in the context of US overall foreign policy ‘in the late 1980s the United States simply was not paying very much attention to Algeria’ (Author interview with US ambassador, 2001). This lack of great interest from the US in Algeria emphasises even further the actions the Chadli regime undertook to move the country towards US and Western positions on the international stage. If the US had been more forthcoming in their support for Chadli, the realignment could be seen as an American attempt to gain influence in a changing Arab world, but the fact that diplomatic activities were mainly coming from Algiers indicates a real willingness to move away from Soviet influence. This was not so much a free choice as a forced one, with a view to adapting to a new international order.

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More evidence of Algeria’s attempt to realign with the winning side in the Cold War can be found in its ­diversification of weapons supplies. Until 1982, Algeria obtained 83 per cent of all its weaponry from the Soviet Union, but by 1985 it was already attempting to diversify its purchases to other suppliers. In particular, it was ‘interested in expanding further military relations with the United States’ (Bennett, 1985: 759). The United States were still sceptical at the time, but were interested in developing new markets. The French already had very close military links with Algeria and had sold them substantial amounts of weaponry. These sales by both France and the US seem to indicate that they were aware of the very powerful role of the Algerian military in the running of the country and used these links to obtain some form of ‘political’ access. Such access would be beneficial both in the short term when the insurgency began, following the cancellation of elections, and in the long term when Algeria became a crucial ally in the war on terror. In political terms, there is also evidence of the abandonment of Soviet-inspired discourse about socialist development. In a very important speech to the cadres of the FLN in September 1988, Chadli called for such extensive reforms as to virtually signal the end of socialist developmental policies. Chadli’s language towards the end of the 1980s was far from the grand socialist proclamations the Algerian public had been used to and signified that Algeria’s experiment with socialism was over. In international terms, it meant not only adopting friendlier policies towards the United States, but an improvement in the relationship with the French government as well. In this respect, Chadli found Mitterrand to be a useful ally and French economic aid allowed Algeria to survive at a difficult economic time. The ending of the Cold War, with its ideological, economic and strategic implications, had a profound impact on Algeria’s policy-makers. Their reaction to the unfolding events on the international stage was an attempt to be integrated in the new order being created. The attempts at redirecting foreign policy towards better relations with the United States, and strengthening the links with France, began before the fall of the Berlin wall, but coincided with the emergence of huge problems in the Soviet system. The toning down of the Third Worldist discourse signalled to the

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West that Algeria was changing and abandoning its commitment to the New Economic Order it had helped devise exemplified this. Market-oriented reforms signalled a willingness to participate in the world economy on the basis of rules Western countries set out and were meant to ‘impress’ the West about the reality of the changes taking place. From a political point of view, Bush’s visit to Algiers and Chadli’s visit to the US meant that Algeria wanted and needed better relations with the superpower poised to win the Cold War. Agreements touching on economic investments and military cooperation in the form of training and weapons supply followed both visits. From an ideological point of view, the new constitution of 1989 eliminated references to socialism and incorporated provisions for multi-party politics and pluralism, traditionally condemned as bourgeois institutions. All this does not mean that there were not domestic pressures behind the changes that were implemented, as discontent was simmering. A testimony to this is the rapidity with which new political formations propped up once political pluralism was introduced. However, the end of the Cold War represented a watershed for many countries previously aligned to Soviet positions and Algeria needed to conform to a new international environment. The evidence suggests that the ending of the Cold War played a role in forcing the ruling elite to seek alternative sources of international legitimacy, and this realignment towards the West was both a resource and a curse. On the one hand, the encouraging signs coming from the US and the West strengthened the ruling elites, which would not be isolated in the new system. On the other hand, the regime was weakened, as this realignment looked suspicious to opposition parties, particularly the FIS, which was proposing a specific Islamic alternative. Abassi Madani summarised where the FIS stood in terms of the debate between socialism and liberal-democracy: democracy in the US, in a liberal and pragmatic sense, has upheld freedom, but it has given more rights to personal freedoms at the expense of the group. It has given more rights to the powerful and less to the weak. This is freedom at the expense of social and economic justice … Democracy in the Marxist sense, on the other hand, is a restriction of freedom. This system has limited personal freedoms by using the rights of the group and society as an excuse … The Islamic alternative provides the kind

the external–internal linkages of freedom wherein individual and societal freedoms do not oppose each other. (Shahin, 1997: 226)

Thus this rapprochement towards France and the US was very controversial, particularly for the FIS, which looked at France with a great deal of suspicion (Kepel, 1997). Direct active policies: the West and democracy promotion Since the mid-1970s, there is one policy, at least rhetorically, that characterises Western foreign policy actions: the promotion of democracy. Democracy promotion is not always an end in itself, but also a means to achieve other goals and it is therefore a contradictory, ad hoc and context-dependent strategy. The contention here is that the political liberalisation in Algeria, although not a product of active policies of democracy promotion, was supported and encouraged as the best means to achieve stability in the region while obtaining material advantages. A corollary is that once it became clear that the process of democratisation would lead the FIS to power, key Western countries in the region pushed for the termination of the democratic experiment. Thus, democracy promotion is a shifting policy, which responds to domestic developments. When it comes to the United States, there is very little evidence to suggest that it exercised any type of influence to promote democracy in Algeria or that it supported the democratising efforts of the regime. During the détente of the 1980s, the United States was more interested in economic liberalisation than in the political changes taking place. A former US Ambassador to Algeria stated that, broadly speaking, ‘the US welcomed [political] liberalisation, but did not devote much attention to it’ (Author interview with Neuman, 2001). At the time there were much more pressing priorities for the United States and even in the regional context, ‘Algeria was of minor economic importance to the US and far from the travails of the Arab-Israeli peace process’, which was the key regional issue for the US. Thus, it emerges that the Bush administration did not really have an interest in Algeria up until the Gulf War. It follows that influence was exercised only in so far as US multinationals were going to invest in Algeria, as confirmed again by the former

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Ambassador, who stated that ‘the opening of the Algerian economy after 1989 provided a new opportunity for US ­energy companies to invest’ (Interview, 2001) and this was the real area of interest at the time for the US ­government. When it comes to France a number of different and at times conflicting perspectives emerge. After the October riots, Mitterrand and his government did not believe that the outcome of such an event would be democratisation. During the Cabinet meeting of 12 October 1988 Mitterrand stated: ‘what will happen in Algeria? I do not really know. However, there is a hypothesis which we are forbidden from thinking about: the establishment of democracy’ (Favier and MartinRoland, 1996: 483). What followed was a surprise to France, as an adviser of the president confirmed when he asserted that ‘we were very surprised that the solution to the economic, social and political problems [was] to initiate a serious programme of democratisation’ (Interview, June 2001). Once the Algerian elites were on the course of liberalisation, the French government was keen on supporting Chadli’s democratising effort because they hoped that political change would result in a strengthening of links between the two countries. The problem was that France should not be seen to be doing so too openly, to avoid undermining the man they were ‘betting their money on’, as the Islamist opposition or sectors of the military could accuse Chadli of colluding with the old enemy. This was the belief of Hubert Vedrine (Favier and Martin-Roland, 1996: 446), who argued: ‘if Chadli is ousted, he will be replaced by a representative of the anti-French faction and the regime … will be completely militarised’. It is for this reason that support for the project of liberalisation was ‘confined’ to the economic sphere until the approval of the new constitution in February 1989. On 8 January 1989 France granted Algeria 7 billion francs in credit and agreed shortly after to buy Algerian gas at more than the market price, injecting an extra 1 billion francs into the coffers of the regime. This was done to strengthen Chadli’s hand in the face of the mounting economic crisis. Open political support for Chadli came in March of that year when Mitterrand visited Algeria and implicitly gave his blessing to the process of democratisation. One of Mitterrand’s advisers confirms this: ‘there was strong support for the rapidity with which the regime chose the democracy option’ (Author

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interview, June 2001). At a more informal level, Ambassador Audebert was also enthusiastic about the ­ transition in Algeria and relayed this enthusiasm from Paris to Algiers. Furthermore, ‘both the embassies and the two military establishments had very close contacts’ (Author interview with Malti, November 2001) and support was shown to the principal Algerian decision-makers. It is this support that has raised controversy. Some experts such as reporter Djallal Malti (Interview, 2001) argue that the ‘real objective of France was not democratisation and … there was no real support for it’. He cites, for example, the very little support that was given to Hamrouche and his reform-orientated government. According to Malti, the true objective of France was stability in the country so as to avoid dangerous spillover effects into France and to maintain the old network with the Algerian elites. According to this view, Chadli was supported because he represented stability and continuity not democracy. Others argue instead that support was genuine and it is only domestic Algerian constraints that did not allow France to play a more overt supporting role, and when it became clear that the FIS would be the main beneficiary of the process of democratisation, supporting Chadli first and the military later became also a strategic imperative. From a theoretical point of view, the two interpretations are not necessarily different. All processes of transition have unknown outcomes and unforeseen consequences, which force actors, be they external or domestic, to adjust their objectives and tactics. It can be argued that France under Mitterrand supported Chadli’s efforts to democratise and this support was instrumental in the survival of the regime in the face of the mounting economic crisis as Maria Do Ceu Pinto (1998: 68) claims: ‘French support for the ailing and discredited Algerian regime can be dated back to the 1988 riots when Paris provided generous aid to rescue Chadli’s government from total collapse.’ France was so committed to shoring up Chadli because it believed that he would be the only one able to deliver a democratic Algeria France could live with, but once the process seemed to deliver a FIS victory Mitterrand preferred stability to democracy. Former Prime Minister Rocard confirms that Mitterrand’s policy towards Algeria fluctuated according to domestic changes within the Algerian context (Interview with author, Brussels, 2006).

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In order to achieve the goal of stability, Mitterrand not only used French resources, but involved the EU as well. According to Morisse-Schlibach (1999: 52) ‘at the European Summit in Luxembourg in June 1991, [Mitterand] put the issue of Algeria at the top of the agenda. Without hesitation, the Council decided to support Chadli financially with aid worth over 400 million ECU.’ It is the likelihood of a FIS victory that determines the later stages of French policy towards Algeria, which shifts from support for democratisation to support for anything but the FIS in power. At the beginning of the transition, the French government, the media and most intellectuals seriously underestimated the FIS and made the mistake of focusing on ‘the socalled democratic forces’ (Interview with Mitterand adviser, June 2001). However, these movements did not have much clout with the people and the results of the local elections of June 1990 came as a real shock to French policy-­makers. The French relied on discredited elites for a ‘picture’ of Algeria and the surge of Islamism shocked them. This 1990 ballot was the real turning point for France, when it became clear that France did not know Algeria at all. At the time, there was a widespread preoccupation with the outcome of the legislative elections scheduled for the following year. According to the French government, ‘the FIS in power [was] a very worrisome development for France’ (Interview, June 2001) and therefore even more support was thrown behind Chadli, given that the so-called democratic parties had proven to be rather unpopular. French support for Chadli came in the form of grants and economic loans just one month after the 1990 election results. The FIS was in doubt where France stood and they accused ‘some senior French political figures [of making] slanderous, patronising and antagonistic statements’ (Author interview with FIS, May 2002). Moreover, the FIS was unhappy about media coverage of the party in France: ‘the French media certainly played a critical role in demonising the FIS’ (Interview, 2002). It is quite evident that France, from June 1990 onwards, was dissatisfied with the development of the transition because ‘France did not see how the FIS would be stopped from taking power through the ballot box’ (Author interview, June 2001). A further development confirmed to the French that they should be hostile to the FIS: the huge popular support in the country for Saddam

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Hussein against the US-led coalition. Such a high level of support for Iraq and such a high level of hostility for France were not expected, and the radicalisation of the FIS regarding foreign policy issues made France even more uneasy. The French stance towards the FIS had two important consequences for Algerian political actors. On the one hand, it strengthened the FIS because it seemed to show ordinary Algerians that the party was the only real independent force in the country. The FIS could then present itself as the true heir of those who fought for independence against France and could accuse the regime of colluding with the former colonial power in once again depriving Algerians of their voice for change. On the other hand, clear French support for the regime and its hostile stance towards the FIS substantially decreased the regime’s eventual costs of repression. Mitterrand’s anti-Islamist parties speech in the aftermath of the Gulf War, the credits and loans given to Chadli after the electoral defeat of 1990, the anti-FIS declarations of prominent French politicians, and the anti-FIS campaign of the French media all contributed to making the Algerian ruling elites less nervous about the future (Slisli, 2001). With the FIS poised to win the legislative elections, French attitudes and policies seemed to support those in Algeria who would intervene to deny the FIS a place in government. Key elements within the French government had very solid links with the Algerian elites and Slisli (2001: 49) argues: ‘the corrupt FLN government was a major business partner with the West, France in particular, trading national resources for personal favours since independence’. There is therefore a lot of circumstantial evidence to point in the direction of direct French meddling in the Algerian transition, but finding evidence of French support for the military coup itself is extremely difficult because of the existence of diverging accounts. Mitterrand’s adviser admitted that ‘when the process was stopped, the Ambassador in Algeria and the government knew it was going to happen’ (Interview, June 2001; Basbous, 2003: 153), but this prior knowledge does not constitute proof that they encouraged it. Mitterrand’s adviser pointed out that the French government ‘did not push for intervention and this intervention was decided to save the country from radical Islam without taking into account what the external reactions would be.

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They [the generals] probably gave it some thought, but not that much’ (Interview, June 2001; Nezzar, 1999). Benchikh (2003: 83) differs from this and claims that ‘le Pouvoir has always been very sensitive about its role and its image on the international scene’ and it is therefore conceivable that they coordinated with French authorities. Aggoun and Rivoire (2004) assert that the French were directly involved in the coup and that emissaries were sent to coordinate it with the Algerian generals. The FIS subscribes to the latter view and argues that ‘there is evidence that the French government did act to prevent the FIS from taking power’ (Interview, FIS, May 2002). In particular, there are two events that are cited to back this claim up. According to the FIS General Nezzar had discussed in 1991 with some unnamed officers in the Ecole de Guerre in France about a Turkish scenario in case the FIS won a majority of seats in Parliament. The second event is a series of trips General Larbi Belkheir made to France before the coup to liaise with French military and civilian leaders, including Mitterrand, about the feasibility of carrying out a coup to prevent the FIS from heading the new government. It is not a secret that the coup was an idea of ‘a number of high-ranking officers of the Algerian army [who] come from the ranks of the French army: it is the case, for instance, of Mohammed Lamari, Mohammed Touati, Larbi Belkheir and Khaled Nezzar’ (Zirem, 2002: 106). Links were therefore present and channels between the two parties open, but hard evidence is difficult to come by. While decisive evidence of direct French involvement in stimulating the coup is hard to find, there is very little doubt that the consistent pro-junta behaviour of the French government after the military’s intervention to cancel the elections shows that France had a very high stake in achieving the outcome that was reached in January 1992. There was obviously great relief among French politicians when the Amy took over and this concerned both left-wing and right-wing parties. The republican Longuet declared that ‘he preferred the freezing … of democracy to the FIS’(Aggoun and Rivoire, 2004: 254), while the socialist Cheysson argued that ‘there was nothing I feared most than the proclamation of a fundamentalist state in Algeria’.5 France’s hostility to the FIS preceded the party’s victory in the 1991 elections and given that the intent to undermine the party did not materialise ex

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nihilo after its victory, it follows that at the very least the intent and will to prevent the FIS from governing the country did exist before the putsch. Thus, France had access to the major political and military leaders and it also had motivation for action. The costs of the military coup were at the very least substantially reduced given that no price would be paid in terms of international repercussions. Concerning the United States, their role in Algeria had traditionally been much more limited. At the beginning, the Bush Administration did not really have a clear policy on Algeria’s Islamists because the US had dealt with radical Islamists in other contexts and was not necessarily ideologically opposed to them. They also were not worried about the economic policies the FIS might have implemented if and when they got to power. A former US Ambassador argued rather convincingly: ‘whoever came to power [in Algeria], the need for revenues from energy would remain paramount and any Algerian government that suspended contracts would effectively prevent itself from developing new sources of revenues’ (Author interview with Neuman, November 2001). The US might in fact have benefited from the policy shifts away from the French connection the FIS would have implemented, as the party’s priority was to re-haul Algeria’s relation with France. Slowly however, ‘Bush’s administration officials became particularly concerned about Islamists’ impressive gains in parliamentary elections in Egypt, Turkey and Jordan’ (Gerges, 1999) and this had an influence on how the FIS began to be looked at. While the victory in the local elections in June 1990 did not attract much interest from the Bush Administration, the Gulf War began to change matters. American officials reject this interpretation (Interview, November 2001), but a privileged observer of American foreign policy in the region however noted that ‘FIS’s support for Saddam Hussein upset Washington and this displeasure was compounded by the increasingly bellicose attitude of the Islamic party, which was now perceived as threatening the stability of the Maghreb’ (Interview, November 2001). Most analysts agree that the United States had no role in stimulating the military coup and in fact a number of them go even further to argue that the US, up until the mid1990s, remained quite favourable to the FIS (Aissat, Dimet and Euzière, 1996: 96–9). The FIS itself did not feel that the

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United States was involved in supporting the Algerian regime either before or after the Gulf crisis. According to the FIS, the US approach since 1989 has been a consistent ‘wait and see’ policy towards the FIS, with a more antagonistic stance beginning only in 1995. This shift in policy was due to a revision of US interests in the region, perceived as a potentially dangerous area of instability due to the many problems originating there (Lesser, 1996). All this does not mean that ‘the stunning victory of the FIS in the first round of legislative elections in December 1991 [did not] alarm Washington’ (Gerges, 1999: 74). Evi­ dence of this alarm can be found in the official statement following the coup, which was more or less condoned. The State Department spokesperson, Margaret Tutwiler, pointed to the fact that the military’s intervention was justified by the Algerian constitution and therefore did not actually qualify as a coup. Not condemning the cancellation of the elections ‘was widely seen as tacit approval of the military’s junta action’ (Gerges, 1999: 75). Bush’s acceptance of the military coup and the launch of the so-called ‘exclusionist approach’ (Hibbard and Little, 1997) vis-à-vis Islamic movements, drew criticism from leading Democrats in Congress. Lee Hamilton (1992) was particularly vocal in emphasising the hypocrisy of the Bush Administration with respect to the policy of democracy promotion. Secretary of State James Baker defended the administration’s actions by stating that the State Department pursued a policy of excluding radical Islamists from power and that this choice took priority over the policy of democracy promotion abroad. Baker’s claim should be read as an acceptance of the military coup, but not as evidence of support for it. Unlike France, the US role in Algeria was much more reactive than pro-active. Given its lack of easy and widespread access to Algerian decisionmakers, its limited knowledge of the country and lack of specific interests, the United States deferred to Mitterrand. Direct active policies: the promotion of political Islam The rise of the Islamic Front in Algeria was part of a wider trend in the Muslim world and specifically in Arab countries. While the emergence of Islamism has an international

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­ imension to it, most Islamist movements have a national chard acter. This national character should not, however, ­obscure the fact that Islamist movements have links with each other, they influence each other ideologically and derive political legitimacy from many of the same sources. The main hypothesis being discussed here is that the Islamic Front in Algeria is as much an expression of domestic concerns as of external influences, particularly in terms of funding and personal links, which would make the FIS beholden to its backers. This is an important aspect of the transition game, as it helps determine the ‘character’ of one of its key protagonists. The Islamist movement in Algeria participated actively in the war against the French, Islam being a distinctive trait used to mobilise the masses against colonial rule. After independence, the Islamist movement was marginalised in favour of Arab socialism until the late 1970s and early 1980s when the regime began to ‘flirt’ with it in order to defeat the radical left and counter the rising admiration for the Iranian revolution (Touati, 1995). By the mid- and late 1980s, Islamism in Algeria, although divided and poorly organised, was beginning to benefit from events outside the country and Halliday (1995: 403) refers specifically to ‘the broader repercussions of the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the subsequent strengthening of Islamist movements elsewhere’. The Iranian revolution was an inspiring event for many within the Islamist movement, and in a context of the loss of ideological appeal of socialism, it became an important catalyst for political change. Algeria was no exception to this trend and even figures within the ruling party called for an increased Islamisation of the country to pre-empt the rise of a strong Islamist movement (Labat, 1995: 97; Burgat, 1995: 49). At the same time, the new Iranian government attempted to export its revolution and this placed the country on a collision course with Saudi Arabia and the conservative Sunni Gulf states for influence in the broader Arab world. The Saudis in particular began to channel funds to Sunni Islamist movements in order to counter Iranian ideological influence. In the context of this Saudi–Iranian struggle, the promotion of political Islam as an ideology to gain influence abroad became a major policy during the 1980s. The overall result of this Iranian–Saudi competition was an increase in the number of movements that became politically active, an

