ABSTRACT
Algeria shares with a number of African and Asian societies a single-party system of government. In most cases, the single-party state is "an outgrowth of the mobilization of persons and groups in the pre-independence period." At first studied by political scientists in terms of their "totalitarian" characteristics, single parties in the newly independent countries were later seen as tools for "building national unity" and "promoting economic development." Like the Soviet and Chinese Communist Parties, the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale (F.L.N.) arose in a revolutionary situation. Its aim was the seizure of state power through the liberation of the country from colonial domination. Like the Chinese and Cuban Communist Parties, the F.L.N. was supported by peasants and led mostly by urban cadres. The F.L.N., an organization of all Algerians, rich and poor, politically moderate and revolutionary, underwent both a structural and a functional change with the proclamation of independence.
