ABSTRACT
Algeria’s recent history has shown the decline of an apparently strong state within the Arab and African regions. In 1962, the country successfully liberated itself from French domination under the leadership of the National Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale, FLN). In the 1970s, when Houari Boumediene’s Algerian socialism was widely admired as a model, the country was in the forefront of the non-aligned movement. Less than two decades later, quite another revolutionary parallel was drawn, when the Islamic Salvation Front (Front Islamique du Salut, FIS) succeeded twice in achieving electoral victory in free elections. Seemingly, ‘authoritarian rule by a Leninist-type party’ (Entelis 1992:20) was on the verge of being replaced by a regime similar to that of Iran’s (Zoubir 1993:105). Both comparisons are not very convincing. As to the Soviet parallel, the power of the FLN as a state party has always been limited due to the predominance of the military in Algerian politics since independence. Given this fact, the January 1992 coup d’état, which interrupted national elections that would have been won by the FIS, is more comparable to other cases where the army imposed itself as the main political actor. This applies to many historical examples in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, but not to the former communist countries.