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increase in the resources available to them and by ­extension an increase in activities and membership. However, did external causes decisively contribute to the emergence of the FIS? In this respect, the main issues are the origin of FIS financial strength and the personal links of the FIS leaders with Saudi representatives. When it comes to FIS funds, a number of scholars argue that the party received substantial financial aid from Saudi Arabia, which allowed it to expand within society, attract new members and outspend the other parties (Balta and Rulleau, 2000; Devoluy and Duteil, 1994). The French government was also convinced of the existence of such financial links, while the leader of the FIS, Abassi Madani, denied it. To the claim made that external aid reached the FIS from certain countries and organisations, Madani responded: ‘such reports are false and untrue. We do not want to rely on supplies provided by others.’6 More recently, however, after spending much time discussing how the FIS was able to secure funding from wealthy and middle-class Algerians willing to finance political change, a FIS representative stated thus: ‘having said this [it was all coming from domestic sources], I would like however to stress that we totally reject the scheme which aims at denying us our right to secure, through transparent and legal means, much needed financial resources for our party’ (Author interview with FIS, May 2002). This does not constitute an admission that money was indeed received from external sources, but it is not a flat denial. The point about external funds is quite important because the FIS was accused of working for foreign powers and therefore of not being an entirely legitimate Algerian actor. While the source of FIS money is contested, it is important to highlight that even if some or most of it came from the Gulf, this did not make the FIS entirely beholden to its financiers as the party’s stance on the Gulf crisis amply demonstrates. When it comes to the personal links of FIS leaders with Saudi officials, there are no indications that there were any. Unlike other religious leaders in the region, Madani did not study in Saudi Arabia and instead pursued his studies in the United Kingdom. Moreover, he taught in Algerian universities and he seemed to be quite critical of Saudi Islam, which he accused of being too strict. While the other FIS leader, Ali Benhadj, was probably ideologically

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closer to the Islam practised in Saudi Arabia, he also did not seem to have links to Saudi officialdom. In conclusion, it is rather difficult to validate the hypothesis that the promotion of political Islam in both ideological and concrete terms was instrumental in the creation of the FIS. There is some evidence to suggest that the rise of the FIS had some loose ideological connections to the wider international phenomenon of the rise of Islamist movements, but it is fair to say that the causes of the emergence of the FIS and its expansion were mostly endogenous. The party overwhelmingly expressed domestic concerns rather than external interests, even at the level of ideology. The criticism of western policies in the region cannot really be taken as evidence of the FIS being part of an Islamist International because such criticism was very widespread and shared by a number of leftist parties as well. At a practical level, it is extremely difficult to offer evidence for the existence or absence of external financing. However, as mentioned above, even if external sources were proved to exist, it does not necessarily imply external control. More recently, movements clearly financed by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States have evidently escaped their control and thus funding does not automatically translate into control. In addition, as Karam (1997: 173) argues, ‘although we must not assume or imply that Islamist political parties are entirely self-subsidised from internal sources, the impact of internal funding dynamics should not be underestimated either’. This means that the promotion of political Islam from external actors is not an influential factor in determining the rise of such movements. They have contacts, they exchange ideas, they share programmatic points and they broadly spring from similar sources of discontent, but they are not external creations and do not seem to represent the national branches of a unified ‘Islamist International’. What remains true, however, is that international issues such as Palestine or Iraq are utilised to mobilise support domestically. Direct active policies: the role of financial institutions and multinationals Nation-states are not the sole relevant actors in international politics and among the principal non-state actors are

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international organisations and multinational companies. By virtue of their size, their resources and their degree of autonomy from state actors, these entities play a considerable role, particularly in developing countries. Just like ­ nationstates, these entities can be conceived of as rational actors with specific interests and with strategies to promote and defend them. In the case of Algeria, international financial institutions had the objective of encouraging a radical change in Algerian economic management. In line with the policy consensus of the time, they wanted Algeria to move away from a planned economy and accept a structural adjustments programme that would favour the rapid development of a market economy, which would inevitably benefit foreign investors. With this objective in mind, they attempted to influence domestic actors by changing the resource structures available to them. Much of the same can be said for oil and gas multinationals acting in Algeria. These actors are much more interested in economic outcomes than political ones, but in order to obtain economic advantages, they need to influence political decision-makers and therefore become political actors themselves (Henry and Springborg, 2001). In the Algerian transition, the role of international financial institutions is relevant and there is some evidence to support the claim that in order to meet their preferences, they had a profound influence on the mobilisational resources available to domestic actors. Before the political transition, both International Monetary Fund and World Bank officials were involved in advising the reformers around Chadli on economic policy-making. Their role was not official, and would not become so for some time, because the Algerian government needed to pay lip service to its autonomous economic policy-making and had criticised these institutions in the past. Nevertheless, these institutions inspired Chadli’s reformers. In fact, since 1986/87, there were close contacts between Chadli’s economic advisers (and later ministers) and IMF and WB officials. Ruf (1997: 9) states that ‘after the collapse of oil revenues in 1986, the international banking community made further credits for Algeria dependent on credit approval from the IMF, which thereby automatically and inevitably became the negotiating partner for the country’. It should be remembered that at the time both institutions

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had just undergone a radical change that saw the arrival of neo-liberal economists who had been formed in the Reagan and Thatcher years. As Stiglitz (2002: 13) highlights, ‘the most dramatic change in these institutions occurred in the 1980s, the era when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher preached free market ideology’. The financial and economic advice offered to developing countries was based on the experience of privatisation and liberalisation in the US and the UK, and was applied across the board (Williamson, 1994). The basic deal was implementation of these reforms in exchange for much-needed loans and credits that Algeria was not in a position to refuse. In addition, sections of the ruling elites were convinced that the reforms would work because they also predicted that there would soon be a rise in oil prices. Thus, by 1989, Algeria had signed an official agreement with the IMF in exchange for a 600 million US dollars loan to support the ongoing reforms (Yachir, 1996: 121). The second stand-by accord was signed in June 1991. At this stage however, the government refused to ask for debt rescheduling in order not to appear completely supine to the requests of the financial institutions. The economic reforms began to be implemented, but had the effect of hardening the socioeconomic conditions of the population. Their first political effect was to strengthen the opposition movements, while discrediting the government for its inability to deal with the economic crisis. It should be noted that given the disastrous economic situation, the government’s measures could not have a positive impact in the short term. In any case, according to Lamchichi (1997: 78), ‘the pressure from the IMF and the WB aggravated economic disparities’ and therefore made the social situation unsustainable, favouring those opposed to such radical changes. At the time, these institutions were not interested in promoting democratisation and were mainly involved in managing the economic transition. This position of ‘non-intervention’ in the political realm considerably lowered the cost of repression for the ruling elites. Credits and loans were dependent on progress in implementing economic reforms and not on political progress towards the installation of a democratic system. Thus, the actors who did not want democratisation to occur, but still relied on external support for economic needs, had little incentive to behave properly once the game started. Furthermore, ­supporting the

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ruling elites before and after the military coup was a priority for these institutions, as an Islamist party in power was too much of an unknown quantity and could have decided to marginalise their policy input. The same logic applies to multinationals with investments in Algeria. Thanks to the economic reforms implemented in the late 1980s and early 1990s, foreign investment in the hydrocarbon sector accelerated dramatically given the sizeable amount of untapped resources in the country. New laws on foreign investment favoured large oil and gas multinationals, which had very little interest in seeing dramatic political changes that might have meant a reduction of their profits and greater uncertainty for their investments. Asked if the FIS once in power would have welcomed foreign investors, the reply was that ‘Algeria needs foreign investors’ (Author interview with FIS, May 2002), but at the same time ‘[the FIS] is asking to benefit from our own national resources’ (Interview, 2002). This refers to the known fact that the FIS wished to renegotiate and review the contracts signed with foreign multinationals. In order to get lucrative contracts, substantial commissions were usually paid to key elements in the regime and in exchange for these commissions, paperwork was speeded up and conditions for investors were made generous. Given the FIS’s preoccupation with stamping out corruption, a primary concern for their electorate, it is very likely that the contracts would have indeed been revised according to new rules. Also, the FIS may have wished to implement a radical change in personnel, giving preference to the vast number of Islamo-technocrats that had supported the party and who hoped a FIS victory would give them professional benefits which they had been denied. This would have disrupted established networks with both officials from financial institutions and foreign private companies. International financial institutions and hydrocarbon multinationals left those domestic actors who were unfavourable to full democratisation in the driving seat because they preferred partners who would implement neo-liberal reforms and favour foreign investments. In addition, there were few incentives in supporting change that would have forced them to deal with new personnel they did not know. The FIS capitalised on the failure of the reforms and on the anti­corruption sentiments of the population to gather ­electoral

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support in the face of the opposition of sectors of the government bureaucracy and the military, fearful of losing their privileges. International economic actors assisted the ruling elites in maintaining power because of the imperative of economic stability. Their objective was to have an open economy in the most important sectors, namely hydrocarbons, and to impose an economic model that reflected their ideological and practical concerns. Both goals obviously would be better achieved through supporting pro-regime actors to the detriment of the Islamist opposition. Overall, while not decisive, the role of international economic actors has been detrimental to a positive outcome of the transition. Support was thrown behind the government and the ruling elites, which ultimately allowed it to halt the democratising political process without affecting the economic changes under way. A confirmation of this strategy can be found in the post-coup policies, which saw international financial institutions grant aid to the military junta in exchange for further reforms, without any strings attached concerning democratisation. In Layachis’s words (1994): ‘the agreement signed with the IMF on May 27, 1994, and later with European leaders, would lighten the debt-servicing burden and bring in more foreign capital to help Algeria … After Algiers committed the country to a stabilisation program and debt rescheduling plan, the IMF responded with optimism and promised a 1.04 billion US Dollars paid package.’ This indicates that democracy was not a priority for such institutions, as they dealt and negotiated with a highly authoritarian regime a rescue package worth billions without any political conditionality attached. Conclusion From the above analysis, it emerges quite clearly that the influence of the ‘international dimension’ has been in many respects decisive in forming the strategies of the domestic actors. The international dimension has considerably altered the cost and benefit analysis of the domestic actors involved and it has affected how the transition game proceeded and ended. It should be underlined however, that some aspects of the international dimension have been much more ­prominent

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and stronger than others in their influence on domestic actors. The analysis of economic recession of the mid-1980s shows quite convincingly that there is a solid causal link between the oil counter-shock and the economic crisis. While the strength of the link between the crisis and the process of political liberalisation is not as solid, the evidence still confirms its existence. The ruling elites liberalised because the economic recession had broken the rentier contract with the population and a re-formulation of a new political pact based on democratic legitimacy was needed. When it comes to the rise of the FIS and its role on the Algerian scene, the analysis shows that there is no evidence to support the claim that the FIS was an ‘external’ creation, that Saudi money or Iranian influence controlled the movement from outside and that the return home of the Algerian Afghanis had a meaningful impact on the transition. Saudi money, if it was ever given, did not allow the Saudis to control the FIS in any meaningful way. As far as Iranian influence goes, there was no direct contact between the FIS and Iran, although the Iranian revolution was an inspirational event that seemed to prove the validity of the Islamist project of radical reform. Regarding the Algerian Afghanis, they had little influence during the transition. The ones engaged within the FIS were a small minority and had to accept the majority’s decision to stick with electoral politics until the very end, while the ones who were truly militant stayed outside the party and began to gain some influence only after the civil war broke out. This does not mean that other events elsewhere in the Arab world did not have an impact on the transition, as the 1990/91 Gulf War shows. An analysis of its consequences on the Algerian polity validates the claim that the Gulf crisis dramatically altered the distribution of power among domestic actors. In addition, the Gulf crisis influenced the perceptions and the policies of foreign actors active on the Algerian scene. It should also not be forgotten that the Algerian transition took place at a time of great international upheaval, when issues of security and international stability were widely discussed and under constant revision. The end of the Cold War proves to be an important factor in this respect and the evidence validates the claim that the regime was looking for a new position in the international system and therefore democratisation was chosen as the path leading to this new

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position. Thus, the process of democratisation was not only undertaken to stave off domestic criticism, but also to carve out a new role on the international scene in order not to be cut off in a West-dominated system. When it comes to the direct active policies of the leading powers in the system, it emerges that the hypothesis that they had a great degree of influence on how actors behaved is only partially confirmed. While there is a rather consistent pattern of interference from France during the whole transition period, the United States was nothing but a rather marginal actor during this period and preferred to defer to France and Mitterrand. It was only in the mid-1990s that the United States was to begin to seriously ‘discover’ Algeria and the war on terror accelerated such process of discovery and rapprochement with the Algerian regime. The overarching aim of France was to avoid an FIS-led government for fear of losing its privileged position as an economic and political partner. In addition France feared that an FIS victory would have negative consequences for its own domestic social and political order. France was not the only international actor fearful of its privileged position and the actions of the international financial institutions and multinationals during the transition were detrimental to its success. Their policies and activities increased the political resources of the Islamist movement because the economic reforms deepened the economic and social crisis from which the FIS benefited. At the same time, their behaviour contributed to lower the costs of the military coup when it became apparent that the FIS, once in power, would have worked towards a reduction of the influence of both international institutions and foreign private economic actors. The larger trend of democracy as an international value will be explored in much greater detail in Chapter 6 because it goes to the heart of the problem of democratisation in Algeria and of the whole Arab world. There is very little doubt that democracy as an institutional choice has been on the rise since the end of the Cold War and its appeal continues to be very strong. However the democracy most scholars and policy-makers refer to is a Western liberal model, with its specific traits and borne out of a very specific and possibly unique historical experience. There is very little or no acceptance that other models of democracy might emerge and

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this is in sharp conflict with political outcomes in the Arab world, where Islamist movements, by definition ­considered to be anti-democratic, are the ones who stand to benefit from and call for democratic procedures. This dilemma of the FIS in power and how the international community dealt with that challenge is at the heart of the discussion in the following chapter. Notes 1

The figure of 700 is found in Al-Chark Al Wassat published 4 November 1997, while the figure of 3,200 is found in Algérie Confidentiel published 27 November 1998. 2 I am indebted to the publisher’s anonymous external reviewer for pointing this out. 3 The article is reproduced at at http://members.tripod.com/~AlgeriaWatch/    nezzar1.html. Accessed 15 December 2007. 4 Le Monde, 2 February 1991. 5 Libération, 14 January 1992. 6 Interview with Sheikh Abassi Madani, Qadaya Dawliyah, August 1990. Available at http://library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/madani. htm. Accessed 15 June 2001.

6 Islamism and democracy: international perceptions

The international dimension of the failed Algerian process of democratisation is an important part of the story because it not only contributes to explain such failure, but also because it indirectly addresses very important contemporary issues about the prospects of democracy in the Arab world. From the previous analysis, it emerges that it is around the emergence of the FIS as the largest opposition movement in Algeria that the whole transition turned. It is largely the rise of the Islamist movement that shaped the attitudes and determined the choices of the other domestic and international actors. This is not to say that the transition would have been unproblematic without the presence of the FIS, but the controversial nature of the party took centre stage from the very beginning. While international events contributed to the rise of the FIS, it is actors’ strategic and political choices that set the Algerian transition on its path to failure. It is therefore necessary to examine in some detail the role of the FIS in its international context because it helps to understand the ways in which the international dimension contributed to the failure of the Algerian transition. While there is wide literature on the domestic impact of the rise of the FIS in terms of the political divisions it created, the international aspect is often neglected, but equally significant. The nature of the domestic challenge of the FIS to the ruling elites is quite self-evident, in so far as its weight as the most important opposition movement inevitably put pressure on privileges and status that ruling elites were not comfortable in giving up. Most authoritarian regimes attempting to re-legitimise their role through democratic changes encounter a similar adversary and are well aware of the potential implications of the opponent’s success. The domestic challenge

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of the FIS to the other opposition parties is also quite selfevident because its large support as a catch-all party across different social classes threatened to marginalise them in the new political institutions. The FIS is thus not fundamentally different from large opposition movements in other transition contexts, but it was at the time unique for the challenges it constituted for the wider international community and for the conceptualisation of ‘democracy’ as a whole. The FIS was an Islamist party, with a political programme of radical change based on religious symbolism and teachings. The early 1990s attempt of the FIS to gain power through the ballot box still resonates in 2008, as both the academic and the policymaking communities are still grappling with the problematic relationship between Islamism and democracy. Democracy as a universal value Still today, one of the main tenets of transitology is the fit between the ideal type of ‘democracy’ and its Western liberal implementation. Not surprisingly, this is the mode of government of the most powerful states in the international system. This means that when a process of liberalisation begins in any given country, the population within that country determines the validity of their version of democracy only up to a point because full democratic legitimacy depends on a process of international recognition. In other words, you are a democracy if the international community says you are, otherwise you are something else and should be treated as such. The example of the Hamas victory in the January 2006 Palestinian elections is a case in point (Turner, 2006). Thus, a range of external actors have to judge if a process of democratisation has succeeded, failed or is still ongoing, irrespective of the degree of legitimacy that emerges from the domestic constituency involved in the democratic transformation of their country. By the same token, the international community also has a say when it comes to guarantee the democratic legitimacy of electoral processes that are in fact dubious and contested at the domestic level. The length to which the US, for example, went in legitimising the controversial presidential elections in Egypt in 20051 sharply contrasts with the dismissal of arguably freer presidential elections in

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Iran the same year.2 The conferral of democratic legitimacy is therefore externally driven as much as it is domestically sanctioned. The problem with this is that the only accepted version of successful democracy is a Western one, as this model is the one adopted in the countries dominating the international system. More specifically, what is particularly challenging and difficult to reconcile is the ‘religious’ and radical dimension that processes of democratic transformation in the Arab world would entail. The Western model of democracy has significant internal variations when it comes to the institutions that exist in any given country. However, what is common to the established democracies of the West and the democracies that have emerged in more recent times is the very strong nexus between the procedures of democracy, with its in-built values of peaceful transfer of power, popular sovereignty and government accountability, and liberal rights. Western and Western-­inspired democracies are liberal-democracies and while the degree of liberalism might also vary from one country to the next, there are considerable similarities. In particular, there is a strong emphasis on the separation of Church and state with all the policy-making consequences that this has. Thus, any process of regime change that is attempting to arrive at a democratic society has a very well established, internationally sanctioned blueprint that needs to be followed and this includes a very high degree of liberalism and ‘liberal’ policies. This, however, is problematic for a number of reasons. First of all, it pre-empts certain policies or institutional solutions from being adopted, thereby restricting the options available to domestic actors when it comes to political, social and economic arrangements. Conservative societies might find it very difficult to reconcile the procedures of democracy they might accept with liberal policies and rights that, rightly or wrongly, are believed to be actually undermining the fabric of society. Secondly, there is the obstacle of ‘cultural adaptation’, which is particularly acute in the Arab world where large Islamist movements tend to be seen as ‘enemies of democracy’ by definition. This refers to the widely held assumption that Islamist parties, even if they claim to accept democratic procedures, are inherently authoritarian and would not relinquish power once obtained because they do not actually subscribe to the principle of

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popular ­sovereignty. This is summed up in the slogan ‘one man, one vote, one time’ that former Assistant Secretary of State Djerjian made famous when talking about Algerian Islamists. The preoccupations with Islamists in power has not changed much since the early 1990s with both the US and EU boycotting, for example, the democratically elected Hamas in Palestine. Another example is the US relation with Egypt. In her visit to Egypt in 2005 to ostensibly put in practice the new pro-democracy doctrine of the Bush Administration, Condoleezza Rice specifically stated that the US would not ‘engage’ the Muslim Brotherhood despite the latter’s commitment to work democratically within the system to change it.3 Thirdly, Islamists view the liberalism and individualism of Western societies as particularly dangerous, leading them to reject forms of Western modernity. All this influences external policies towards them and towards the other domestic actors. For instance, if policy-makers in Western countries are intellectually unable to conceive of an ‘Islamic’ democracy, they will be unable to accept a process of transition that legitimises Islamist parties with controversial and radical policies, which will inevitably be labelled anti-­democratic and anti-liberal, usually citing the case of women and religious minorities. Finally, there exists the problem of pigeonholing the new democracies into a pre-conceived role, which serves the dominant interests in the international system. There is in fact an important international aspect to becoming a democracy that should not be underestimated. New democracies are expected to accept the West-dominated international system because they are now considered to be part of it and can reap the benefits of their participation, even if in a subservient position. Western countries and multilateral institutions support or, alternatively, boycott domestic political actors active in a transition according to their international agenda. Chavez-led Venezuela springs to mind. This is not ‘bad’ policy per se, but it can clash with the genuine aspirations of the domestic population, which by expressing a legitimate and democratic preference for an anti-Western political movement might see the whole process of democracy being labelled as a façade simply because of such antiWestern sentiment. Whether this might actually be the case or not, democratisation in the Arab world promises to be

