The events of the Arab Uprisings that started in the provincial Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid in December 2010 have challenged the prevalent focus in political sciences and area studies on regime elites and formally institutionalized politics as it neglected the sometimes silent but significant transformations unfolding at the societal level. Though Algeria did not experience its “Arab Spring” in the context of the regional upheavals (Baamara 2012, Belakhdar 2011) and while the institutionalized opposition still struggles to constitute itself as a credible counter-power, ordinary Algerian citizens nonetheless continuously challenge the state by everyday practices of resistance and thus contradict the picture of a “blocked society” (Droz-Vincent 2004). Drawing on Migdal’s state-in-society approach (Migdal 2001), on the broad research on resistance and participation in authoritarian contexts (Bayat 2009; Beinin/Vairel 2011; Bennani-Chraibi/Filleul 2003; Al-Hamad 2008; Scott 1990) and on ethnographic data collected during fieldwork trips to Algeria in October 2012 and March-April 2013, the paper aims at researching dynamics of contention at the local scale. In particular, it will offer insights into how the state is challenged by non-conventional forms of political participation in two different localities. In doing so, I will highlight the ambiguous state-society relations and the ways the post-colonial social contract is renegotiated. Thus, the paper will examine forms of political participation around and beyond the polling station that predated and accompanied the legislative elections of May 2012 in the berberophone city of Tizi-Ouzou. It will reveal that parts of the Algerian population, through massive abstention and reinvestment of traditional local institutions, continuously perform a strong rejection of the central state, undermine its authority and not least, challenge the very definition of national identity. This perspective will be completed by an analysis of the regular praxis of localized protests and riots in Bouhadjar, a small locality in the province of El Tarf (East Algeria). The paper will illustrate how young protest actors, often decried as violent and apolitical, address a particular imaginary of the state, reclaim its reengagement against the backdrop of neoliberal policies and in a sense, force it to take into consideration their demands and finally contribute to renegotiate the social contract.