Based on personal interviews as well as writings of a sample of 43 former student leaders and members of the Union Générale des Etudiants Musulmans Algériens (UGEMA, 1955-1963), this paper will trace the brief history of the Algerian Revolution’s only autonomous NGO and the consequent patterns of cooperation and competition over the years of its leadership. The sample represents a broad political spectrum of Algeria’s recently retired civilian elite. It is biased toward students who achieved high office in subsequent years. Elected leadership positions in UGEMA seem nevertheless to have anticipated subsequent promotions and co-optation by the Boumedienne (but not the Ben Bella) regime. This study of career patterns shows a UGEMA elite broadly divided into five overlapping categories, the captains and cadres of industry, diplomats, educators, civil servants, and private sector professionals. Led by Belaid Abdesselam, the captains of industry flourished between 1965 and 1978 but were subsequently marginalized while still in their forties, victims of Algeria’s campaign of “deboumediennization” following the president’s death. The educators tended to survive through the Chadli era (1979-1992), whereas some of the diplomats also retired early from public life. Finally in the early 1990s some of UGEMA’s captains of industry and diplomats returned to high positions in the state’s formal hierarchy. But unwilling or unable in the course of their careers to act in concert, they never acquired real authority. Even taking into account the constraints on an alien Francophone elite in a violent popular revolution, there were also more immediate causes. UGEMA was effectively “suicided” in 1961, the summer before external military forces outgunned those of Algeria’s Provisional Government and seized power. Neither outcome was inevitable but these events set postcolonial Algeria on the path of military dictatorship. For better or worse, UGEMA’s potential civilian leadership remained hostage to competing military factions and seriously divided, its captains of industry opposed to Arabizing educators. Shutting down its only autonomous intermediary left independent Algeria with a weak, politically impoverished state.

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.

Based on biographical interviews with former member of the Parti de l’avant-garde socialiste (PAGS), this paper aims to reflect upon their place vis-à-vis the Algerian regime. The PAGS was an underground organization created in the wake of the 1965 military coup that brought Houari Boumediene to power, as an heir to the Algerian communist party (PCA). While part of its leadership was detained, the party followed a policy known as “critical support” of the regime, supporting only the left leaning policies. This papers offers to look at the question from the perspective of individual itineraries of PAGS activists, rather then from that of party line: many of them were in fact involved in the State, in public companies or public services. They were also active in mass organizations that were connected to the FLN. Because many Pagsists were highly educated, they were able to hold high responsibilities, including at government level, while still reporting to and receiving instructions from their underground party. How did individuals balance participation in the State and party activities? Did they conceive of themselves as opposing the regime? Despite their remaining outside the FLN, “state edification tasks” were highly valued and the State was at the core of their ideology and practice. The analysis of these itineraries over time will provide material for reflecting upon the evolution of the FLN-State. Just how capable of attracting beyond the limits of the FLN in the 1980s, by comparison with the 1970s? And how well did it do with the younger generations of activists, who joined the PAGS in the 1980s? And while more and more activists were involved in associations – rather then parties –, did the Pagsists themselves try to consolidate the connection between their party and the State?