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‘anti-Western’ in so far as it would likely produce a ­challenge to the current international order on a number of issues, ranging from the distribution of hydrocarbon revenues to the Palestinian question. For example, despite expressing moderate and democratic views on a number of different issues including women rights, the leader of the Egyptian Brotherhood recently declared regarding Israel that ‘we will not recognise Israel which is an alien entity in the region. And we expect the demise of this cancer soon … if they want to live with us as normal citizens sharing our rights and duties then we don’t mind. But to remain an occupying tyrannical country, then this will not happen, God willing.’4 This view is quite unacceptable to the international community. In spite of these problems, democracy has however become a universal value and holds widespread appeal in the Arab world as well, where its superiority is recognised for what it can accomplish in terms of both accountability and economic performance. In sum, democracy exercises considerable ‘ideological’ appeal for the vast majority of mainstream political movements in Arab societies, as it has become synonymous with all that is positive about regulating state–­society relations. It is not a surprise that Islamist parties, from Morocco to Egypt and from Jordan to Tunisia, all call for the instauration of democratic rules. For example, the most popular Moroccan Islamist group refuses to engage with the regime, but proclaims its attachment to democracy and condemns the use of violence to pursue political goals.5 Also, the leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Mohammed Akef, when asked to qualify what principle would govern an Islamic state, replied that it meant that ‘the people are the source of authority, the ruler has to be elected and there has to be rotation of power’.6 This was not always the case, as in the early stages of their political activism, Islamist ideologues and parties considered democracy as a Western-imported model that was inferior in many ways to the model they were proposing. The democratic turn of Islamist parties since the late 1980s is testimony to the appeal that democracy, understood as elections and government’s accountability, has a universal value. This is even more the case since the collapse of communism and the poor long-term performances of other authoritarian systems. Indeed most political ­movements in the Arab world today, either religiously ­inspired or secular,

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blame the current crisis of their respective ­countries on the suffocating authoritarianism of the ruling elites. While it is true that doubts still exist about the democratic credentials of Islamist movements, even the most sceptic have to recognise that what Al Ahram weekly wrote in 2004 about the Egyptian Brotherhood applies almost across the board: ‘the MB has softened its position on democracy, human rights, women, and minorities’.7 In many ways, the Algerian FIS was a forerunner of the trend of Islamist parties progressively moving towards the acceptance of democracy as the legitimate means of contestation of power, but with a pronounced disdain for certain traits of western societies and for their international policies in a number of areas. This acceptance of democracy on the part of Islamists is not uncontroversial because democracy, despite being a universal value, remains an essentially contested concept and how it is interpreted and conceived of in practice matters very much. The diverging conceptualisations of democracy make all the difference when it comes to internationally sanctioning processes of democratisation and the actors involved. In any process of transition, domestic actors operate in a very restricted ideological environment and therefore their choices in managing regime change are extremely limited. The discourse of democracy becomes a powerful tool for all domestic actors, who use it to achieve their goals, whether they are true believers in democracy or not. Thus, this discourse becomes a very useful resource in the transition game because international legitimacy usually entails accession to a set of privileges that authoritarian states may not enjoy. All actors, in the Algerian case, utilised the discourse of democracy in order to reach the moral high ground and to attract both domestic and international sympathy. These discourses however were, and still are, very much conflicting because they do not share the fundamental premises of what democracy is about. The nature of the international system and the interests of powerful states within the international community then determine which democratic discourse is to be validated and which one should be exposed as a sham. This bears no correlation to the actual democratic validity of the contending discourses themselves, but is the product of realpolitik frameworks. Paradoxically, in the Algerian case, the army’s intervention

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in the electoral process was ­justified, ­domestically and internationally, as a democracy-saving exercise. Democracy truly is in the eye of the beholders. Islamism vs. democracy? The emergence, the appeal and the electoral successes of the FIS in what can be considered free and fair elections both in 1990 and 1991 highlighted the practical difficulties for secular domestic actors and for the international community of applying traditional democratic standards to the Algerian events. Much of the academic and policy-making debate prior and following the rise of political Islam centred on the issue of compatibility between Islam and democracy and, more specifically, between democratic values and Islamist parties. A great amount of scholarship on Islam and democracy generally attempts to prove that the two are inherently incompatible or that, alternatively, they are not only compatible, but mutually reinforcing. In a seminal article on the topic, Hugh Goddard (2002) outlines the four major lines of thinking about Islam and democracy that characterise this debate among Muslim scholars and activists. Through an examination of the works of these intellectuals, it emerges that Islam and democracy are inherently opposed to each other or simply irreconcilable or compatible or in fact inseparably linked. This wide variety of interpretations only provides a partial picture of the relationship between the two. Once western scholarship enters the scene, the complexity increases, as a substantial number of authors attempt to prove the debate one way or the other, searching for the true essence of Islam and its relationship to democracy in the works of Muslim intellectuals and scholars. Thus, on the one hand, the sacred scripture, the hadith, and the whole of Islamic scholarship and philosophy are used to demonstrate that indeed democracy is not compatible with Islam because the religion requires submission and exclusive divine sovereignty where democracy requires instead equality and popular sovereignty. Islamic concepts and traditions are therefore mobilised to argue that the essence of Islam is authoritarian and that unless a secular reformation takes place, Muslim citizens are bound to be treated as remissive subjects held hostage by

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r­ eligion. On the other hand, scholars search the same sources for evidence that Islam and democracy are inherently compatible. Through a process of adaptation to modern times and requirements, concepts such as shura or bay’a are transformed into pillars of the fit between Islam and democracy. In addition, selective readings of the Quran are utilised in the debate to further the assertions of these schools of thought. Where one author focuses on the verses about submission, killing and discrimination against women and non-believers to prove the impossibility of Islam and democratic values being reconciled within a political system, another author might focus on the verses emphasising compromise, equality and forgiveness to demonstrate exactly the opposite. Such an attempt to arrive at the true nature of Islam in order to have something definite to say about democracy has inevitably spilled over to the examination of Islamist political and social movements. Are these movements, whose political activism is divinely inspired and whose symbolism is highly religious, going to be able to compete with secular entities in a democratic game without hijacking the whole process? Thus, a similar question to the one asked about Islam and democracy is also asked about Islamist movements: what is their true nature? Such a question is regularly debated in both academic and policy-making circles. Recent studies of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood highlight quite well how the outcome of this type of research is so contradictory as to be virtually irrelevant for understanding. Thus, while Khalil (2006) argues quite strongly that democracy in Egypt would not survive were the Brotherhood to take power through the ballot box, Mona El-Ghobashy (2005) comes to a radically different conclusion having analysed the ideological metamorphosis the Brotherhood went through in recent decades. Criticising such analyses does not mean that it is not important to examine the ideological underpinning and the ethos of political movements claiming to be democratic. There is much to learn in tracing how the ideological tenets of political movements evolve over time or in identifying who the leaders are and how their background influences their thinking and the direction of the party. There are significant differences between secular and religious parties, for instance, and they should not be hidden because religiously inspired parties do rely on an intangible ‘divine revelation’ in order

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to justify their policies and positions, generating genuine concerns among secular figures about the involvement of religious parties in politics, particularly when the discourse of some of these parties is highly questionable in terms of toleration of diversity. However, focusing the attention exclusively on the perceived true ethos of Islamist movements leads to a sterile and ultimately fruitless debate. First of all, the other side of the relationship is never really examined: what ‘democracy’ are we talking about? As mentioned in the previous section, democracy is an essentially contested concept and its meaning cannot be monopolised by one side over the other. For example, to the claim that Islamist parties are not democratic because they discriminate against women and non-believers, the Islamists respond by arguing that they win elections and therefore what is more democratic than having the support of the majority of the people, including women? Secondly, and more importantly, the focus on the true ethos of Islamist movements does not tell us much about the actual behaviour of Islamist parties in day-to-day politicking. Their ideological tenets and policy positions are not fixed in time because they do not operate in a vacuum and can and do evolve according to the changing political environment, to which they have to continually adapt if they want to stay in touch with both sympathisers and wider society. This makes them very much like all political actors, with all the internal contradictions, divisions and rationalistic attributes that come with it. As Brumberg (2002: 111) convincingly argues, ‘the challenge is not to figure out whether Islamism is “essentially” democratic versus autocratic … Instead, it is to see whether this or that Islamist group is acting within a hegemonic political arena … or else within a competitive … arena.’ The surrounding political and institutional arena is of crucial importance to understanding and ultimately judging the behaviour of Islamist parties, which in many ways are no different from other political movements, such as the Spanish or Italian communist parties, whose authoritarian tradition and ethos did not stop them from becoming responsible pillars of democratic, multi-party political orders. This rationalistic approach to the role of Islamist parties is more beneficial as it avoids sweeping generalisations about their behaviour and allows for a better understanding of national differences. As Bayat (2007: xvii) recently re-stated, ‘the

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realisation of democratic ideals in Muslim societies has less to do with the essence of Islam than with the intellectual conviction and political capacity of Muslims’. This includes Islamist parties, but it is something that the international community still has to fully grasp. The nature of the FIS and the international community Analyses of and attitudes towards the FIS were and still are conflicting and polarising because they were and are framed within the context of attempting to identify the true nature of the party, leading to irreconcilable academic and political divisions. Generally speaking, there is a considerable consensus among scholars that the party was a collection of individuals and movements with different agendas and beliefs, sticking together in the name of a shared adherence to general Islamic principles and anti-FLN sentiments (Willis, 1996). In addition, there is academic consensus on identifying the widespread popular antipathy for the regime and the ability of the Islamists to deliver social services and spiritual comfort to the impoverished and dissatisfied masses as the main reasons for widespread popular support. In the political process and during the game of transition, however, the complexities, contradictions and internal differences were swept aside in favour of presenting the FIS in very crude terms. FIS representatives also did not help dispel some of the myths surrounding the party and failed to reassure the secular parties, the regime and the international community about their intentions and beliefs, but this stemmed more from internal differences that can be explained by the fact that the FIS had many currents, not always able to send out the same message. Thus, the question of the FIS democratic credentials became the central issue of the process of regime change. On this issue the FIS was in a ‘catch-22’ situation, which is common to all Islamist parties that decide to enter institutional politics. On the one hand, such movements draw ideological inspiration and policy choices from a religious revelation that, theoretically, cannot be contradicted. This leads them to being accused of inherent authoritarianism because who, after all, can question those claiming to be doing God’s will? On the other

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hand, while they do not deny that primacy should be given to God’s sovereignty, they are also acutely aware of the necessities of governing in the ‘here and now’ according to popular sovereignty and for this reason they declare themselves to be ‘democratic’. The catch-22 is that if they insist on God’s sovereignty, the other political actors will rightly accuse them of authoritarianism and will not let them play by the procedures of democracy. If however they pronounce themselves as democratic and claim that they will respect multi-party politics and alternance in power, the other actors do not believe them because of the ‘nature’ of the party itself. Thus, there is no way of establishing any of this a priori unless they are allowed to have a go in power, which is precisely where their beliefs and intentions could be tested. Addi (1992: 76), referring specifically to the Algerian case, made precisely this point and argued that ‘democratization in Muslim countries must necessarily pass through and beyond political Islam’. The impossibility of establishing democratic credentials constituted an advantage for the other domestic actors participating in the game, as, almost by definition, they could label themselves democratic and present their own democratic credentials to the international community. The secular parties thus began to be labelled in the foreign press ‘the democratic parties’ and the regime began to enjoy the label of ‘secular’, denoting therefore some sort of ideological proximity to Western mainstream politics. In a special report on Algeria, Radio Canada compared a vote for the FIS to ‘a vote for the abolition of the Algerian republic and a vote for a radical and dictatorial doctrine’,8 while the French philosopher Bernard Henrly-Levy in a special report for the newspaper Le Monde omitted to tackle the issue of the cancelled elections and lauded the Algerian generals and their methods for defending the country from tyrannical Islamism.9 It is no surprise, therefore, that much of the debate around the FIS’s participation in the electoral processes and the democratic political game was not discussed as such and contextualised, but it was examined in absolutist and highly ideological terms. Scholarship is changing in this respect and there is an increasing amount of work, which studies Islamist ­movements as ordinary political actors, using the instruments of comparative politics to analyse their

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activism, strategies and behaviour. This means taking into account the institutional environment within which they operate. In the late 1980s and early 1990s such studies were the exception rather than the norm and therefore ideological interpretations prevailed, leading to the demonisation of the FIS and to a bitter political conflict that undermined the transition. It should be noted however that even if the FIS’s activities had been contextualised within the parameters of mainstream comparative politics, this would not have made much difference for external political actors, who were fearful of the policies of the FIS rather than of its perceived authoritarian nature. The FIS formally requested legalisation according to the regulations that the regime had set up, it participated in the local elections in June 1990, it called for legislative elections forcefully but within the legal framework, and it decided to participate in the 1991 parliamentary elections in spite of the imprisonment of its leaders and in spite of gerrymandering of electoral districts. All these FIS decisions suggested that the party was very confident about the appeal of its electoral message and saw no need to act outside the proper legal framework to make its demands. In addition, once elected, it would have been under pressure to deliver on its many populist promises, with voters holding it to account for its failure to implement its programme. It is by playing the game of democracy that political actors and individual citizens are socialised into it (Volpi, 2006) and, ultimately, the FIS populism might have been its own downfall as its confusing and general political programme was built on powerful slogans devoid of substantive content. Carlier (1995: 363) argues that the FIS attitude to politics can be summarised thus: ‘society is ill, it needs to be cured; society is ignorant, it needs to be educated; society is corrupted, it needs to be purified. The answer to all these problems is contained in one word: sharia.’ Institutional constraints, both domestic and international, might have in fact had an impact on the FIS behaviour and ability to reach its objectives affecting its supporters. The absolutist debate however took over and the FIS behaviour has been largely neglected in many scholarly examinations of the party and largely dismissed in policy-making circles as an Islamist ploy whereby participation was not out of belief in democracy, but simply a means to get to power and then

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do away with the democracy the FIS really despised. Much of the debate around the FIS was thus about discovering its true nature. Unsurprisingly, General Khaled Nezzar points to the anti-democratic ethos of the FIS, which would have used the democratic openings to the install an obscurantiste theocratic state. In addition, by claiming that ‘violence is inherent within Islamism’ (Nezzar, 1998: 90), the General is able to justify ex post the military coup and the ensuing conflict. Former Minister of Interior El Hadi Khediri (1998: 109), referring to the October 1988 events, agrees with General Nezzar and implies that discussing the developing relationship between the FIS and democracy in a sophisticated manner is quite meaningless because the ‘Islamists wanted to take by power by any means’. This suggests that there was no point in analysing the Islamists actions by taking into account the surrounding environment and their decision to play the democratic game because they had already decided that they were going to get to power no matter what, since it was the Islamists’ intention to want exclusive power from the very beginning of their activism. Latifa Ben Mansour (2002: 18), in her analysis of the FIS discourse, argues that ‘no political party founded on the basis of religion and its instrumental use can be integrated in a republic or in a democracy. And, if it takes power, it is in order to enslave the people and dominate neighbouring states. These parties only feed on violence and war.’ This, according to her, is the true nature of the Algerian FIS and she concludes with the usual claim that ‘when it comes to democracy, the Algerian fundamentalists wish to use it in order to dismantle it; they attempt to use the democratic process to then abolish it’ (2002: 108). Prominent secular figures within the political system and civil society expressed similar views during the transition, setting the stage for the Army’s takeover. The leader of the secular RCD, Said Saadi, proclaimed on 30 December 1991 in the face of the FIS victory in the first round ‘I do not want to go to my country’s funeral’10 and called for the army to stop the electoral process. The New York Times was quite prophetic when, in summing up the views of sectors of secular civil society, it stated that ‘many Algerians who oppos[e] the Islamic Front say they are confident that Algeria’s army, silent so far, will act if necessary. If secularists fail to stop the Islamic wave [through the

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ballot box], it is said, the army will stage a coup, ­ forcibly suppressing fundamentalists and reinstituting a military dictatorship.’11 In order to have their views confirmed, they isolated statements of members of the FIS leadership to ‘prove’ their true authoritarian and discriminatory intentions and it is no coincidence that the most quoted sentence used to discuss the FIS is Ali Benhadj’s anti-democracy statement in which he strongly criticises the concept (Al-Ahnaf, Botiveau and Fregosi, 1991: 87–8). On the other side of this essentialist debate about the nature of the FIS, we find the leader Abassi Madani’s acceptance of political pluralism: ‘multiparty politics and governmental alternance are normal, as no party can indefinitely preserve its youthfulness and its efficacy’ (Zéghidour, 1990: 186). In addition, participation in competitive politics effectively ‘proves’ the party’s democratic credentials (Guillard, 1994). In this respect it is worth quoting at length Mourad Dhina (2002) who set out the FIS thinking on democracy: FIS strongly supports the democratic practice that gives to the people the right to freely choose its leaders. Citizens, for FIS, should be given the right to organize themselves in societies, parties and whatever structure enables them to act collectively for the good of the community. FIS also adheres to the much forgotten Islamic principle of mouhassaba, or accountability, of the ruler. The People have the right to elect the ruler and to remove him from office. Any form of dictatorship, be it military, economical, ethnical or religious is rejected.

In this case democracy is simply equated with electoral participation and not with a more complex definition that would include liberal rights and respect for non-religious points of view. The problem of this essentialist debate is that there is a lack of sophistication in discussing the relationship between the FIS and democracy from both scholars and protagonists of the transition. This absence of sophistication is not accidental, but served the purpose of legitimising the political actions of the parties involved. The essentialist debate makes of ‘democracy’ a terrain of contestation because each party claims to actually embody and represent the true democratic ethos, through which they can claim both the moral high ground and receive material benefits. The whole issue of democracy was therefore couched in a very partisan language,

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with both sides arguing that they were the real democrats. On the one hand, this confirms how universal the term has become. On the other hand, it also demonstrates how controversial it is and how its essence is contested. This domestic debate, framed in essentialist terms, quickly spilled over into the international realm, where it was picked up and utilised to promote the interests of one side over the other. This occurred even though the debate cannot a priori be solved one way or the other because the democratic commitment and credentials of political movements can only be legitimated and proven by participating in the construction of a plural political order. The inability and unwillingness of Western actors to come to terms with a different ‘version’ and interpretation of democracy, in this case an Islamist one, is a crucial factor in explaining how the debate was resolved in practice given that processes of democratisation need to have external sanctioning. Louis Cantori (2000: 2) argues that this Western diffidence towards models of democracy that do not accept the main ‘teachings’ of the Enlightenment is detrimental to understanding other cultures and other ways of organising a polity, leading in turn to poor policy choices. There are, according to Cantori, three main teachings derived from the Enlightenment that contrast with the belief systems of Muslims and that therefore would be unlikely to feature in an Islamic democracy. First of all, ‘there is the belief in an idealised future of freedom’ (2000: 2) in Western democracies that sharply contrasts with Muslim societies’ references to past political and social experiences believed to have been ideal. Secondly, ‘the stress upon the individual and individualism’ (2000: 2) is in conflict with the communalism of Arab societies. Lastly, ‘the assumption that the ends of society consist of maximising individual freedom and material well being’ (2002: 2) is at odds with the more spiritual goals found in Muslim societies. From an ideological point of view, Islamist parties aim at recapturing the perfect society created by Mohammed, stress the primacy of the unity of the community of believers and do not see material wealth as the way society and individuals should be measured. From this it follows that their ‘ideal’ of democracy might indeed rest on the procedures and institutions that established democracies have, but may be founded on very ­different values, which

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could be considered quite ‘illiberal’. This is ­rather ­difficult to accept for Western policy-makers, who prefer their counterparts to espouse and practise the same basic values and ideas. It is no surprise therefore that external actors during the Algerian transition accepted as democratic the discourse of secular parties and the putschiste generals, while they rejected as totalitarian the discourse of the FIS despite such discourse being based on the pre-eminence of popular will. The paradox is that those in Algeria who defended the values of democracy, as understood and practised in liberaldemocratic systems, were the stronger advocates of military intervention and the cancellation of the electoral results and were supported in their call by Western actors who, up to that point, had been exporting the ‘sanctity’ of popular will across the globe. The inability of international actors to conceive of an Islamist party as ‘democratic’ favoured those in Algeria who saw this as an opportunity to justify the cancellation of the election. In addition, there is a degree of domestic and international patronising of the Algerian people involved in demonising the FIS and legitimising ‘democratic’ parties and secular figures with very little popular support. In most media quarters and policy-making circles, ‘the elections results [of 1991] are explained as the outcome of lack of political maturity of those who voted and through the absenteeism of those who did not turn out’ (Nabi, 2000: 29) rather than a rational choice of voters, who desired change and did not feel connected to what most secular parties had to offer in terms of alternatives. Furthermore, emphasising poor turnout does not invalidate the results because this occurs in established democracies as well. According to Guillard (1994: 71), the political programmes of the so-called democratic parties ‘are a myth, a fable, a ghost …’ because the ideologies they rely on, the issues they emphasise and the activities they carry out are largely disconnected with the reality of most Algerians, which the FIS had been, on the contrary, able to identify and partially deal with. This disconnection explains their rather poor showings at the polls, and presenting large sectors of the population as immature for having been somehow ‘taken in’ by the FIS denotes also a form of elitist contempt for the masses, which does not bode well when you have to go seeking their support. The international community would have very much

