Even though it is commonly admitted that the regional dynamic of the „Arab Spring“ didn’t manifest itself in Algeria in form of mass demonstrations demanding regime change, growing and sustained popular pressure from different sectors of the population pushed President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to announce several reforms, among them anticipated legislative elections, scheduled for May 10th 2012. These elections are presented by the Algerian regime as the crowning glory of the (timid) reform process initiated in spring 2011, including the recognition of new political parties of Islamist obedience and an obligatory women’s quota on the electoral lists. This positive appreciation stands in sharp contrast to the overall skepticism and indifference of the population. Indeed, the voter turnout is expected to be as low as in previous elections (Bennadji 2007). Far from being an act of depolitisation, electoral abstention is considered to be a mode of opposition to the “pouvoir” and contestation of the political system (Dris-Ait-Hamadouche 2009) and thus as a mode of political participation (Al-Hamad 2008; Bennani-Chraibi/Filleul 2003). In the face of the anticipated weak turnout and calls by parties to boycott the elections, the regime is already making huge efforts in order to mobilize citizens, e.g. sending text messages by appealing to the citizen’s sense of duty. Drawing on data to be collected during an intensive field work trip, this paper will examine how elections are translated in small localities of the berberophone Kabylie region, which are regularly shaken by “riots”, road blockades and squatting of local administrations by exacerbated inhabitants, demanding housing, jobs, functioning infrastructures and an end of corruption and hogra – injustice. These “riots” are often labeled as being spontaneous and leaderless, but research on participation points to the family and neighborhood networks that constitute the basis for such mobilizations (Singerman 1995). Studying elections in these peripheral areas, will thus give insights into the way of how different governmental and oppositional actors – including the main Berber political parties, the FFS, the RCD as well as the representatives of the Mouvement des Arouches – negociate and compete for the votes or the boycott of a local population and their “informal” representatives, used to overcome institutionalized intermediate channels between state and society, considered as ineffective.