Algerian institutions are weak. This weakness has been attributed to a number of sources. Early studies focused on the role of the party-state: ideological imperatives undermined state institutions. Subsequent explanations have included the divisive nature of Algerian elites whose longstanding personal or regionalist disputes over political orientation continue to dominate politics (Quandt 1968; Harbi 1984; Entelis 1986); rival clans motivated by economic interest who seek to seize the upper echelons of power, and thus weaken institutional foundations (Dillman 2000; Werenfels 2007); or simply the continued influence of a shadow military government known as Le Pouvoir. The explicantia are voluntarist: Algerian institutions are weak because the political and economic elite either want - through individual or collective efforts to achieve power or wealth - or cause weak institutions. While intuitive, they are deficient in timing and scale/place. First, they focus on Algerian formal institutions after they were created. Institutions channel political and economic behavior (North 1981, 1990). Notwithstanding sudden moments of reform or revolution, the causal arrow is rarely inversed (Skocpol 1979). Second, and outgrowth of the first, the focus on Algerian administrative and representative institutions has been at the national level. The disarticulated nature of local informal institutions, social groups, and uneven strength of local political economies that were shaped by or lay outside the colonial system (Leca and Vatin 1975; Charrad 2001) at independence has led many scholars of post-independence Algeria to discount the ability of actors within those arena to negotiate with the state in formation. Ironically, these informal / micro-institutions posed the post-colonial regime the bulk of its problems at independence (Ottaway and Ottaway 1970; Leca and Vatin 1975). Local or provincial rebellion plagued Ben Bella (1962-1965) - forcing him to rotate the regional prefects more than 250 times in three years. Houari Boumediene recognized this weakness, and organized local elections in 1967 in an effort to accommodate, co-opt, or sideline local notables that had posed his predecessor so many problems. Focusing on Western Algeria, this paper focuses on the negotiations between local notables and state agents during the initial phase of Algerian state formation (1962-1967). Compromise on both sides - often outside of the legal framework - would weaken incipient formal institutions, from the local level, and percolating to the regional and national level. It is based on interviews and personal papers of local level state cadres involved in state building process, as well as secondary sources.