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liked to deal with secular, reasonable and moderate figures like Dr Saadi, leader of the RCD, or Khalida Messaoudi, a prominent anti-Islamist feminist, but the election results went another way. During and after the transition Messaoudi was often seen on French television debating the changes in her country, attacking the FIS for their regressive social stance and discussing her ministerial role in the post-1992 governments. Her secular, liberal and democratic positions showed exactly the type of figures that Western governments and actors prefer to deal with. However, she ‘may [have] connect[ed] powerfully with like-minded Western audiences during her countless TV appearances, but she was never asked why she failed miserably to connect with her own constituency … she garnered less that 1 percent of the vote when she ran for a legislative seat in December 1991’ (Tehami, 1999: 125). The leader of the secular RCD party Dr Saadi ‘was the man who, after the first round of the legislative elections of 26 December 1991, called with the most vigour for the interruption of the electoral process’ (Guillard, 1994: 70). On their part, General Nezzar and General Lamari, two of the main décideurs of the military coup, are both on record as stating that they should be thanked for saving democracy in Algeria. All sides used the discourse of democracy and its universal value to defend completely conflicting actions and stances, but the central element in tipping the balance of the debate in favour of the army has been the very partisan international legitimisation of only one type of possible outcome for the process of democratisation: a Western-style liberal democracy. The role of the international community in deciding which type of ‘democracy’ is the only valid one was particularly important in the immediate aftermath of the military coup, when western governments and politicians rushed to justify it in name of saving the country from ‘fundamentalism’ and therefore authoritarianism. While officially worried about the ‘abnormality’ of the actions the generals undertook, Mitterrand had already given the green light to the coup and French politicians, from both the left and the right, publicly expressed their support for the coup (Aggoun and Rivoire, 2004: 253–5). In an 2005 article El Watan affirmed that ‘Mitterrand had given the green light to the coup’ as reported by a former adviser and intelligence

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­ fficer.12 The only exceptions were Alain Juppé, Lionel o Jospin and Valery Giscard d’Estaing. The US administration followed the French lead. What was constantly emphasised was that the Army had respected the constitution with their intervention. It should be underlined that there were genuine fears about the type of legislation and policies that the FIS would have implemented in a number of realms. The greatest fear was that the FIS would have hijacked democracy and set up an authoritarian theocracy Iranian-style where the institutions of democracy would have been emptied of their content and social legislation would have seen the introduction of mandatory discrimination against women and minorities. The FIS, political power and violence A range of domestic and international actors applauded the cancellation of the elections and the banning of the FIS in the name of democracy. The fear of what the FIS might have done once in power was the glue that held together very diverse political actors, with radically different motivations and agendas. Thus, mixed with the ideological inability to see the potential of an ‘Islamist democracy’ were also much more practical preoccupations, which led a coalition of domestic and external actors to support the coup. A number of distinct constituencies can be identified within this coalition, each one of them with a specific idea of what the FIS would have done once in power and therefore with a clear justification for stopping it. The leading generals within the military apparatus, behind their rhetorical declarations about ‘intervening to save Algeria from the Islamist darkness’, had their own survival in mind. As Hichem Aboud (2002) details in his book, the leading figures of the Algerian military, particularly the ones who had been members of the French Armed Forces in colonial times, had been able to remain at the core of Algerian politics since independence, reaping enormous economic and social benefits from their positions. The privileges this caste enjoyed would have been under threat if a government accountable to the people with the mandate to fully place the military under civilian control had been in power. This does not necessarily mean

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an Islamist government, but any government they could not control from behind the scenes, being independent from the military for legitimacy. The FIS, as it happens, was the party destined to take power in 1992 and part of the success of the FIS was its pledge to stamp out corruption, which was rife in the upper echelons of the Army. The FIS was not against the Algerian Army itself and against its legitimacy which had been derived from fighting the French. In fact the FIS presented itself as the true heir of the revolutionary spirit of the anti-colonial war. The FIS however had promised to its electorate that ‘corruption’ would have been ended and prominent figures within the Army felt their status and privileges threatened. This does not mean that the only reason to carry out the coup was personal safety, but this sense of being personally targeted was certainly present and contributed to strengthening the resolve of the people involved in the coup. It is debatable whether the FIS, once in power, would have been able to fulfil the pledge of ridding the country of corruption, mainly linked to the hydrocarbon rents, but the risk was not worth taking, particularly at a time when the Algerian media, freed from decades of censorship, had begun to investigate and present to the public numerous instances of corruption, which fed anti-establishment feelings. A second constituency which had fears about the FIS was the French-speaking, urban intellectual community. The newly found freedoms of expression increased the activism of such a community in favour of democracy, human rights and modernisation of social practices. They however felt targeted by the FIS propaganda, which had heavy anti-French and anti-intellectual undertones, in line with populist movements elsewhere. Specifically, the FIS had adopted a discourse which condemned in many ways the Westernising attempt at modernisation that Algeria had followed and called for a return to a path of social development on completely different bases. The FIS strongly criticised the social and economic development of the West, which was something that Algeria should avoid at all costs. Aping French modernity had failed and something else should have been tried. The French-speaking intellectual caste was seen as disconnected to the everyday reality of many Algerians and was condemned for propagating ideas and modes of behaviour that were undermining the solidity of the community

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of ­believers. This could not reassure a great number of people who did not want to move away from the authoritarianism of the FLN simply to end up with religious authoritarianism. The role of women in society became the most prominent battleground. The FIS was accused of wanting to return to a social order where women would be confined to the home, legally discriminated and treated as minors. The Iranian scenario was evoked at every turn, with accusations that Madani, if elected, would become the Algerian Khomeini, discriminating against half of the Algerian population. The FIS was quite unable to respond unequivocally to these accusations and even when Madani forcefully argued that women would not be ‘forced’ to wear the veil and would have full legal equality, this was not believed. In many ways, the conflict over these issues was carefully constructed on a paradox. Discrimination against women and the lack of legal equality were already enshrined in law since 1985 and this had nothing to do with the FIS. In a bid to stem the rising tide of conservative elements within the FLN, the government in the mid-1980s had institutionalised ‘the Islamist discourse through the weekly sermon of the Egyptian Islamist Mohammed Ghazali, exiled in Algiers; the eulogy of jihad through TV series produced in the Gulf States; annual seminars on “Islamist thought”; and, more importantly, through the adoption of a new family code, which feminist organisations denounced as the “Code of Infamy”’ (Touati, 1995: 8) because it made them legal minors. In spite of this paradox, a great number of secular, liberal intellectuals decided to support the military coup as the lesser of two evils. While many acknowledged the moral dilemma they faced in choosing between a corrupt military and an Islamist government, the fear of political Islam prevailed and large sectors of urban, secular society rallied to the military. Some had even gone as far as to plead for the military to intervene once the results of the first round of the 1991 legislative elections were announced. A third domestic constituency fearful of the FIS was the Berber community of Kabilye. In this region of Algeria, with a distinct language, traditions and practice of Islam, the rise of the FIS was perceived as a largely Arab phenomenon to be treated with suspicion because of its emphasis on a ‘literal’ reading of the sacred text, its mistrust of linguistic ­minorities

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and its anti-French discourse. While the FIS claimed to be a party for all Algerians, it did not really make inroads in Kabilye where the movements led by Ait-Ahmed and Sadi were most prominent. The population of Kabilye, while in favour of regime change, voted solidly for the two ‘Berber’ parties and saw the success of the FIS with a degree of mistrust and fear. To his credit, Ait-Ahmed did not support the coup and had called in fact for a nationwide mobilisation to stop the FIS advances through democratic means, namely by voting massively against FIS candidates in the second round of elections. Sadi, on the other hand, rallied to the military. Thus, three important domestic constituencies, for quite different reasons, coalesced to stop the FIS from taking power. The international community, and France in particular, supported the coup and provided moral and material resources to the ‘democratic camp’. The international community, paradoxically, did not much care about the domestic policies the FIS would have implemented once in power. After all, there were no protests when the regressive family code was passed in 1985 and both the US and France live quite comfortably with allies such as Saudi Arabia that have very regressive and discriminatory domestic legislation against women and religious minorities. For the two governments, the priority was securing international stability, which the FIS in power, according to the party’s propaganda, would have greatly upset. The fear of an FIS-led Algeria playing a ‘spoiler’ role on a number of crucial international issues such as Iraq, Palestine and access to hydrocarbons determined the choice to support the coup. In addition, it was convenient to be able to argue that the support for the cancellation of elections was not given only for crude material interests, but as an idealistic defence of democratic principles and human rights, which the FIS would have trampled on. The French media largely espoused this line, siding with the French-speaking intellectual caste with which they shared values and beliefs. As Benchikh (2003: 64) argues, ‘the will to present the image of an army at the service of society is reinforced by the fear of rejection from the international community’, which finds it therefore justifiable to support a military regime because the latter is supposedly operating for the greater good. Thus, a coincidence of interests was at the heart of the anti-FIS coalition

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and the same dynamic seems to be at play both in Algeria and in the wider Arab world in the early years of the twentyfirst century. In fact, in the Algerian case, ‘Western governments and media almost unanimously approve the military coup’ (Goytisolo, 1994: 37). This anti-FIS coalition justified its stance ex post when the civil conflict broke out, as it was simplistically presented as a struggle between Islamist fundamentalists bent on creating a dictatorial Islamic Republic and a secular regime attempting to preserve future chances of democratisation and defending society from savagery. While the development of the conflict over the years might have to some extent conformed to such a reading of it, particularly with the emergence of the Groupes Islamiques Armés (GIA), this should not obscure how both domestic and international actors instrumentalised the war to justify their positions and policies. In order to explain the conflict, the essentialist framework has often been utilised in policy circles and in some academic quarters, but it has now lost its explanatory power. From the very beginning ‘the Algerian government invoke[d] the legitimacy of the struggle against terrorism to erase all the political aspects on the crisis in Algeria’ (Benchikh, 2003: 90) because it relied on the assumption that important sectors of domestic society and the international community conceived of political Islam as ‘inherently violent’. Ben Mansour (2002: 23) confirms the inherent linkage between Islamism and violence when arguing that ‘the ensuing atrocities [during the civil war] are the practical and real consequence of the language which proliferated for a decade in the sermons’ of preachers close to the FIS. However, this explanation for the breaking out of violence overlooks the evidence and the sequence of events. In the summer of 1991, after the arrest of Madani and Benhadj, the leadership of the FIS had refused to follow the suggestion of some within the party to opt out of the political process and took the decision to continue to engage with the regime and to take part in the December legislative elections. The following political statement was released: ‘we commit ourselves to remain faithful to the political line traced by the FIS, that line that relies solely on non-violent means to implement the Islamic project. The FIS will abide by legality and considers the regime as entirely responsible

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of any consequences that would stem from denying the FIS its right to act legally.’ In addition, immediately following the coup, the same leadership and Hachani in particular, re-affirmed the intention of the party to ‘fight’ the coup not through violence but through the recourse to proper legal procedures. The FIS, after witnessing not only the cancellation of the results, but also the dismantling of the party structures and the arrest of activists by the security forces, began to use the imagery of the anti-colonial struggle to have their right to rule reinstated. Thus, ‘FIS deputy leader, Abdelkader Hachani, FIS leaders Mohamed Saïd and Abderrezak Redjam sent a letter to Mohamed Boudiaf, the newly imposed president by the military junta [reminding] him that: “the just fight that you took yesterday against colonial France is of the same nature that the one to which we are ourselves confronted today against the military junta”’ (Dhina, 2002). It is not until later in 1992 that the FIS leadership began calling for armed struggle. It is very difficult not to see a very strong link between the cancellation of the elections, the ensuing repression of the FIS, which touched thousands of militants and sympathisers, and the explosion of violence. In many ways, ‘by halting the electoral process, le Pouvoir cut off all communications with its only real interlocutor’ (Goytisolo, 1994: 40) in society and tipped the balance within the Islamist movement in favour of those who had always been suspicious of the electoral route to power and warned against compromising with an ‘impious’ and treacherous regime. Touati is one among many scholars that recognise the strong link between the halting of the democratic process and the decision of many Islamists to embrace violence, although this causal mechanism works only because the state has left a political void filled only with repression. Touati (1995: 13–14) convincingly argues that ‘by violating the House of God by arresting preachers and ordinary Islamists, the state sacralises the struggle of its opponent, which becomes the cause of Islam and widens the circle of Islamist contestation to ordinary Muslims as well’. It is no surprise that it is at this time that the more radical voices within the Islamist camp, who had decided to remain outside the FIS or had been marginalised within the party, found a wide audience and their extremist discourse began to replace the

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pre-coup reformist discourse. One example of this radicalisation is the declaration of Sheikh Ikhlef Cherati following the coup: ‘the time has come to own up to our error, the error of having conferred legitimacy to a tyrannical power which has committed all injustices and repressed the people’ (Touati, 1995: 253). Perhaps the most convincing study on the ‘rational’ decision of Islamist militants to opt for violence is found in Hafez’s work. He argues that the extremists bent on violence ‘only gained prominence after the coup put an end to the FIS’s electoral option’ (Hafez, 2003: 43) and details why the rebellion was in many ways successful, as it engaged the security forces for over a decade and was capable of mobilising a vast network of support throughout the country. The international community and the media largely dismissed as irrelevant the sequence of events and the complexities of the political situation following the coup that led to violence. This attitude partly allowed a circle of brutality to take hold in Algeria for over a decade. The exclusion of Islamists from power despite their ballot-box victory led to short-term stability and to the promotion of economic and strategic interests in the country, but in the overall context of international peace and security it failed to pay off, as the continuing international climate indicates. The Algerian scenario has haunted the Arab world and the international community. While some recognise that ‘Algeria missed a golden opportunity which could have paved the way for the learning of democracy … [and that ] the cancellation of the results was a very grave error in so far as the ballot box clearly highlighted the rejection of the current system and the choice in favour of the FIS made by the voting majority’ (Rouadjia, 1994: 22), others still claim that Islamists should not be allowed in power in any case. Respecting the outcome of the ballot box in the case of Algeria was certainly problematic, but what came after cannot really satisfy anyone, as the country has since known only death, destruction, authoritarianism, illegality and economic penury. Today, even some figures within the regime who had welcomed the coup question the savvy of the decision and wonder whether letting the FIS rule would not have been the better option. Former minister Brahimi recognised that stopping the election process was probably a mistake in a 2005 interview with the Irish Times.13

islamism and democracy

All this does not mean that the FIS might have not r­ epresented a danger for liberal freedoms and for international stability once in power, but it simply reaffirms the existence of a significant moral and political dilemma when it comes to deal with the electoral victories of radical parties. While not making a normative judgement on past and present decisions, the solution of this dilemma on the part of the international community over the last two decades in favour of exclusion has not led to increased international peace, stability and dialogue: quite the contrary. The FIS experience was used in a number of Islamist circles across the Arab world as evidence that participation would not lead to power and demonstrated the inherently biased anti-Islamist policies of the West, further driving a wedge between political Islam and liberaldemocrats. It is a pity that the decision on Algeria became the blueprint for dealing with similar scenarios elsewhere. Notes   1  For the note of congratulation on his election sent by President George Bush to Mubarak and the Egyptian people see http://usinfo.state.gov/ xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2005&m=September&x =20050911120639lebahcb0.2090723. Accessed 20 November 2007.   2  See http://www.mywire.com/pubs/AFP/2005/06/11/890391. Accessed 20 November 2007.   3  The article by Stacher and Shehata on Rice’s visit to Egypt appeared in The Boston Globe on 25 March 2007. Reproduced and available at www.merip.org/newspaper_opeds/oped032507.html. Accessed 10 December 2007.   4  Al Ahram Weekly, 15–21 December 2005, Issue 773.   5  See references to democracy available in the documents contained in the website www.nadiayassine.net . The site is maintained by a leading member of the group and daughter of its founder, Nadia Yassine.   6  Al Ahram Weekly, 15–21 December 2005.   7  Text available at http://www.ahram.org.eg/acpss/eng/ahram/2004/7/5/ EGYP11.HTM. Accessed 5 December 2007.   8  See the special report at http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/dossiers/algerie/origines.html. Accessed 14 December 2007.   9  Le Monde, 8 and 9 January 1998. 10  Available at www.la-kabylie.com/personnages-kabyles/said-saadi/saidsaadi.php. Accessed 12 December 2007. 11  New York Times, 25 June 1990. 12  The El Watan article can be found at www.algeria-watch.org/fr/article/ pol/france/putsch_mitterand.htm. Accessed 15 December 2007. 13  Irish Times Weekend Review, 19 August 2006.

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7 From partners to allies: the integration of authoritarian Algeria in the international system

The research findings support the contention that the international dimension played a significant role in the origin, development and conclusion of the failed Algerian transition. In particular, a set of coinciding interests between key domestic and international constituencies was decisive in ending an electoral process that would have seen the establishment of a FIS-led government. The process of democratisation might have ended even if the FIS had been allowed to govern, as there were serious doubts about its democratic credentials and commitment, but this situation did not arise because of a preventive military coup, which was externally sanctioned and welcomed. While it would be methodologically unsound to infer the existence of a causal mechanism between the military intervention in the electoral process and the policies a range international actors implemented following the coup, an ex-post facto examination of the behaviour of the international community towards Algeria can be very useful to gauge how democratic change in the country was dealt with. Algeria remains a profoundly authoritarian country in need of ‘demilitarisation’ (Roberts, 2007), still relying on its hydrocarbon resources for economic development and still displaying widespread social discontent due to the absence of social and economic justice. In addition, while political violence has certainly abated because of the defeat of the insurgents, it has not entirely disappeared and indeed it has been revived thanks to the unstable regional situation as the rise of the terrorist group Al Qaeda Maghreb indicates.1 However, since the military coup, Algeria has been fully integrated into the current international economic and political

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system, becoming a privileged US ally in the war on ­terror, an important economic partner for the European Union and a friend of France once again as the visit of President Chirac in 2003 indicated. During the visit both the Algerian authorities and numerous ordinary Algerians enthused for the President, who called for the ‘renewal of the FrancoAlgerian alliance’.2 Newly elected President Sarkozy also visited Algeria in December 2007 in a more controversial atmosphere, but the visit confirmed the relevance the country holds for French policy-makers. During his visit a number of lucrative contracts were signed.3 The spokesperson of President Sarkozy stated that the visit had the objective of ‘re-establishing the exceptional partnership which France and Algeria share through a number of concrete projects and initiatives for the benefit of both populations’.4 The international transformation, over a rather short period of time, of Algeria from a radical socialist republic struggling against imperialism and rallying non-aligned countries for a New International Economic Order in the name of Third-Worldism, to a compliant ally of the United States and France, supporting neo-liberal economic policies and repressing the most popular domestic political force in the name of values it does not actually practice is quite interesting to analyse. This chapter examines in some detail how the role of the international community has been crucial in sustaining such transformation of the country. In this respect, democracy, democratisation and human rights were placed on the backburner in favour of ‘creating’ a stable and compliant Algeria, which would satisfy the interests of the dominant powers and actors of the international system and, at the same time, provide sufficient resources to domestic constituencies charged with maintaining such stability. In many ways Algeria paved the way for the type of relations that Western governments and international economic actors wish to have with Arab countries. The chapter analyses how the integration of Algeria occurred and how it moved from an initial uneasy partnership to a very friendly and profitable alliance, while, throughout, neglecting the issue of democratisation despite paying lip service to it.

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Rewarding the regime The involvement of key international actors in ending the Algerian transition is still quite controversial, although the empirical evidence provided here goes some way in highlighting that there is an important international aspect to the Algerian transition. What is however uncontroversial is the solid support that the post-January 1992 authoritarian regime received from different quarters within the international community. During the Cold War, in the name of national security, established democracies were willing to support friendly authoritarian regimes despite the ‘clash of values’ that in theory existed between them. In order to contain and roll-back the advances of ‘communism’ it was justified and justifiable to have privileged relationships with authoritarian regimes as long as they supported anti-communism.5 Thus, democracies armed and funded a number of brutal regimes in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. With the end of communism, the newly found effectiveness of international legal norms and the emphasis on democracy in order to achieve international peace and stability, it was believed that military coups to overthrow elected governments would be a phenomenon of the past and would not be tolerated. In the post-Cold War climate, ‘Western foreign policy objectives were overhauled [with] greater emphasis placed on promotion of democracy, respect for human rights, better governance, transparency and accountability’ (Ayttey, 1999: 277).6 The coup against Gorbachev, therefore, in the summer of 1991 was short-lived not only because of poor planning and domestic opposition, but also because of the refusal of the international community to legitimise it in any meaningful way. The interruption of the Algerian electoral process was not only tolerated and politically legitimised, but encouraged and supported from the beginning. In this respect, it is plausible to suspect that the military had the perception or knew that the international community would ‘thank’ them for their coup instead of shunning them. If the coup had taken place without anyone outside Algeria knowing about it, it is logical to assume that responses to it and measures towards Algeria would have taken some time to elaborate, but this was not the case, as support was immediately shown.

