Review of Dalia GHANEM (2022): Understanding the Persistence of Competitive Authoritarianism in Algeria, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Copyright (c) 2023 Alicia Olmo-Gómez
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Abstract
The popular protests of October 1988 challenged the Algerian collective imagination. The clashes between the army and civil society revealed the lack of consensus on which the foundations of the post-colonial state and the social contract had been built and opened an unresolved debate on the political nature of the Algerian regime. The intentionality of the regime's response to these protests, through a process of "political liberalisation" that advocated the end of the single party, has generated divergent interpretations among scholars. Dalia Ghanem's new book, Understanding the Persistence of Competitive Authoritarianism in Algeria, is part of this debate, arguing that there was not and is not a trend towards democratisation in Algeria. This review analyses Ghanem's proposed reading, engaging in a critical dialogue with the author.
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References
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