Cooptation of political opposition is commonly understood as a central strategy of autocrats in Arab states. The literature tends to frame the process as a zero-sum game, with a single winner. Specifically, the incumbent regime’s dominance requires, and results in, a weakened opposition. In the Algerian context, this narrative has been renewed since the 1992 military coup which removed a popular Islamist party. However, the use of local channels for pursuing and achieving various political interests come as evidence of a more complex dynamic among various post-coup Islamists, specifically the Algerian Movement for a Society of Peace (MSP). There is some preliminary evidence that the party’s legal status, indeed its very cooptation ‘pact’ with regime, may help its members achieve locally-defined ends, even if its participation in national politics appears a façade. My paper will use the case of the MSP to explore how coopted parties may be understood as agents, even in systems that appear tightly controlled, even staged. What gains do members in fact see to participation in such a political system? How do party members make sense of this position while also understanding themselves as opposition? To what extent might a party opt for cooptation as a safe strategic choice? I answer these questions using ethnographic methods such as interviews and participatory observations (using the Algerian Arabic dialect). In this process, I have identified and compared competing narratives on the MSP’s political participation in MSPs stronghold towns of Blida, Chlef, and Oued Souf. I will also use textual analysis of primary and media sources to complement the individual subjective (at times retrospective) accounts from the ethnographic process This discussion will contribute to literature on how political parties in the Arab world adapt to authoritarian bargaining, and in particular to cooptation. Building on the works of Asef Bayat and Salwa Ismail, who have written extensively about everyday, mundane means of local party resistance and circumvention, my proposed thesis will explore first, the benefits of the MSP’s participation as they are locally conceived, and second, to what extent the party’s legal status allows its members to achieve these ends. In the former, “benefits” and “costs” to the party are understood through the prism of members’ values, beliefs, and socially produced dynamic preferences (rather than a hierarchy of fixed preferences).