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The months and years following the coup confirm such a hypothesis, as the increasing integration of Algeria into the international community proceeded at speed through a number of measures that smacked of reward for the domestic constituencies that had directly or indirectly participated to the coup. These rewards were multifaceted and had a number of objectives. The ‘rewards’ for the new Algerian regime can be divided into three different categories, which are nevertheless connected to each other. The first category is financial and economic rewards. Since the coup, the regime has benefited from increases in development, military and other financial forms of aid, which helped secure its stability. Both state and non-state actors contributed to the financial solvency of the regime and, crucially, to the setting-up of a ‘liberal’ economy, which would benefit foreign investors and a number of pro-regime businessmen. The arrival of neo-liberalism to Algeria has made, over the years, the country quite wealthy, although the social situation has not changed much, with migration, unemployment and general discontent still high because the liberal economic reforms that international actors suggested were largely hijacked for the profit of the few (Dillman, 2001). The second category of rewards is of a political nature and more precisely the international legitimisation of the regime borne out of the cancellation of elections. Rather than being shunned, the new regime saw its international legitimacy increase. For instance, Algeria was admitted to all international forums and multilateral partnerships that sprung up in the 1990s without having to demonstrate its democratic credentials. The Euro-Med Partnership has been one of the most legitimising instruments of the Algerian regime, despite the Partnership’s rhetorical emphasis on the promotion of democratic governance and respect for human rights. In addition to direct political legitimacy from both states and international organisations, the Algerian regime enjoyed ‘good press’ in the West and in a number of Arab countries, where the ruling elites closely monitored Algerian events. Good press might seem like a minor legitimising tool, but in the context of a growing global civil society interested in pressurising both states and non-state actors to live up to their own pro-democracy rhetoric, providing a distorted

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and simplistic vision of the Algerian situation to the public contributed to the ability of policy-makers to protect from scrutiny their political agenda regarding Algeria. The third category of rewards concerns the realm of security. Since the start of the civil conflict, the international community began to think of a ‘stable’ Algeria as one of the pillars of the new security structure in the region. Algeria is for example one of seven countries involved in the Mediterranean Dialogue launched by NATO in 1994 with the objective of increasing regional stability.7 It is interesting to note that Israel is one of the seven Mediterranean countries taking part. With the ‘war on terror’ such a role has been inevitably enhanced. On the one hand the Algerian regime quickly claimed that what the United States faced on September 11th 2001 was similar to what Algeria had been fighting against since 1992 and this suits the US interpretation of terrorism quite well. On the other hand, Western countries, particularly the US, were now directly concerned with the stability of the Algerian regime and needed the cooperation that the Algerians could provide. The US State Department acknowledges that ‘since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, contacts in key areas of mutual concern, including law enforcement and counter-terrorism cooperation, have intensified. Algeria publicly condemned the terrorist attacks on the United States and has been strongly supportive of the international war against terrorism.’8 It is not therefore a surprise that military and intelligence cooperation increased significantly over time, in the process strengthening the Algerian military and intelligence services; the very actors that had ‘saved Algeria’ from the FIS for the benefit of democracy and that still benefit from their privileged position of key interlocutors for the international community. These rewards will be detailed in the following sections. For the moment it suffices to say that the Algerian regime and key international actors were and still are involved in a game of ‘pretend to’. The international community pretends to believe that the Algerian regime is democratising and pretends to believe that domestic institutional changes are going into that direction, while this is quite obviously not the case. In addition, the international community pretends to believe that the liberal economic reforms are having a positive impact, while in fact Algeria has

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gone back to the same failed developmental strategy of the past based on rentierism. For its part, Algeria pretends to accede to the demands of the international community on democratisation and political pluralism, knowing full well that such demands take the back-seat once the spectre of Islamism is raised. Semiane (2005: 32) convincingly argues that ‘Islamism is the bogeyman which is used as the principal enemy of democracy’, particularly for external consumption. In this game, what prevails in Algeria are the interests and vision of that part of society ‘which is overwhelmingly francophone, supposedly secular and falsely republican; it is this Algeria-Club de Pins, which is supposed to articulate the point of view’ (Semiane, 2005: 28) of society as a whole, when in fact it only represents itself to the detriment of a much larger section of a disenfranchised population. This means that the conditions that had given rise to the 1988 ras le bol and led to the growth of Islamism are still present. The rewards for the Algerian regime had the intent of achieving a number of both short-term and long-term objectives. The long-term goal of key international actors was to prevent the country from falling into the hands of Islamists either through the ballot box or through the gun. In addition, rewarding the regime was meant to draw Algeria into the pro-Western camp and take advantage of its vast natural resources to secure energy supplies. The shorter-term objectives changed over time according to changes in the domestic Algerian situation. Roughly speaking there were four short-term objectives. At the very beginning of the crisis, it was imperative to accord legitimacy to the military junta and allow the military to deal with domestic Islamist opposition as it saw fit. Later, in the mid-1990s, it became necessary to strengthen the impression that Algeria was moving away from military rule and towards some sort of democratisation in order not to be seen as supporting a regime that was coming under scrutiny and criticism from sectors of global civil society for its conduct in the war against the insurgents. This needed to be achieved while stopping short of recognising the claims of the FIS as legitimate. Thus, it meant supporting, even if unwillingly for some, the Algerian government’s decision to boycott the Saint Egidio peace accords, which had been reached with the participation of the vast majority of Algerian political parties, FIS included. The

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Economist reported that ‘the outcome [of the talks] was an impeccably democratic document’,9 but the Algerian regime rejected the Rome Accords and claimed that all those in favour of even listening to the FIS were interfering with the domestic affairs of a sovereign country. The international community, rather than stepping up pressure, decided to go along. Finally, since Bouteflika’s election, the objective has been to try to reinforce his rule through raising his international profile in order to demonstrate that democratisation is continuing in Algeria because of the increasingly assertive role of the elected president to the detriment of the military. When Bouteflika was re-elected in 2004, the White House issued the following statement: ‘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.’10 The same message arrived from Paris.11 In the context of these external efforts to support and integrate Algeria, much is made of the differences that existed between France and the United States and the conflicting views and policies that they implemented, seemingly in competition with each other. Much is also made of the role of the European Union in so far as it was radically different from the realist rhetoric and actions emanating from Paris and Washington. While it is acknowledged that different international actors pursued at times diverging interests and implemented conflicting policies, the long-term objectives of the main actors in Algeria and in the Middle East at large tend to converge and differences and conflicts tend to disappear. In the big picture there is not much difference between the regional stability that France, the US, the EU or large multinational oil companies envisage when it comes to Algeria and to the wider Middle East and North Africa. While the policy instruments and the accompanying rhetoric might differ, the desired outcome is much the same and ‘minor’ conflicts over tactics are quickly and easily smoothed. Thus, ‘despite minor tactical differences over methods, timing and reach, the United States and the European Union have virtually the same objectives in the region, operate under the same ideological assumptions, are bound by the same constraints and fall victim of similar contradictions’

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(Durac and Cavatorta, 2009). With the advent of the ‘war on terror’ this is even more the case despite some scholars arguing that the rift between the US and European countries had for instance reached an inevitable breaking point that the US-led invasion of Iraq simply accelerated to the point of no return (Neuhold, 2003; Asmus, 2003). The economic pillar The stability of the regime after the military coup became the top priority of both the domestic ruling elites and key actors within the international community. It was therefore imperative to sustain the country economically, as this was the most impelling crisis. Despite the rise in oil prices as a consequence of the Gulf crisis, the Algerian economy was in dire straits and the state’s coffers almost empty. Even more worrying were the size of the external debt and the weight of the repayments on the whole economy, which was suffering from the consequences of structural adjustment. In a 1990 article detailing the difficulties of the Algerian economy, The New York Times reported that ‘with $27 billion in foreign debt, Algeria [was] spending nearly 70 percent of its estimated $10 billion annual oil revenue to pay off the debts and interest’.12 The crackdown on Islamists furthermore increased the necessity for the state to find extra resources with which to face down the rebellion of those who had felt robbed of their electoral victory. In fact, following soon after the internment of thousands of suspected Islamists in desert camps and the disbanding of the FIS, violence against state officials and security forces began to occur. Islamist groups that had never believed in the electoral strategy of the FIS activated their networks and began a campaign of violence. In addition, indiscriminate state repression ‘resulted in the migration of many FIS activists toward radical organisations’ (Hafez, 2004: 46). In the face of the mounting military challenge to its survival and confronted with a very serious economic crisis that further undermined its legitimacy, the ruling elite needed funds to tackle both problems. The international community came to the rescue and made sure that over the next four decisive years, when the military confrontation was at its peak and its outcome quite in the balance, the Algerian regime would enjoy significant

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­ nancial support to survive and fully re-assert its power, if fi not its legitimacy. The financial and economic aid came in three different ways: directly from friendly governments, from international financial institutions operating under the urges of key governments and from private economic actors. The French government was quite obviously the largest donor from the very beginning. While it should be acknowledged that the military coup exposed some internal differences and disagreements within the French government over the best policy to follow, these differences never undermined the fundamental objective of stabilising Algeria, which meant helping the new Algerian regime to deal with the crisis. This attitude characterises French policy up to the present and ‘whatever the governments in Matignon, political stability was France’s guideline in defining its Algeria policy ever since the 1992 coup d’etat’ (Bonora-Waisman, 2003: 216). This concept of ‘political stability’ did not and still does not entail the arrival to power of a radical Islamist movement, irrespective of how it might get there. France, through the state owned Crédit Lyonnais, refinanced some Algerian debt freeing up $1.5 billion and decided not to modify the annual standing export loan of $1 billion. In addition, ‘just after the coup, France provided $550 millions in aid to help Algeria import food’ (Cordesman, 1996). Spain and Italy, very much concerned for the stability of the country just like their French counterparts, followed the French example and provided a combined aid package that amounted to more than $1 billion. The United States refrained from directly supporting the regime financially and preferred to use their influence within international financial institutions to pursue their objective of the regime’s stabilisation. The fiercely nationalist Algerian government had always refrained from engaging with such institutions, but the 1986 economic crisis led the more reform-minded members of cabinet to ‘begin negotiations with the IMF and the World Bank in 1987’ (Calchi Novati, 1998: 237) and although such negotiations did not lead to formal agreements, they paved the way for the ones that took place in the years 1994 and 1995 when, with the decisive help of France (Provost, 1996) and the United States, Algeria agreed to a comprehensive package of deeper neo-liberal reforms than the ones ­implemented up

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to that point, in exchange for loans and a vital rescheduling of the debt. The reforms that the international financial institutions demanded Algeria to adopt included the reduction of the budget deficit, privatisation and unrestricted access to foreign investors. It is interesting to note that there was no mention of democracy and democratisation. While it is true that at the time such institutions did not really deal with purely political issues, the absence of any pressure in terms of the re-establishment of the procedures of democracy indicates that the reforms, given their controversial social outcomes, might have been better carried out by an authoritarian regime with the sufficient will to impose them. For its part, the European Union also supported the regime through credits and loans because of French pressures. While it is true that some funds were held back between 1992 and 1994, this was not due to political conditionality, but because ‘the real policy of the EC and its successor the EU was to force the Algerian government to accept the rescheduling of Algeria’s debt and all that this entailed’ in terms of reforms that would favour European interests in the country (Roberts, 2002: 112). Such an attitude points to the rather cynical use of the Algerian crisis to extract economic benefits, while strengthening links with the new authoritarian rulers. Overall, as Volpi (2003: 113) summarised, ‘in just over a year [from late 1993 until 1995] the Algerian regime gained access to over $15 billion through a series of debt reschedulings and loans from foreign governments, banks and international financial organisations.’ The operation of debt rescheduling was repeated in 1996 furthering freeing up $4 billion (Volpi, 2003: 114). In addition to these ‘public funds’, foreign private companies were encouraged to invest in Algeria. The liberal reforms undertaken now favoured foreign direct investment, but the only valuable resources of the country were hydrocarbons and this is where the attention of private investors focused. Since the beginning of the 1990s, ‘the presence of American companies had been substantial and it coincided with the first liberalising measures the Algerian regime implemented’ (Leveau, 1998: 42). The example of these companies was soon followed and throughout the 1990s a significant number of other major oil and gas multinationals

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entered the country. At first, it was European state-owned companies such as the Italian SNAM that signed important contracts, followed later by BP, Total and Arco. The amount of investment in the industry has been extremely significant and profitable over the years. In addition, the prospects for future profits are also quite high given the size of the Algerian desert and the very strong possibility that there are still vast untapped resources in many parts of the country. It is interesting to note that investment in the hydrocarbon industry was almost risk-free. Despite early attacks against foreign workers that led to the suspension of some contracts and the withdrawal of foreign personnel, the Algerian military was very swift in securitising the oil and gas fields and the infrastructure. The myth that foreign investors are always reluctant to invest in countries with an unstable political situation or, even worse, ravaged by a civil war should be dispelled. For certain types of business, insecurity and instability are what is needed for the investments to be profitable. If a foreign investor receives assurances from one of the actors involved in the struggle that their business will not be affected, and this actor then delivers on the promise, there is a mutual benefit: higher profits for the investors who risk money in an unstable country (other investors may effectively be reluctant to invest and competition would not be as strong) and a source of income for an actor that needs funding to carry on with a war. The vast sums available to the regime in the early years were invested in upgrading the security apparatus and tackling the economic crisis. Martinez (1998) examines in great detail the repercussions on Algerian politics and society of the resources employed. It suffices here to summarise the most relevant aspects, which, to a certain extent, still affect Algeria today. First of all, it should be highlighted that significant funds were used to ‘combat’ the insurgency. Not only was new weaponry bought, but also the security apparatus was restructured and strengthened through the recruiting of personnel who could be provided with important economic incentives. In addition, the extra resources allowed the regime to ‘privatise’ the war through the creation of different kinds of militias in charge of defending their locality from the infiltration of terrorists. All this would not have been possible if the state’s coffers had remained empty. A second aspect

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of significance is that the economic reforms implemented in order to access some of the resources made available by the international community contributed to the reassertion of corrupt practices and patronage. Like many other scholars, Quandt (1998) had put faith in the political consequences of economic liberalisation. Built on the belief that economic liberal reforms would liberate the ‘democratic forces’ of the country over time, foreign aid, in all its forms, was justified as having a beneficial long-term impact, particularly once the war had been won. Unfortunately, the existence of a causal link between economic liberalisation and democratisation is at best disputed. In the case of Algeria, economic reforms led to the creation of crony capitalism, which simply replaced the previous corrupt socialism. Privatisation was one of the sectors where such corrupt practices occurred and therefore reforms did not fundamentally alter the fortunes of vast sectors of the population neither in the short nor the long run. Thus, in terms of domestic impact, the economic pillar of international support allowed the regime to defeat the insurgents and implement neo-liberal economic reforms. Regarding the first matter, it became quite clear by 1997 that the insurgents were not going to take power in Algeria through the gun. The 1995 election of Zeroual to the presidency had already demonstrated that the majority of the population was extremely tired of the violence, resulting in loss of support for the insurgents and an increase in support for any political actor who would put forth a reconciliation plan. This did not mean an end to violence, as periodic massacres continued, but the political stability of the regime was no longer threatened. On the economic front, the Algerian economy began to recover from 1997 onwards with reasonable growth of GDP. This was mainly due to the rise of the price of oil and gas, which allowed the ruling elite to begin redistributing the rents to its supporting constituencies. The diplomatic-political pillar The diplomatic-political pillar served the purpose of avoiding the marginalisation of the post-coup government at a time when the international community, if consistent with its liberalist rhetoric, should have shunned it and possibly punished it. The reaction instead was overwhelmingly

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­ ositive. As Bonora-Waisman argues in her analysis of p Franco-Algerian relationships from 1988 to 1995, France could not be publicly seen to support the military’s intervention, but there was widespread relief in many quarters that this had indeed taken place. Investigative journalists Aggoun and Rivoire claim that not only was there private satisfaction within the French government, but that the coup had been somehow orchestrated in conjunction with the Algerian military leadership through the work of French General Rondot. They claim that Mitterrand himself had signalled to the Algerian military that the coup could go ahead, with the proviso that his friend Chadli should not be harmed (Aggoun and Rivoire, 2004: 253–5). The FIS leadership supports this view and claims that the recognition of the ‘illegitimate’ government formed in 1992 meant the complete disregard of all the calls for dialogue that the FIS was expressing, in particular though Hachani and Kebir. It is very difficult to determine whether the French government had prepared for the coup and had decided to position itself in the middle ground between official acceptance and strong condemnation. Michel Rocard (Author interview, October 2006) argues that the whole Algerian policy was in the hands of only Mitterrand and Roland Dumas, which meant that it was rather secretive, but also subject to a considerable degree of change and adaptation. The reaction to the coup was mixed and contradictory not out of design but out of institutional constraints. What remains certain however is that the condemnation of the coup was not as strong as would have been expected in a clear-cut case of democracy being derailed so spectacularly and, more significantly, no sanctions followed the diplomatic condemnation. The opposite instead was true and after a short period of France ‘blowing hot and cold’ (Bonora-Waisman, 2003: 45), with Mitterrand more critical and Dumas more conciliatory to the new regime, relations became excellent as of early 1993. Again, some argue that such contradictions within French policy-making were the outcome of real differences regarding what stance to take towards Algeria, while others argue that these differences were either a ‘show’ put up for the media and European allies or simply the product of institutional processes. In any case, close friendship with Algeria was quickly restored and ­diplomatic and political legitimacy bestowed on the

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g­ overnment in Algiers. On its coming to power, the centreright in France did not much change its approach to Algeria and despite Alain Juppé’s support for a political solution that would include all sides in the conflict, the French government and Jacques Chirac continued their policies of support for the military. Chirac himself had, in 1990, argued that developing countries could not afford the luxury of multiparty politics and when it came to the Arab world he was a man of his word and never really pressed on democratisation. The Bush Sr. Administration faced a similar conundrum and ‘the White House first stated that the military intervention fell within the provisions of the 1989 Constitution’ (Spencer, 1996: 131), giving the impression that it condoned the coup. Realising the problematic nature of the first statement at a time when democracy promotion was high on the US agenda, another one calling for respect of international democratic standards was issued later. However, this did not the hide the US administration’s lenient stance on a military coup at the height of a wave of democratisations around the globe. Human rights campaigners criticised the US for their silence, with Human Rights Watch pointing out that ‘the State Department declined to criticize the cancellation of the elections and that on January 13, spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler would only express hope that “a way can be found to resume progress [toward democracy] as soon as possible”’.13 The role of the United States in the first years of the Algerian crisis has been much debated. First of all, it is highlighted that the United States had traditionally been quite close to radical Islamist movements across the Muslim world and did not therefore feel the threat of the FIS in power as much as some European states, notably France. Some argue that up until 1995 ‘American policy towards Algeria … has been characterised for a long time by an unfaltering support for Islamist groups and for the FIS in particular’ (Aissat, Dimet and Euzière, 1996: 99). While this is highly debatable given the very problematic nature of the FIS foreign policy positions on a number of issues of great interest for the United States and their stance on the Gulf crisis, it is true that the same spirit of close cooperation with the regime that can be witnessed in the French case cannot be detected in the American one. For instance, a prominent FIS leader found a refuge and a political platform in the United

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States before being arrested in 1995. Secondly, some authors argue that at the time the United States had begun to reevaluate the importance of North Africa, a region where, traditionally, politics was delegated to the French ally during the Cold War, and had come into competition for influence and for resources with the French (Zirem, 2002). This obviously meant the US could not take the same side as the French if it was going to be successful in its strategy of replacing French influence. Despite the superficial validity of some of these arguments, at a closer inspection, US support for the FIS is very hard to find and competition with the French was more over tactics than strategy. With respect to the argument that ‘the US always adopted a policy of support of [Islamist] fundamentalism’ (Aissat, Dimet and Euzière, 1996: 96) and therefore by implication of the FIS, this does not seem to stand up to scrutiny. From an ideological point of view the United States has been inimical to radical Islamism for a long time, although it used Islamist actors to further its interests in a number of places. Support for fundamentalism was and still is therefore purely instrumental. Thus, the United States do not find state-sanctioned fundamentalism such as the Saudi one objectionable and support it because it is a pillar through which the friendly Saudi regime remains in place. The domestic implications of US support for religious fundamentalism in allied and friendly countries is of no concern to US policy-makers. In addition, fundamentalism was a precious ally in the proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, serving the strategic purpose of contributing to the demise of communism. In these instances the statement that the US supports Islamism is quite true. The problem, however, arises when fundamentalism serves to underpin the political activism of parties and groups that have a foreign policy agenda inimical to US interests and whose implementation would go to the detriment of US economic and strategic objectives. Precisely because of the instrumental nature of US support for fundamentalism, the specifics of the case should be examined. Ortega (1995: 55) argued, for instance, that ‘fundamentalism’s effect on the Maghreb and the effect of the Maghreb on fundamentalism are probably the main issues of concern for the US’. In the case of Algeria, open support to the FIS was never given because of the fears the party provoked in

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Washington, as highlighted in Chapter 5. At the same time however, bridges were never completely cut off with the FIS because the post-coup regime did not look very stable. Hedging your bets is not the same as unwavering support and the US took more actions favourable to the stabilisation of the regime than ones that would undermine it, while keeping the FIS option open until the election of Zeroual. At this juncture the US fully fell behind the French and threw diplomatic and political support behind Zeroual. The US attitude towards Zeroual is best summed up by Zirem (2002: 103) who argues that ‘the Americans will close their eyes on a number of dérapages committed by the Algerian authorities, which did not certainly go in the direction of a real democratisation of the country’, while rhetorically suggesting steps for a renewed process of democratisation. After 1995 the Clinton Administration became more concerned with economic issues and President Clinton welcomed the new Algerian ambassador to the US in 2000 emphasising the following: ‘we are counting on your newly appointed government to promote meaningful economic reforms that will lead to greater stability … the United States pledges to continue supporting your government in these efforts’.14 Clinton also emphasised the need to combat terrorism together. On the issue of competition with the French characterising the US approach to Algeria in the first few years, the same closer scrutiny suggests that the intensity of the competition has been overemphasised. The French government acknowledged that there were differences regarding the crisis, but the overall aim was and still is for both to prevent the emergence of radical regimes in the Mediterranean. It is no secret that the Bush Sr. Administration, at the onset of the crisis, delegated matters to Mitterrand and followed the lead of the French president. Ahmad Moussali (1998: 7) claims that ‘Washington has also welcomed the Algerian government’s iron-fist policies towards the Islamists and its suspension of the elections.’ Clinton’s ‘concerned watchfulness’ (Gerges, 1999: 144) was an attempt to distance the US from the Algerian eradicators and to bolster moderate domestic opposition in Algeria, but it never went as far as boycotting the regime as highlighted above. On the contrary it helped France secure debt rescheduling for Algeria in 1994 and again in 1995. It also promoted foreign investment in the country.

