ABSTRACT
I believe I have demonstrated the risks of crediting Algeria’s associational life with a boundless democratising potential, and the dangers of limiting the analysis of its political impact to the issue of democratic change. Yet, recognising that the emergence of the associative sphere has so far failed significantly to contribute to the country’s democratisation does not necessarily equate to dismissing it as dysfunctional. In exposing the place taken by the associative sphere in the establishment of Algeria’s liberalised autocracy, I have tried to frame the functions it performs as part of a broader Hobbesian project, consisting of an articulated attempt by a weak state to reacquire legitimacy and reinforce its capacity to expect voluntary compliance to its rule, without resorting to coercion. These functions include the articulation of consent and the insulation from dissent; the preservation of a corporatist order based on rent distribution and patronclient networks; the co-optation of loyalty from core support groups located especially in and around the public sector; the management of a form of political pluralism which limits the role of parties and its institutional expression – the legislature; and the restoration of the country’s international position through repeated appeals coming from within and outside Algeria to the regime’s civic legitimacy.
