The international dimension of the failed Algerian transition: Democracy betrayed?

By Francesco Cavatorta

The book builds an innovative theoretical framework, through which previously neglected international factors are brought into the analysis of transitions to democracy. The case of Algeria is then explored in great detail. This volume is an important contribution to the literature on democratization and provides an interesting analysis of Algerian politics during the last two decades. More specifically, the book examines how international variables influence the behaviour and activities of Algerian political actors.

By bridging the comparative politics and international relations literatures, the book offers a new understanding of the initiation, development and outcome of transitions to democracy. International factors, far from being marginal and secondary, are treated as central explanatory variables. Such external factors were crucial in the Algerian failed transition to democracy, when the attitudes and actions of key international actors shaped the domestic game and its final outcome. In particular, the book explores the controversial role of the Islamic Salvation Front and how its part was perceived abroad. In addition the book argues that international factors significantly contribute to explaining the persistence of authoritarian rule in Algeria, to its integration into the global economy and its co-optation into the war on terror.

This book will be useful for scholars and students of processes of democratisation, for Middle East and North Africa specialists and for general readers interested in the role of international actors across the Arab world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Release date: Jul 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781847796905

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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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 non-existent? This question has profound consequences for how 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