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A degree of economic competition with France also existed in the hydrocarbons sector, but there are sufficient resources in Algeria for all companies and such economic competition did not and will not upset overarching security objectives. It might be true that ‘three companies today [1998] symbolise the power of American oil Capital in Algeria: ANDARKO when it comes to exploration/production, ARCO in assisted recuperation and AMOCO in the exploitation of natural gas. If we add BP (Great Britain) we can see how AngloSaxon companies have largely replaced traditional Southern European Capital, French most notably’ (Khelif, 2001: 256), but France still retains its interests and networks and closely cooperates with the United States on the most important aspects of their relationship with Algeria. As Gerges (1999: 155) convincingly claims, ‘there is less to US–French differences that meets the eye’. This coincidence of interests was quite evident when both countries supinely accepted the intransigent Algerian position on the Saint Egidio peace initiative. When the majority of Algerian political parties, including the FIS, met in Rome to discuss a peaceful solution to the conflict which would have entailed the re-admission of the FIS to political life in exchange for their complete denunciation of violence and acceptance of the democratic process, the Algerian regime refused not only to participate, but to even take the initiative into account. Algiers effectively buried the initiative in criticism and rejected it. In order to do this it could count on prominent civil society members who had repeatedly warned that the authorities should not negotiate with the FIS. Khalida Messaoudi defended this position in 1997 article for the French newspaper l’Humanité in which she argued that dealing with the FIS meant submission to it.15 While France, with Juppé playing a vital role, and the United States welcomed the initiative, their actions demonstrated the opposite as no pressure whatsoever was placed on the Algerian regime to even consider the proposals formulated in Rome (Impagliazzo and Giro, 1997). While it might be understandable that sovereign governments would set moral concerns aside in the name of the national interest, the same behaviour is very much unexpected of actors that derive their legitimacy and make much of their ‘normative’ stances. If nation-states could not ‘delegitimise’ the post-coup regimes, international organisations,

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thanks to their autonomy, could send a message in the opposite direction. International financial organisations were not expected in the early 1990s to deal with issues related to governance and it is only later that democratic participation was seen as an integral part of economic development and an issue on which both the IMF and the World Bank should press. To a certain extent therefore, their attitude is justifiable given the purely economic mandate they have. However, even today, the IMF treats the country’s economic problems as completely isolated from the political sphere.16 On the contrary, the European Union’s behaviour, whose normative traits should characterise policies, could have hardly been expected to be supportive of the military coup. The support was financial (Roberts, 2002) and diplomatic, as Algeria was not marginalised and reprimanded, but rather integrated in a new structure, the Euro-Mediterranean policy, specifically put in place to ‘securitise’ the Mediterranean. In fact the partnership was launched as a response to the Algerian crisis and to ‘solve’ the problem of radical political Islam in the Mediterranean through democracy promotion, cultural exchanges and economic liberalisation in the countries of the Southern bank. The internal contradictions of the partnership, intentional or not, permitted the European Union to be rhetorically committed to democracy, while relying on economic liberalisation and security cooperation to achieve its objectives. Given that the Southern partners were aware of the EU imperative of taming political Islam, democratisation, which would benefit Islamists, was quickly taken off the agenda in favour of economic liberalisation. The EU need for stability meant that the ruling regime became the most important interlocutor and several agreements, including the Association Agreement, were signed with Algeria. In addition, EU commissions sent to Algeria to find out about human rights abuses never really attacked the Algerian government’s policy of eradication. The Algerian government had ‘welcomed’ the 1998 EU mission with this statement: ‘Algeria has not and will never accept such inquiries because things in Algeria are clear: there is a state confronting terrorism through its legitimate means. There is no doubt or confusion or mystery that requires investigation or inquiry.’17 Guney and Celenek (2007) argue that the European Union’s policy of promoting democracy in Algeria has been a failure

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and list a number of reasons for this including the hijacking of the policy on the part of France, to the complexity of the institutional set-up of the EU which led to policy inconsistencies. While a number of reasons are therefore given for this failure, it could also be argued that democracy in Algeria or anywhere else in the Arab world was never the intention of the European Union from the start (Cavatorta, Chari, Kritzinger and Gomez, 2008), which set up multilateral institutions precisely to stabilise such regimes through economic aid and legitimacy. This process of securitisation which relies on the authoritarianism of the partners on the Southern bank has only increased since the start of the ‘war on terror’. The main diplomatic help that was given to Algeria over the years has been the near total absence of condemnation for the abuses and practices of the authoritarian government. Thus, despite the presence of very clear provisions both in the Barcelona document and in the Association Agreement calling for the suspension of relations and the triggering of the principle of conditionality,18 such provisions were never implemented nor threatened. At this stage it should also be mentioned that Western media largely underpinned the diplomatic and political support the Algerian regime received. This is due to two factors. First of all, the ‘proximity’ between many Western and Algerian intellectuals who shared similar secular and liberal values greatly contributed to the superficial representation of a secular government fighting, with the support of large sectors of civil society, a war against the forces of mindless and violent fundamentalism. The French media in particular presented this view to their audience, therefore allowing the French government to operate according to its own interests without the scrutiny of public opinion. The second reason for a largely positive coverage of the conflict, to the extent that it was covered at all, was due to the ability and the connections of the Algerian regime, which was able to present itself as the saviour of democracy in the face of the mounting threat of Islamism. The theory of the clash of civilisations a year after the coup seemed to confirm that the attitude of the Algerian military was the right one. In conclusion, the post-coup governments of Algeria enjoyed wide diplomatic and political legitimacy despite taking power through the gun and disrupting electoral results.

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If we add that the other Arab countries were very much supportive of the Algerian regime because of the fear they had of their own Islamists, it becomes clear that rather than being isolated the regime was wholly embraced by a number of key international actors. The military pillar The third pillar of the strategy of support was military aid. The resources that were made available to the regime allowed it to upgrade its weaponry and its structure to make it fit the requirements of fighting a guerrilla war in the mountains and urban warfare in the cities. It follows that the military links that had been established before the military coup were deepened and involved expanded training of officers and the export of specific weapons. For instance, channels for American influence on domestic actors had been opened in 1985, as ‘the United States Department of Defence had provided a small annual grant under the International Military Education and Training Program to provide professional military development courses and technical training for Algerian officers in leadership positions or deemed to be potential leaders’ (Provost, 1996: 101). Ciment (1997) documents that France quickly supplied the regime with new weaponry, provided intelligence and exported the latest surveillance technology to be used against the Islamist movement. This might have been dismissed as propaganda, as there was little hard evidence to support the claims, but in 2002 Habib Souaidia, a former Algerian officer who had left the Army in disgust at how the war was being conducted, detailed both the weaponry delivered by France and the type of training received in France by the security forces charged with fighting the Islamist insurgents. These weapons included Ecureils helicopters and night vision instruments. Direct sales were not the only way through which weapons were delivered to Algeria and the system of triangulation was used, whereby an Arab state supporting Algeria would buy weapons from a Western country and then ship them to the Algerian government, usually with the full knowledge of the Western government. For instance, Qatar ordered $7.5 million worth of military equipment from the UK as a gift for the Algerian Army. When asked about British knowledge

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of this, Qatar’s foreign minister replied that the British government had no objection to the export of arms to Algeria.19 Small Gulf States saw Algeria as the place where the global struggle against a challenging fundamentalist movement was being fought and they threw their support behind the generals. Partly, the justification for this support was also due to the ‘externalisation’ of the civil war, whereby Iran and Sudan were accused by the Algerian regime of propping up the Islamic groups. The Army’s budget is difficult to quantify, but the high intensity of the conflict suggests that spending on weaponry increased from an already high figure in 1990. The data collected by the Stockholm Peace Research Institute show that military expenditure as a percentage of GDP increased constantly from 1991 and military spending went from US $622 million in 1991 to US $1,119 million just two years later.20 After a couple of years, when the outcome of the civil war hung in the balance due to the strength of the insurgency and the poor performance of the security forces, the new resources pouring in from outside had a decisive impact and the balance of power shifted towards the Army (Martinez, 1998). The provision of weaponry continued even after the war against the insurgents had been virtually won and this served the purpose of furthering linking the Algerian ruling elites to Western countries. Thus, ‘in 1999, Algeria, attempting to modernise its military, spent almost 600 million US dollars to buy US made military material, becoming the second American client in the Arab world and the 7th in the developing world’ (Zirem, 2002: 104). Over time, expenses kept increasing and as rents also augmented with the rise of the price of oil and gas, they allowed for a strengthening of the military and security forces and by 2004, ‘the Algerian armed forces [all services included] can count on between 550.000 and 800.00 men, 45.00 of which are solely in charge of protecting the oil and gas infrastructure’ (Jolly, 2004: 14). The provision of military aid and the sale of weaponry solidified the integration of Algeria into the West-dominated international community because it represents one of the most significant tests of trust between governmental actors. It should not be forgotten that until the mid- to late 1980s the Algerian military still had a number of formal links with

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the Soviet Union and in the space of only a decade it had become a strategic partner of the West in the name of regional stability. Good military relationships with the US continue to this day and the US State Department highlights the following: ‘the United States and Algeria have also conducted bilateral naval and Special Forces exercises, and Algeria has hosted U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ship visits. In addition, the United States has a modest International Military Education and Training (IMET) Program ($824,000 in FY 2006) for training Algerian military personnel in the United States, and Algeria participates in the Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP).’21 Cooperation between the EU and Algeria on intelligence matters has also intensified, as a 2004 EU brief makes clear, detailing the key developments of such cooperation.22 Façade democracy and crony capitalism By 1997/98, the Algerian regime was reasonably secure despite the regular occurrence of extremely bloody massacres of civilians. From a military point of view, the security forces had been able to defeat the insurgents, who had basically given up on taking over the state and were bent on mindless infighting and anti-civilian violence. From an economic point of view, the country was by 1997 on the course to recovery, at least from a macroeconomic aspect. Economic indicators started to improve and since then Algeria has been growing quite solidly. The more secure military and economic situation allowed the military to begin reshaping Algerian institutions and polity to stave off future challenges. While the first post-coup phase saw the generals exercising power directly in order to perform the essential task of dismantling the FIS’s political structure, imprison its leaders and defeat the insurgency, the second phase, opened with the presidential election of 1995, was about attempting to superficially re-legitimise the state. In this respect, the election of Liamine Zeroual as President in 1995 represented the turning point. The most optimistic scholars and analysts saw this election as a new beginning for Algeria and interpreted the high turnout and vote for a man who had made no mystery

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about his intention to bring the violence to an end as the start of a new process of democratisation. This ‘second’ attempt was going to be managed better than the previous one and it would take time, but many believed that the country was going to get back on track. In fairness, it has to be underlined that the 1995 presidential election was a positive event for ordinary Algerians and for the country as whole because the high turnout in particular seemed to demonstrate that people wanted a voice, and if allowed to have it they would be involved in the political process despite the violence surrounding them. The candidate was a retired general who the leading generals in the Army selected to perform two essential tasks: politically re-unite the country by ending the violence and show to the outside world that ‘civilian rule’ had been reinstated and that the country was making some progress towards real democratisation. Zeroual did not really manage to achieve the first objective and was largely unable to bring peace to Algeria because of the well-known divisions within the military between eradicateurs and conciliateurs. Zeroual was considerably more successful on the international front. The international community was already well predisposed towards the Algerian regime even prior to the arrival of Zeroual on the scene and his elections finally swung the American administration behind France in their unequivocal support for the country in its fight against terrorism. The election was very much a welcome development because it gave the opportunity to Algeria’s backers to reduce some emerging criticism of their policies in light of the enormous number of victims that the civil conflict was producing. The promise of more political openings, accountability and genuine democratisation, however, were not kept despite the fuller insertion of Algeria into a number of international forums where democracy and democratisation were considered to be of paramount importance. The re-shaping of the institutional set-up that took place after 1997 had the objective of satisfying the Western international community, which needed to have the impression of progress on the democratisation front. Genuine democratisation was not acceptable to any of the actors involved and the FIS remained outlawed, but both Algerian society and Western powers needed the regime to show some progress to save appearances.

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While at this time Western media were still covering the conflict using the superficial stereotypes with which they had examined it from the start, Arab public opinion, through a small number of independent media, was presenting the Algerian situation in a very different light. For instance, Al Jazeera provided an important platform for expressing proFIS views and for a number of political and religious leaders to denounce the Algerian military for having stopped a legitimate party from taking power and for plunging the country into a civil war, from which it benefited politically and financially thanks also to the support of Western countries (El Oifi, 1998). This did not really matter for the West at the time, but the near monopoly on the interpretation of the conflict had been broken, leading to the questioning of some of the more controversial Western policies. In addition, Algerian journalists, former military men and exiled politicians began to increasingly write about the lack of democracy, the abuse of human rights, the terror campaign conducted by security forces and their involvement in massacres. Thus, over time, this pressure from some sectors of civil society forced a readjustment of Western policies, which began to ask for the introduction of some democratic measures in Algeria. This indeed formally took place, but the institutions of democracy are emptied of their real content and have no substance. Irrespective of this, any measure that seems to be democratic is received with great enthusiasm in the West as a sign of progress towards full democratisation. The problem however is that the vast majority of ordinary Algerians are not really duped and do not participate, refusing to sanction sham progress. The restructuring of the institutional set-up of the country rests on a number of measures focused specifically on ‘hiding’ the central political role of the military behind civilian rule. In many ways it was a matter of ‘shaping the present in light of the past’ (Volpi, 2007: 83) and it was particularly successful. The first measure undertaken was to establish a nominally multi-party system, which, in theory, would allow representation to all sectors of society. Thus, all political currents are present on the Algerian political scene, from the communists to the nationalist conservatives and from ‘Kabile’ parties to Islamist ones. Zeroual, in order to keep his distance from the discredited FLN, had created the

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National Democratic Rally (RND) for the 1997 parliamentary election with the intention of supporting his presidency through it. Once Zeroual was gone, the RND faded away and the FLN came strongly back on the scene and did very well at the 2002 legislative elections. The FLN had undergone a significant process of internal reform and Ali Benflis was the man responsible for this change and for the electoral success. His intention was to use the party as a vehicle for his 2004 presidential campaign. Thus, the nationalist camp had strong presence and representation from 1997. The Islamist camp went through significant adjustments as well. The banning of the FIS liberated the Islamist vote, and two movements, the Movement of Society for Peace (MSP) and the National Reform Movement (MNR), captured part of it. The MSP had been founded in 1990 with the intention of challenging the FIS on the Islamist terrain, but failed to make a significant impact because it was perceived to be too close to the regime. The MNR was founded in 1999 and is closer to some of the FIS positions than the MSP. In addition, there are a number of parties that represent the far left. However, the description of Algeria as a multiparty democratic state is very much for international consumption and at closer scrutiny it emerges that the party system is in fact managed from behind the scenes by a rather small clique of military men, high-ranking bureaucrats, career politicians and businessmen. The spectacular success of the RND in the 1997 elections was more due to their interference in the electoral process itself than to the enthusiasm with which the population received its appearance. Its waning, to the benefit of the FLN, follows a similar pattern. The presence of two Islamist parties should not make one think that an Islamist opposition is actually tolerated because both parties, to different degrees, have been co-opted (Boubekeur, 2007). While co-optation has certainly brought about the ‘de-radicalisation and professionalisation’ of the two parties, their roots in society are at best questionable. The ruling elite recognises that there is an Islamist vote out there, which needs to be aired, but at the same time it needs to control it so as to minimise its policy-making impact. Co-opted Islamist parties perform the function of intercepting some of the Islamist vote and placing it in the hands of the ruling elite. The parties of the left do not have a large ­following and

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some of them are very close to the regime as they were pressing the military for an intervention against the FIS since the early days of Algeria’s experiment with democracy. All of this, rather than pointing to a genuine multi-party system, indicates the ‘illusion of significance’ (Willis, 2002) of these parties, which do not enjoy autonomy from the real wielders of power and do not have extensive links to society. Their co-optation makes their leadership highly dependent on the security services charged with rigging the elections, assigning seats and generally deciding how political office is going to be distributed. The only party that still retains a degree of autonomy is the Kabyle-based FFS, which, in recognition of the problematic nature of this state-constructed party system and of the elections, regularly moves from cautious participation to boycott and back. Thus, political parties lack independence and are simply props used to stage a mockery of democracy and accountability in the context of stagemanaged electoral competitions. Elections in fact constitute the second measure through which Algeria strengthened its international legitimacy. As in the vast majority of the other Arab countries, the importance of elections has increased over time because it can confer some sort of legitimacy on the rulers. Thus, since 1995 regular presidential, parliamentary and local elections have been taking place and with the exception of the 1999 presidential election, they have been ostensibly multi-party and multi-candidate elections. This should not obscure the fact that there are tried and tested mechanisms the ruling elite employs to generate the results and the outcomes it prefers. Volpi (2007) argues that there are three main components to how elections are conducted in Algeria and explains the workings of such mechanisms. First of all, ‘each electoral race is carefully stage-managed’ (2007: 85) as there is the necessity to convince opposition figures to run and accept a pre-determined score in exchange for personal or professional rewards. At the same time real opponents are discouraged from participating. The second component is how the campaign itself is run. Access to media and money is distributed unevenly and unfairly, severely limiting meaningful debate. Finally, the third component is poll-fixing. Thus, elections are quite meaningless from a policy-making point of view because outcomes are pre-determined and the president has

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to have the support of the leading figures in the Army and security forces in order to be successful. The third measure through which Algeria is attempting to cast itself as a democratising and liberal state has to do with legislative changes. While due to the residual presence of violence, emergency law is still in effect, there is a vast array of legislative measures that have been taken to strengthen the ‘liberal’ state. Thus, aside from the electoral laws, we find laws to prevent and fight corruption, laws to ensure the accountability of state officials, laws to guarantee transparency in public spending, and laws to protect freedom of the press and association. In addition, state’s institutions mock the ones established in Western democracies and we thus find an independent judiciary and a Cour de Comptes. While this is the theory, the practice is extremely different. Emergency laws, for instance, allow great leeway in punishing over-­critical media. Generally speaking, the problem is that while laws are present, they are not enforced in any meaningful way. Thus, the judiciary is only nominally independent and is highly corrupt. While transparency legislation should ensure control of what public officials do, corruption is rife within the state bureaucracy and more specific legislation makes it very difficult for laws to be enforced. Despite all this, the international community has positively sanctioned all these developments. For instance, with reference to the 2004 presidential elections which saw Bouteflika winning a second term, ‘the international observers dispatched by the OSCE, the European parliament, the African League and the Arab League to monitor the election gave the Algeria regime a clean bill of health’ (Volpi, 2007: 87). In addition, both Chirac and Bush Jr. congratulated Bouteflika for his election and complimented Algerians for their democratic commitment. The recent constitutional amendment allowing Bouteflika to run for a third term is only the latest sign of how rules can be bent without fearing any external sanction. Thus, Algeria is today a ‘pseudo­democracy’ (Volpi, 2007) or a façade democracy, with which the international community is very much at ease. In this respect the enormous power of the Algerian intelligence services in shaping the political, institutional and economic structure of the country should be underscored. As Roberts (2007: 12) convincingly argues ‘since 1990, Algeria has had

