Withholding allegiance, seeking recognition: Aït Ahmed and the FFS revolt, 1963-5 An instance of the ways in which conflict within the political elite can both mobilize and demobilize collective action within and between groups in Algeria is provided by the armed rebellion of Front des Forces Socialistes (FFS) in 1963-5. The sociology of this affair was theorized by Jeanne Favret as a paradox - a recourse to a ‘traditional’ mode of action (a Berber rebellion) being motivated by the ‘ultra-modernism’ of its protagonists. This view largely ignored the actual behavior of the leader of the rebellion, Hocine Aït Ahmed, and the other main actors in the drama and accordingly misinterpreted the logic of their actions and the character of the FFS. The FFS, which was legalized in 1989 and still exists, is widely described as ‘Algeria’s oldest opposition party’ and even as ‘Algeria’s oldest democratic party’. But Aït Ahmed’s political position in 1963-5 was not that of democratic opposition to the FLN regime, but simply a critique of Algeria’s first president, Ahmed Ben Bella, for allegedly abusing his ‘personal power’, and a call for a congress of the FLN to be held. Far from a clear-cut revolt in the name of democratic principles, the affair was a maneuver undertaken in a highly complex political context for reasons that were never acknowledged. As such, it established the template of political action for those forces not represented within what Algerians call ‘le Pouvoir’. These forces are not true oppositions motivated by their commitment to a qualitatively different form of government but more accurately conceived as ‘dissident’ movements which withhold support from the regime as a ploy in attempting to renegotiate the terms of their loyalty to it. As such, their motivations fall short of the ‘ultra-modernism’ that Favret attributed to the FFS at its inception. Based on in-depth field work in Algeria as well as detailed research on primary and secondary sources, this paper explores the logics of the course of events during the rebellion and of the complex maneuvers to which a wide range of actors resorted in response to it. By doing this it discovers the principles that have informed the strategies of dissident members of the Algerian political elite and thus their understanding of the political environment in which they have found themselves and their perception of the nature of the Algerian state.