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five heads of state, eleven heads of government and four defence ministers, but throughout this entire period the DRS (Département du Reinseignement et de la Sécuirité) has been commanded by General Mohammed Mediène and the DCE (Direction du Contre-Espionage et de la Securité Interne) by General Smail Lamari.’ (Deceased in August 2007.) This strongly indicates who the king-makers are in Algeria and with the political violence returning to the country, their role is likely to remain as influential as in the recent past. It follows therefore that the adoption of the formal trappings of democracy should not lead one to think of Algeria as being on the road to democratic governance. The establishment of crony capitalism accompanies this façade democracy. The early wave of economic reforms, rather than stimulating the creation of a productive middle class with liberalising and democratising attitudes, plunged the country into a desperate social situation and reinforced networks of corruption based on the distribution of oil rents. Rather than facilitating private enterprise through fair competition the economic reforms simply substituted state monopolies with private ones, particularly in very lucrative import markets where licences were assigned to clients of the ruling political elite. The authoritarianism of the political system insulated these corrupt networks from public scrutiny and ensured the creation of a class of nouveaux riches that would be highly dependent on the regime for position and economic success. In addition, the civil conflict led to a privatisation of the economy of war with predatory traits, generating illegal wealth for selected actors. From 1997 onwards, with the amelioration of macroeconomic indicators, it was believed that economic success would not only reduce social and economic inequalities, but would positively influence the political system, leading to a renewed effort in favour of genuine democratisation. The international community reinforced such belief and prodded the regime to continue with neo-liberal reforms. However, as Cook (2005: 95) explains, ‘whenever Arab regimes have reformed their economies … the result has been economic liberalisation without either the institutionalisation of the market or the emergence of democracy’. Algeria is no different and with the help of increasing oil and gas prices, the ruling elite was able to avoid market institutionalisation in favour of crony

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capitalism. In 1998 the price of a barrel of oil was a meagre $12 rising to about $28 in 2000 and to a staggering $86 in 2007. While gas prices did not increase by the same percentages they also rose substantially. These figures give an indication of the immense wealth available to the Algerian government over the last few years and help explain how the state has been able to insulate itself from society. In 1999, Bouteflika came to power, partly, on an anti-corruption platform and vowed to manage the economy with transparency and or the benefit of the population. This however has not happened. On the one hand, ‘the liberalisation of the economy … has allowed the lucrative state monopoly to be replaced by new godfathers who have divided up the import markets, worth nearly $20 billion each year since 2001’ (Hadjadj, 2007: 265) with the cover of powerful figures within the military establishment. The extensive network of patron–client relations is underpinned by violence and the threat of violence against potential competitors and therefore a mafia mentality and behaviour dominates economic relationships: dividing markets up prevents conflicts and satisfies all those involved. On the other hand, state control over hydrocarbon resources allows for corrupt networks within the bureaucracy to also survive. While it is true that the rents have allowed Algeria to rid itself of its entire foreign debt, there is very little planning and control behind the expenses the state incurs. The IMF mission to Algeria recognised in its 2007 report that ‘ensuring the quality of government spending’ is of crucial importance.23 However, as Hadjadj (2007: 265) details, ‘the Algerian government has decided to invest more than $150 billion in infrastructure and public works in the next five years, without any coherent plan or guidelines to guarantee transparency in the management of public monies’. The absence of political accountability allows all this to occur, despite the presidential rhetoric about fighting corruption and restoring public confidence. It follows quite inevitably that such spending has very little effect on the social situation because that is not the problem being addressed nor it is the larger framework within which economic policy is conceived. The main issue is that money is spent not according to real needs and sustainable projects generating long-term employment and a rise in productivity, as the IMF wishes, but is used to finance huge projects which,

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through no-bid contract practices, simply feed a system of commissions that generates wealth for only a selected number of key actors within the bureaucracy and their patrons. Despite the enormous wealth generated over the last decade, the social situation remains explosive with unemployment steady at around official figures of 20 per cent and emigration remaining the priority for the vast majority of young people (Semiane, 2005: 76). While, according to IMF data, unemployment was only 15.3 per cent in 2005, it is still over 31 per cent for the Algerian youth and it represents a significant social problem.24 Semiane also claims that an estimated half a million people had left Algeria from 1993 until 2004, with 250,000 of them cadres. For its part, the international community does not seem preoccupied. First of all, the liberalisation of the economy has allowed many multinationals to invest in the lucrative hydrocarbon sector, strengthening their hold on Algeria’s resources and allowing for their free and unhindered flow to Western economies. Secondly, a number of foreign firms have been able to secure important contracts to build infrastructure and run former state monopolies. Thirdly, through the Association Agreement, the European Union has strengthened its role in the country, given the free trade provisions that exist in the accord. In sum, crony capitalism, with its corollary of corruption, has left Algeria with ‘a decaying state, semi permanent residual terrorism, a failing economy, poverty and mass marginalisation and an obsolete, decaying public administration’ (Hadjadj, 2007). This is not a pretty picture and the unaccountable Algerian ruling elites are undertaking the same policies that led to the emergence of the FIS in the first place. In a recent interview with Le Monde former FIS leader Ali Benhadj said as much25 and many independent commentators agree. While there has certainly been a generational change within the ruling elites (Werenfels, 2007) with some new groups being co-opted, the mechanisms of governance and policy-making have not been altered: ‘a small group, mostly military people and high-ranking bureaucrats, trade unionists and managers of state-owned companies, forms a de fact collegial power’ (Jolly, 2004: 13). Some (Entelis, 2007; Mortimer, 2006) argue that the Bouteflika presidency is marginalising the military and leading the country towards stronger civilian control, suggesting that the military is

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l­ osing its grip on power and that therefore scenarios of political normalisation are possible. However, it could be argued that Bouteflika, while having acquired a degree of ­policy-making autonomy, is allowed some independent action because he has fulfilled his task of making Algeria accepted and acceptable abroad. Algeria is now a full and very legitimate western ally in the ‘war on terror’, it has solved its macroeconomic problems and is flush with oil money. For its part the military has been professionalised, its budget is unlimited and it has links with both the US and NATO, enjoying joint manoeuvres and cooperation of all sorts. In addition it indirectly controls much of the country’s economy. High-ranking officers are probably happy to leave the scene to Bouteflika, having also secured impunity for their crimes during the civil conflict thanks to the law for Peace and National Reconciliation that Bouteflika devised. Rather than having marginalised the military, Bouteflika might simply enjoy more autonomy because the military men are busy doing something else in the knowledge that they can still exercise political control if the need arises. Thus, as Roberts (2007: 19) aptly suggests, ‘there can be no doubt that the demilitarisation of the Algerian polity is a fundamental pre-condition of the advent of law-bound government, let alone democracy’. Notes   1  A number of powerful bombs rocked Algeria in 2007 causing a significant number of victims and material damages. At the time of writing in December 2007, the group had just targeted the Supreme Court building and the UNHCR Headquarters in Algiers.   2  See the report of Radio France International at www.rfi.fr/actufr/­ articles/039/article_20356.asp. Accessed 17 December 2007.   3  For specific details of the contracts signed see http://info.france2.fr/­ dossiers/monde/37031602-fr.php. Accessed 12 December 2007.   4  See the France 2 report available at http://info.france2.fr/dossiers/ monde/37031602-fr.php. Accessed 12 December 2007.   5  This became known as the Kirkpatrick doctrine after Jean Kirkpatrick, US ambassador to the UN who justified support for right-wing authoritarianism in the struggle against communism.   6  I am grateful to Mide Ni Shuilleabhain for making me aware of this citation.   7  A summary of the initiative is available at www.nato.int/med-dial/ summary.htm. Accessed 5 December 2007.

the integration of algeria   8  Statement available at www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/8005.htm#relations. Accessed 15 December 2007.   9  The Economist, 18 February 1995. p. 13. 10  Available at www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040409– 1.html. Accessed 6 December 2007. 11  For detailed international reactions to the election see www.algeriedz.com/article437.html. Accessed 12 December 2007. 12  New York Times, 25 June 1990. 13  See the 1993 Human Rights Watch report on Algeria at www.hrw.org/ reports/1993/WR93/Mew–01.htm. Accessed 10 December 2007. 14  The entire text is available at http://telaviv.usembassy.gov/publish/ peace/archives/2000/february/me0203a.html. Accessed 12 December 2007. 15  The article is available at www.humanite.fr/1997–02–07_Articles_Khalida-Messaoudi-Dialoguer-avec-le-FIS-c-est-se-soumettre. Accessed 13 December 2007. 16  See the 2006 IMF report on Algeria at www.imf.org/external/np/sec/ pr/2006/pr06228.htm. Accessed 15 December 2007. 17  See BBC news at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/46197.stm. Accessed 16 December 2007. 18  See the Barcelona Declaration at http://ec.europa.eu/external_relations/euromed/bd.htm. Accessed 15 December 2007. 19  Associated Press, Doha, Qatar, 19 June 2000. 20  Available at http://first.sipri.org/non_first/result_milex.php?send. Accessed 20 June 2000. 21  Declaration available at www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/8005.htm#relations. Accessed 13 December 2007. 22  See the brief at http://ue.eu.int/uedocs/cmsUpload/Brief_note_counterterrorism16.12.04.pdf. Accessed 6 November 2005. 23  See the summary of the report at www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2007/ pr07271.htm. Accessed 12 December 2007. 24  See IMF working paper on unemployment in Algeria at www.imf.org/ external/pubs/ft/wp/2007/wp07210.pdf. Accessed 15 December 2007. 25  Le Monde, 3 April 2006.

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8 Conclusion

Since the mid-1970s the move away from authoritarian forms of rule to democratic governance represents a highly significant political phenomenon. The number of democracies has increased and this change has been captured in the literature on transitions. The end-product of many transitions has been the establishment of Western-style liberal­democracies, but many other countries have either experienced a return to authoritarian rule or are suspended in the limbo of ‘liberalised autocracies’ (Brumberg, 2002). Whatever the final outcome of the transition, it is important to examine how such outcomes come about. The examination and theorising of processes of regime change has been traditionally incorporated within comparative politics with the consequence that domestic factors and actors have been identified as the central explanatory variables for such processes. More recently however, there has been a renewed interest on the influence of the international dimension, a traditionally secondary aspect. Following from Kopecky and Mudde’s (2000: 531) recognition that ‘the international dimension of democratic transition and consolidation … received very little scholarly attention’, this study fills this gap and makes a contribution to the understanding of regime change in light of international variables. Most theories on transitions still regard domestic factors, whether structural or actor-led, as the only explanatory variables, but this study rejects such an approach and argues that transitions do not occur in a vacuum and that international variables are a necessary part of the explanations because they have the capacity to influence the strategies and the choices of the domestic actors. The evidence also suggests that at times it seems that the external environment does not leave domestic actors much

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choice in terms of the options available in the construction of a new political order. This is due to the fact that the sanctioning of the international community is a key element that domestic actors need to take into account and that diminishes the range of choices available. Through the use of theoretical insights from international relations theories and globalisation it is possible to examine the links between domestic and international politics, thereby analysing formally internal processes as part of wider international trends. In the specific field of democratisation, it was clearly stated that regime change was the exclusive product of domestic variables and bargaining, thereby insulating the analysis of transitions within comparative politics. Over the years, very few questioned this assumption although international variables appeared in analyses here and there as ‘facilitating factors’. However, in line with other fields of study where international factors have been used to achieve a better understanding of domestic political phenomena, transitology is going through much the same change. This research is part of this expanding literature and offers an explanation of democratisation constructed around two dimensions that have been previously neglected. Admittedly, this explanation is partially custom-built for the case study under examination, but the framework and explanatory structure employed here could be useful, with appropriate adjustments, to study other cases. Previous studies of democratisation emphasised the importance of the type of authoritarian regime in place when explaining how regime change could occur and develop into full democratisation and consolidation. To this end, it is often seen as relevant to ‘classify’ the different authoritarian regimes as military regimes, one-party political systems or personal dictatorships because it is believed that they democratise differently. While this may indeed be the case, such an emphasis on the type of government is to the detriment of analysing the nature of the state independently from the type of regime in place. To this end, one of the dimensions that this study relies on for analysis is the nature of the state, and specifically its position within, and its relation to, the international economic system. In the developing world, the nature of the state is strictly related to what type of economic organisation is in place and how

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r­ esources are ­distributed. In turn, this profoundly affects the political system. Another element that has been constantly examined in the wider literature on regime change is the presence or absence of previous democratic experience in the country undergoing a transition. It is argued that such a democratic past can lead to a more successful consolidation in new democracies, particularly if the previous experience was long and perceived as positive. There is some validity to the argument, but a democratic past does not automatically ensure that a new democracy will consolidate. For instance, there are countries that have periodically shifted back and forth from authoritarianism to democracy, such as Turkey. Furthermore, if the argument were to be stretched to its logical conclusion, we would have very few democracies across the globe today, as at some point in its history any country that is democratic today had to start from authoritarianism. Instead of focusing on this element, explanations should look at the position of a country in the international system in terms of its geostrategic relevance to other regional and world actors. This second dimension complements and integrates the nature of the state in economic terms because it contextualises the relations that domestic actors have with the surrounding environment and clarifies the stakes that international actors have in processes of regime change. Another innovative approach of this study is that it takes into account both external structural changes and actor-led policies. Usually, scholars of transition make a choice based on the need for ‘parsimony’. It is conceivable, however, to suggest that structural constraints and contingency interact to a considerable extent. The primary role of actors, their strategies and their resources are the building blocks of studies of democratisation. Although it has led to useful insights into processes of transition, this exclusivist approach should be tempered and ‘though bargaining lies at the core of most contemporary models of regime change, they are typically weak in specifying the resources that contending parties bring to the negotiation and even the institutional stakes of the negotiation itself’ (Haggard and Kaufman, 1997: 263). Thus, while bargaining is important, it is necessary to specify how bargaining power is acquired and what determines its level. Haggard and Kaufman are particularly interested in underlying economic and social forces, but a different ­explanation

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could also conceive of the presence of strong political forces as well, derived specifically from the international environment. It follows that both structural constraints and actorled policies need to be taken into account. Both contribute to influence the ‘power’ and resources available to the domestic actors who are formally in charge of the transition. This distribution of resources affects the strategies and the choices of these actors, modifying their interests at a time of high volatility. As McFaul (2002: 243) argues, a ‘comprehensive theory of transition should … include both structural and strategic variables’. In order to examine the impact of the international environment defined as a combination of the effects produced by structural changes and actor-led policies, three different variables have been taken into account. It has been argued that there are larger trends in international politics that indicate the existence of one general direction for authoritarian countries. These larger trends point to the ever wider acceptance of democratic governance as the ultimate basis for ruling over society, as well as the acceptance of a market-orientated economy underpinning such Westernstyle systems of government. However, these larger trends and structural constraints, if accepted uncritically, would seem to predetermine the socio-­political fate of all countries across the globe, eventually erasing differences. This is clearly not the case. Transitions are not pre-determined as there are intervening strategic variables that throw the outcome into doubt. Thus, there are two more variables that can account for discrepancies, which lead to very different outcomes. First of all, there are external shocks that can change the course of a transition and, secondly there are specific policies put in place that can also affect the outcome. Crucially, it should be highlighted that in the context of a transition it is actors who are in charge of the process. It is these actors, through their choices, that determine the whole process. The only caveat is that actors are not, and cannot be, fully autonomous and independent in their decision-making, as they operate within a framework of structural constraints. Some of them are, inevitably, beyond their control.

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The international dimension in Algeria This open model of democratisation has been applied to Algeria, whose transition has been poorly examined and often misrepresented. Algeria is quite representative of wider trends affecting liberalisation and democratisation in the wider Arab world. Specifically, the emergence of a strong Islamist party, with its ideological arsenal of slogans and solutions derived from religion, represents a challenge for the notion of liberal democracy so dear to the international community. A better understanding of the failed transition not only helps in clarifying the dynamics of the civil conflict that occurred after the 1992 military coup, but is also helpful in explaining how the international environment influences democratisation in the Middle East and North Africa at large. The evidence from the case study indicates that including international variables is useful to better understand how transitions are triggered, how they develop and how they end. When it comes to triggering the transition, it is commonly held that divisions within the regime bring about the initial phase of liberalisation. Facing a crisis, authoritarian governments may choose to liberalise, particularly if there is also considerable pressure ‘from below’ to do so. While domestic actors are the ones formally initiating the process of initial liberalisation, the case of Algeria demonstrates that the economic crisis that led to political openings was not simply domestic, but was externally driven due to Algeria’s over-dependence on the hydrocarbon sector, which is particularly volatile and sensitive to international price fluctuations. This does not mean that a simple causal link can be established between the oil counter-boom and the decision to opt for radical political change, as the crisis might not have had such a devastating impact if the country had a more sound economic structure in place. It should be highlighted that Algeria had gone through other externally driven crises before and that liberalisation had not occurred then even in the presence of the same type of domestic economic situation. This might imply that the decision to democratise was purely internal, and this would indeed be the case if other alternatives to democratisation were available to the domestic actors in charge of the political process, but what

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seems to emerge from the evidence is that there was no other alternative, for a number of reasons and concomitant factors. First of all, the severity of the crisis was much deeper than previous economic slowdowns and there was a need to respond not only through economic reforms but through political changes as well. Secondly, the crisis occurred at a time when left-leaning authoritarian regimes would not have had any external support if they wished to continue with past political practices. The international environment had changed and Algeria’s position in the system did not allow much room to manoeuvre. Thus, the leadership lacked alternatives to democratisation due to the constraints of the external environment. While the 1985/86 crisis alone cannot be the sole cause of the changes of late 1988, if we take into consideration the ‘pressures’ coming from other external sources the picture begins to change and points in the direction of outside involvement. This type of involvement was both direct and indirect. The indirect pressure to liberalise came in the form of the failure of socialism on a global scale due to the end of the Cold War and the ‘values’ the winning side claimed it was going to promote. The direct pressures came from the presence of officials from international financial institutions in the decision-making bodies of Algeria. While their role was not public, the policies that they suggested Algeria implement greatly increased social malaise and fuelled the riots of 1988. Both these pressures did not work autonomously and they needed a ‘domestic audience’ to be truly effective and it is precisely at this ‘crossing’ between domestic and international factors that explanations for transitions should be sought. A neat separation between the two levels of analysis is impossible and there needs to be an open channel of mutual influence. During the period of democratisation following the initial opening, strong evidence points to the decisive effect that external support had on maintaining the authoritarian regime in power. All domestic actors had a stake in the new political climate, as new elections were promised. Both the ruling party and the opposition movements had reason to believe that they would win such elections and therefore had an interest in sustaining the efforts of President Chadli and the government to continue the process of ­democratisation.

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However, the government was also attempting to deepen market-­orientated reforms, which in the short term increased discontent and dissatisfaction. Given that the Algerian economy was near collapse, and that such collapse might have helped the more ‘radical’ elements within the opposition with dangerous consequences for the stability of the country, France intervened financially to support the regime’s democratising efforts. Such aid was handed out to Chadli and helped the regime to face the crisis on a marginally more secure financial footing. The aid also represented much more than its financial value, as it meant that ‘political’ support was given to President Chadli himself. A powerful external endorsement, although kept secret for fear of accusations of colluding with the former coloniser, could have proven useful in the transition game, as securing international legitimacy is vital to any country undergoing regime change. The development stage of the transition into full democratisation was also influenced by other factors over which domestic actors had no control, but which modified the resources at their disposal. Thus, the Gulf War of 1990/91 had a positive impact on the Islamist opposition, strengthening its popular appeal and showing the leadership how unpopular the government was. While the Gulf crisis quite soon ceased to be a major element of mass mobilisation, it was significant in so far as it showed how far apart the regime and the opposition were on fundamental policy issues. During the pre-consolidation phase, the external environment had its strongest influence, particularly in the messages conveyed to the military that they would not be punished for intervening. On the contrary, they were left with little doubt that an intervention would be both welcome and rewarded. The costs of repression were already decreasing, as the Army believed that an FIS government might slash their privileges and prerogatives, and the knowledge that there would be no international interference made the costs of intervention even lower. From the overall picture, it emerges that there was an influential role for international factors and actors during all phases of democratisation in Algeria. An interesting aspect that merits some attention is that different external forces acted at different moments. At one level, the forces that helped trigger the transition were not the same ones

conclusion

that helped end the transition. At another level, external actors who supported democratisation at the beginning and through its initial stages shifted their policy positions when it became clear that their interests would not be served by the outcome of the democratic process. What remained constant was the necessity for the democratising countries, Algeria in this case, to conform to a preconceived model of democracy and international behaviour. Such a model does not allow for radical, challenging political movements to come to power in new democracies. Without the impact and influence of external pressures the outcome might have varied considerably, but the Algerian transition did not take place in a vacuum and it ‘suffered’ from external intervention. However, there are two different caveats that should be added to qualify the previous statement. First of all, the role of the international dimension was not as extensive and far-reaching as some of the initial hypotheses suggested. For instance, it was argued that the FIS would have been highly influenced by external support in both ideological and resource terms. The evidence does not point in that particular direction, as the ideology of the FIS, its political discourse, its organisational structure and the profile of its militants reflect almost solely domestic concerns and developments. This is not to say that the FIS did not profit from the pro-Islamic ideological environment characterising the late 1980s and early 1990s due to the victory of the Afghan rebels and the Iranian revolution and from the Gulf monarchies’ handouts, but these factors are largely marginal to the creation, objectives, strategy and behaviour of the FIS. The roots of the FIS were more in Bennabi’s Islamist nationalism, which postulated the importance of democratic participation, than in a pan-Islamist ideology with violent undertones (Walsh, 2007). A second qualification that needs to be made is that in the Algerian case, structural constraints may be as important as international actors in influencing the domestic constituencies. While much attention has been paid to the central role of actors and their bargaining at the domestic level, structural constraints play a significant role at the international level. There is one very specific way they are able to do this and that is restricting the choices of developing countries when it comes to economic policy making. However, when it comes to fostering democratic governance

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the key international actors refrain from placing similarly strong constraints on developing countries, as material interests and political stability are prioritised. Would the story have been the same? At this stage of the conclusion, it is necessary to address the issue of the role of external factors in the Algerian story in relation to the development of that story in isolation from the external environment. Obviously, it is impossible to say how the exclusion of one explanatory variable would affect the story of a specific political phenomenon, but it is nevertheless possible to make some inferences. The absence of an internationally driven economic crisis might have simply deferred the necessity to launch a programme of political reforms, as claimed by the FIS for instance. The argument here is that the Algerian economic system was so poorly organised, and was performing so badly, that the internationally driven recession worked only as a catalyst. In the absence of the oil and gas price drop, the elites would therefore have been forced into making changes in any case due to declining economic performances and mounting discontent. In fact, this argument may not be easily sustainable for a number of reasons. First of all, the regime had been able to manage other economic recessions in the past without conceding political reforms. Secondly, without such an economic recession, the regime could have implemented market-oriented reforms without having to worry about political changes, so as to improve economic performance. If we look at Algeria in a comparative context, it emerges that the other countries in the region were able to avoid radical political transformations mainly due to the international aid they received allowing them to remain authoritarian. This is patently the case in Egypt, where the economic recession might have placed the ruling elite in danger, but the Mubarak-led regime was saved thanks to injections of money coming from the United States as a reward for participating in the war against Saddam (Clement and Springborg, 2001). Thus, it is legitimate to argue that without the recession, political reforms in Algeria could have been postponed for a long time, much like in most other countries in the

conclusion

region. It can also be claimed that without the Gulf crisis, the transition might have developed differently. The war issue was very relevant for domestic actors only for a short period of time and it might have not prevented the different parties to come to a negotiated agreement for power-sharing, but the aftershocks of the conflict throughout the region and what they represented for western actors should not be underestimated. In this respect, the Gulf crisis showed key international actors how ‘dangerous’ to international stability the FIS in power might have been. The year between the legalisation of political parties and the Gulf War had seen the parties and the regime behave as if democracy had already been established, and the indication was that the FIS would have been happy to share power with Chadli until the next presidential election. In this sense, General Nezzar’s argument that power-sharing was Chadli’s objective is true. The power-sharing option might have still led to a military coup because the arrangement would have still threatened the privileges of the upper echelons of the Army and security forces, but a coup would have been much more difficult to carry out without the radicalism the FIS displayed during the Gulf crisis. This radicalism was not necessarily about the war itself and therefore about foreign policy, but the regime perceived it to be dangerous because it was translated into domestic demands for quicker institutional changes that became harder to accept. Finally, the issue of the military coup that ended Algeria’s experiment with democracy has to be tackled. The question that needs to be answered is the following: did the international community matter at all in the decision to carry out the military coup? Most scholars argue that the military had too many political and material privileges to protect and too much to lose by not intervening, so they would have intervened even in the face of open Western opposition. It follows from this that tacit Western support for the coup simply added an extra bonus, but did not fundamentally alter the line of thinking of the plotters and their cost–benefit analysis. In the absence of substantial evidence pointing to the decisive role of the external factors, it is quite difficult to refute the previous argument. However, it is possible to provide a different perspective on this based on the evidence gathered. The first point to be made about the Algerian military

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coup is that it took place at a time when the international community was putting a great deal of emphasis on democratic principles and procedures. By the early 1990s those who carried out military coups were seen as outcasts. Thus, the Algerian generals were at least playing a very dangerous game because international marginalisation might have resulted in all sorts of punitive measures which would have threatened the survival of the regime. If these measures had been foreseen as likely, the Algerian generals might have had second thoughts about the coup. The resources available to them in case of civil conflict, in the absence of international aid, were far from sufficient to defeat the insurgency and provide for the population and they might have thus lost the conflict in a short period of time. It is true that they might have not foreseen such a widespread rebellion to their coup, but resistance to their intervention was to be expected. To this it should be added that, for instance, it was not a coincidence that both the French and the US were concerned after the coup to stress its constitutionality. The second point has to do with the rewards that the generals enjoyed after the coup itself. Suffice it to say that, far from being shocked by the ending of the democratic experiment and far from taking time to assess policy options, the international community swiftly came to the rescue of the regime with economic, military and political support. Such a quick positive reaction should make one ponder about timing. The Algerian scenario Following the military coup, it became evident that the most powerful international actors had no intention of promoting processes of democratisation in the region that would lead to the establishment of ‘democracies’ inimical to their strategic and economic interests. Over the course of the years, Algeria has been progressively integrated into the West-dominated international security and economic system, from which the ruling elite derive enormous material and political benefits. Like in many of the other countries in the region, the ruling elites are able to remain in power partly because they enjoy significant external support. In many ways the Algerian events are crucial in the ­current

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understanding of international politics in the MENA region because many of the policies since the early 1990s towards the region have been devised with the Algerian scenario in mind. It was in Algeria first that an Islamist party with a radical programme of social, political and economic change decided to take advantage of electoral openings to participate in the institutional life of the country and measured its popularity at the polls. The success of the FIS generated both fear and disillusion in certain sectors of Algerian society and in the international actors. The FIS programme and discourse scared the liberal and secular sectors of Algerian society for the type of regressive reforms that the FIS would have implemented domestically, but it also scared the international community for its ‘anti-imperialism’. The disillusion with Algerian voters was made clear through a number of patronising statements about ordinary Algerians not showing maturity at the polls. The FIS victory suddenly made democratic elections dangerous because they might not deliver the results that were expected. After decades of emphasising how crucial elections were and ‘beating’ unfriendly authoritarian states with the stick of the absence of elections, this was now no longer the case throughout the Arab world. Immediately after the FIS victory, it became clear to both Arab rulers and to the international community that if elections were held throughout the region, the same results would very likely occur. This fear of elections is still present and fundamentally undermines all efforts to promote democracy. In addition, the perception that such results would still hold true so many years after the FIS suggest that the Algerian events still exercise considerable influence. Thus, electoral democracy is now on the backburner and the concept of stability is once again emphasised. The war on terror seemed at first to challenge the notion that supporting authoritarianism was good for stability, but both the United States and the European Union still have the Algerian scenario in mind and refrain from enforcing the precepts emanating from their liberal values. Given the results of the Palestinian elections of 2006, they cannot really be blamed for thinking that elections in the Arab world would yield unfriendly regimes. The Algerian scenario is very useful to Arab rulers as the Islamist danger can always be invoked to generate support for repressive practices. While it is diffi-

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cult for the international community to pursue an alternative policy, the one being pursued is not working very well and having many ‘Algerias’ across the region does not bode well for the future because the causes for the emergence of radicalism are still there and if they are not addressed more instability is likely in the future. Due to their weight and influence, international conditions are decisive in the promotion and consolidation of democracy. It is quite untrue to claim that external actors, particularly powerful ones, can do little to foster change. The instruments are there for this objective to be achieved, particularly if short-term interests are sacrificed. Structure is important, but the structure is also a product of actor-led policies. These actors can and should promote real change. If the very notion of democracy is sacrificed on the altar of short-term material interests, the concept itself is demeaned and this has dangerous consequences for those who struggle to achieve rights and freedoms purported to be universal. Changing course is difficult, but maybe, unlike in the Algerian case, it might pay off to engage Islamist parties and see what they are about. Those who had supported the coup of 1992 thought that it would save the country and democracy; more than 150,000 dead Algerians, over 7,000 disappeared and countless refugees might beg to differ.

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Interviews Interview conducted by e-mail with journalist/writer Djallal Malti, 15 November 2001. Personal interview with adviser for Algeria to President Mitterrand conducted in Paris, France, 26 June 2001. Personal interview with journalist Paul Marie de la Gorce conducted in Paris, 27 June 2001. Interview conducted by e-mail with Ambassador Roland Neuman, 20 November 2001. Personal interview with Michel Rocard (MEP) in Brussels, Belgium, October 2006. Interview conducted by e-mail (and subsequent exchanges) with FIS representative abroad (Switzerland) throughout May 2002.

Index

Afghanistan 58–9, 64, 68–9, 86–8, 92–5, 162 Africa 28, 150, 174 Ait Ahmed, Hocine 143 Akef, Mohamed 127 Al Aqqad, Mahmoud Abbas 17 Algerian Afghanis 94–5, 120 Algerian Army (ALN) 1–3, 11, 13, 20–3, 86, 97, 110, 128, 135, 139–41, 143, 167–8, 170, 174, 186, 189 Al Jazeera 171 Al Qaeda 56, 64, 148 AMOCO 164 Andarko 164 Arab League 84, 174 Arab world 3, 6–9, 12, 14–15, 34, 39, 41, 52, 64, 83, 85–7, 92–3, 95, 101–2, 113, 120–1, 123–7, 144–7, 161, 166, 168, 184, 191 Arco 158, 164 authoritarianism 7, 9–10, 13–15, 39, 67, 128, 132–3, 139, 142, 146, 166, 175, 178n.5, 182, 191 Baker, James 101, 112 Belkheir, Larbi 110 Ben Bella, Ahmed 97 Bencherif, Osman 95 Benflis, Ali 172 Benhadj, Ali 114, 136, 177 Bennabi, Malek 18, 187 Benjedid, Chadli 1, 2, 19, 20–2, 76, 82–6, 91, 97, 102–4, 106–9, 116, 160, 185–6, 189 Berber minority 142–3   political agitation 89 Bin Ali, Zine El Abidine 5 Bin Laden, Osama 60

Boudiaf, Mohamed 145 Bouteflika, Abdelaziz 3, 154, 174, 176–8 Brahimi, Lakhdar 146 Brazil 30–1 British Petroleum (BP) 55, 158, 164 Burma 49 Bush, George H. 84, 101–2, 104, 111–12, 161, 163 Bush, George W. 126, 147n.1, 174 Canada 79, 133 capitalism 45, 67   crony capitalism 159, 169, 175–7 Carter, Jimmy 61 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 58–9 Chavez, Hugo 126 China 49, 55, 58, 67 Chirac, Jacques 149, 161, 174 civil society 2, 10–13, 34, 50, 63, 135, 151, 153, 164, 166, 171 civil war 3–4, 40, 120, 144, 152, 158, 168, 170–1, 175, 178, 184, 190 clash of civilisations 65, 166 Clinton, Bill 163 Cold War 6, 7, 27, 48, 55, 58, 60–4, 70, 82, 87, 101–4, 120–1, 150, 162, 185 Colombia 65 Constitution of Algeria 2, 67, 76–7, 91, 104, 106, 174   constitutional coup 3, 21, 112, 140, 161, 190   coup d’état 3, 6, 12, 156 corruption 67, 90, 92, 118, 141, 174–7 democracy promotion 48, 61–3, 65, 70, 100, 105, 112, 161, 165

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index democratisation 2–4, 6–7, 9–13, 17, 19, 22–4, 27–8, 31–42, 48–9, 54, 62–3, 68–9, 80–1, 91, 96, 105–8, 117–21, 123–8, 137, 139, 144, 148–9, 153–5, 157, 159, 161, 163, 165, 170–1, 175, 181–7, 191 Desert Storm 95, 100 direct active policies 56, 62, 105, 112, 115, 121 Dumas, Roland 160 Eastern Europe 12, 27–8, 62–3 economic crisis 20, 57, 75, 89–92, 97, 106–7, 117, 120, 155–8, 184, 188   external debt 57, 79, 155, 176   inflation 77–8   oil counter-boom 184   unemployment 78, 151, 177 economic position 29, 45–6, 80 economic reforms 1, 6, 45, 67, 70–1, 75–82, 91, 117–18, 121, 151–2, 159, 163, 175, 185   liberalisation 57, 77–8, 81, 105–6, 117, 159, 165, 175–7   privatisation 57, 117, 157, 159, 175 Ecuador 66 Egypt 5, 55, 111, 124, 126–7, 140, 147n.2, 188 end of history 67, 82 European Union 39, 43, 49, 61, 107–8, 154, 157, 174, 191   association agreement 165–6, 177   democracy promotion 28, 62, 63, 126, 149, 165–6   Euro-Med Partnership and ENP 54, 151, 165, 169 external environment 7–8, 25, 33, 36–7, 40, 45, 49, 52, 73, 180, 185–6 external shocks 56–7, 89–90, 92, 183 façade democracy 169, 174–5 family code 142–3 foreign investments 58, 77, 79, 118, 163 France 39, 71, 78–9, 81, 100, 106–7, 121, 143, 145, 149, 154, 161, 166   elections in Algeria 108   Gulf War 86, 99, 109   financial assistance 97, 156, 160, 163–4, 186

  military assistance 102–3, 167, 170   relations with Algeria 80, 102, 105, 110–11, 156, 160 Front de Libération National (FLN) 2, 10, 18–20, 94, 103, 109, 132, 142, 171–2 Front des Forces Socialistes (FFS) 173 Front Islamique de Salut (FIS) 2, 7, 11–13, 21–3, 71, 81, 83, 85, 90, 93–5, 110, 113–15, 120, 123, 128, 132, 138, 147, 151–4, 169–73, 186–9   elections 3, 70, 86, 95, 112, 124, 129, 133–5, 191   Gulf crisis 96–100   leadership 18, 21, 84, 90, 114, 136, 145, 160–3, 177   peace platform 164   policies 21–2, 78–80, 91, 104–9, 111, 118, 121, 139–44   violence 146, 155 geopolitical environment 38, 47–8, 52–6, 82 Ghazali, Mohamed 142 Ghozali, Sid Ahmed 20 Giscard d’Estaing, Valery 140 globalisation 27, 44–5, 54, 181 Gorbachev, Mikhail 27, 82, 101, 150 Great Britain 59, 100, 102, 164   see also United Kingdom Groupes Islamiques Armés (GIA) 144 Guatemala 66 Gulf monarchies 96, 187 Gulf states 63, 87, 96, 113, 115, 142, 168 Gulf War 60, 69, 83–6, 95, 98–100, 105, 109, 111, 120, 186, 189 Hachani, Abdelkader 95, 145, 160 Hamas 124, 126 Hamilton, Lee 112 Hamrouche, Mouloud 20–2, 76, 80–1, 107 Hassan II, King 5 Hidouci, Ghazi 20–2, 81 Hussein, Saddam 16, 84, 95–8, 108, 111, 188 hydrocarbons 37, 39, 52, 73–4, 77–80, 89–90, 119, 143, 157, 164

index India 55 international factors 27–9, 31–2, 35, 37, 39, 181, 185–6 international variables 9, 25, 27–9, 31–3, 35, 38, 41, 47, 72, 180–1, 184   see also external environment International Monetary Fund (IMF) 43, 66, 76–7, 116–19, 156, 165, 176–7   structural adjustments programmes 57–8, 66, 116, 155 Iran 58, 63–4, 69, 86–7, 113, 125, 140, 142, 168 revolution 54, 63, 86–8, 113, 120, 187 Iraq 16, 60, 63, 69–70, 84, 95–9, 108, 115, 143, 155 Islamism 18, 54, 58–9, 64–5, 86–7, 92–3, 98, 108, 112–3, 123–4, 129, 131, 133, 135, 144, 153, 162, 166 Islamist movements 15–6, 54, 64, 93, 112–13, 115, 121, 128, 130–2, 134, 161 Islamo-technocrats 94–5, 118 Israel 96, 127, 152   peace process 105 Italy 79, 131, 156, 158

Middle East and North Africa (MENA) 5, 7–8, 50–1, 55, 60, 154, 184, 191 Mitterrand, François 99, 103, 106–7, 109–10, 112, 121, 139, 160, 163 Morocco 5, 56, 127 Mouvement National pour la Réforme (MNR) 172 Mouvement de la Societé pour la Paix (MSP) 172 multinational companies 34, 115 multinationals 44, 48, 50, 55, 79–80, 105, 115–16, 118, 121, 157, 177   see also transnational companies Muslim Brotherhood 126–7, 130

Japan 79 jihad 58–9, 87, 92, 98, 142 Jordan 111, 127 Jospin, Lionel 140 Juppé, Alain 140, 161, 164

October 1988 riots 23, 89–90 oil prices 52, 74–5, 91–2, 117, 155 Organisation of Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC) 46

Kabilye 142–3, 171, 173 Khediri, El Hadi 135 Khomeini, Ruhollah 16, 63, 87, 93, 142 Kuwait 60, 69, 83–4, 96–7 Lamari, Mohamed 110, 139 Lamari, Smain 175 larger trends 33, 56–7, 66, 71, 183 Latin America 28, 30–1, 62, 150 liberalism 43, 125–6 Libya 5, 55 Madani, Abassi 91, 93, 99, 104, 114, 136, 142, 144 Maghreb 53, 56, 111, 149, 162 Mediene, Mohamed 175 Mediterranean 49, 152, 163, 165   geopolitics 52–5 Messaoudi, Khalida 139, 164

national unity 10–11 neo-liberalism 45, 151 New Economic Order 103 New World Order 70, 101 Nezzar, Khaled 21–3, 98, 110, 135, 139, 189 Nicaragua 61 Nigeria 66 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) 152, 178 North Korea 49

Pakistan 59, 93 Palestine 115, 126, 143 path-dependency 9, 19, 23, 41, 56 Peace and National Reconciliation 178 pivotal state 48–9, 55 political culture 9, 14–15, 18, 23, 42 Portugal 28 Pouvoir, le 110, 145 power-sharing 22, 189 preconditions of democracy 9, 11, 13 Qadahafi, Muammar 5 Qatar 168–9 Qutb, Sayyid 16–17 Rassemblement National Démocratique (RND) 172 Rassemblement pour la Culture et la Démocratie (RCD) 135,

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index 139 Reagan, Ronald 61, 116–17 Redjam, Abderrazak 145 rentier state 37, 49–52, 57, 73, 75, 91 rentierism 37, 49, 51–2, 153 Rice, Condoleeza 126, 147n.3 Rocard, Michel 107, 160 Rondot, Philippe 160 Sadi, Said 143 Said, Mohamed 145 Saint Egidio peace talks 153, 164 Sarkozy, Nicolas 149 Saudi Arabia 6, 60, 63–4, 84, 96, 113–15, 143 September 11th 14, 61–2, 65, 152 SNAM 158 socialism 66–8, 70, 82, 86, 103–4, 113, 159, 185 soft-liners 1 SONATRACH 77, 79, 81 Soroush, Abdolkarim 17 Southern Europe 28, 53–4, 79, 164 Soviet Union 3, 27, 39, 59, 60, 67, 70, 82, 87, 100–3, 162, 169 Spain 28, 156 Sudan 168 Syria 6 Thatcher, Margaret 117 Third Worldism 103, 149 Total 158 Touati, Mohamed 110 transition 3, 6–8, 10–12, 46–7, 53, 55, 57, 61, 63, 69, 71–4, 76, 78–81, 83–4, 86, 95–6, 98, 101, 106–9, 113, 116–17,

120–1, 123–4, 126, 128, 132, 135–6, 138, 150, 189   failure 4, 68, 119, 123, 134, 148   literature 5, 9, 18–41, 180–7   pact 24, 72 transitology 4, 5, 33, 124, 181 transnational companies 65, 71 Tunisia 5, 24, 56, 127 Turkey 110–11, 182 Tutwiler, Margaret 112, 161 United Kingdom 72n.1, 79, 114, 117, 167 United Nations 60 United States 39, 43, 49, 53–5, 58–9, 64–5, 70–1, 79–80, 82, 87, 97, 100–6, 111–12, 121, 124, 126, 140, 143, 149, 156, 162–4, 167   Algerian elections 86, 161   democracy promotion 6, 61–2, 117, 154, 163   Iraq 60, 69, 83–4, 96–7, 106, 155   war on terror 61, 149, 152, 154, 169, 178, 191 urbanisation 10–12, 58 Vedrine, Hubert 106 Venezuela 68, 126 war on terror 53–5, 72, 103, 121, 149, 152, 155, 166, 178, 191 World Bank (WB) 43, 66, 76, 116, 156, 165 World Systems Theory 31–3 Zeroual, Liamine 159, 163, 169–72