Beneath the veneer of industrializing industry and triumphant third world leadership lay a single-party regime still attempting to fabricate the revolutionary party that had broken up at independence and still afraid of a postcolonial elite that might have institutionalized the party-state. With Boumediene’s death in 1978 Algeria turned about face from its industrializing project. This paper will explore the reasons behind the dramatic reversal of industrial policy under Boumediene’s successor. Beginning with Belaid Abdesselam in 1990, key ministers, most recently Ahmed Taleb-Ibrahimi and Sid Ahmed Ghozali, have published elements of their memoirs. The present writer has also collected memoirs of these three key players, along with a number of other former student leaders close to Abdesselam, who had served as their principal patron and advisor in the mid-1950s. Based in part upon these interviews conducted in 2007-08, this paper will analyze the underlying fragility of Abdesselam’s industrial enterprise. It was faltering even before Boumediene’s death but might have endured, had it acquired institutional roots. Unfortunately Bounediene had inherited the weakest of former French North Africa’s postcolonial states, and he reversed his strategy of state-building after 1970. The aspirations of his developmental state consequently could not be sustained, not being grounded in political institutions. Why he shifted course and embarked on agrarian and cultural revolutions as well as an industrial one in 1971 remains an open question, albeit one that may shed more light on the Boumediene era. This paper will suggest that the specter of a postcolonial landowning bourgeoisie indeed distracted attention from efforts to build a developmental state.

Within the larger historiographical context, the history of Algerian women in post-colonial Algeria has received little attention. Even fewer studies have looked at women’s sport. During the Boumedienne era in Algeria – and despite the official discourse that it was time for women to be liberated -the state’s position towards women was considerably conservative. Yet, if social conservatism prevailed, it is also during that period that the state promoted, and made compulsory women’s sport in the state school system, as well as promoting female participation in sports at the competition level. My paper seeks to explore the role of the state in promoting and governing women’s sport. It aims to show the ways in which the promotion of female sport has been linked, on the one hand, to the nation-building process and was an integral part of the Socialist ideology promoted by the regime, and, on the other hand, to the changing position and status of women in post-colonial Algeria. Finally, through media analysis, my paper will seek to explore and analyze popular reaction in Algiers to the promotion and development of women’s sport.

Most judgments of the Boumediene regime have focused on the national level and, whether sympathetic or hostile, have generally taken its authoritarian if not dictatorial character for granted. Examination of the dynamics of local politics in Greater Kabylia during this period suggests this picture badly needs to be qualified. In contrast to regime practice in the era of formal pluralism since 1989, the Boumediene regime did not rig or falsify elections, interference from the army was conspicuous for its absence, popular participation was high and the legitimacy dividend to the regime substantial. This paper discusses the interaction of party, administration, central government, local communities and informal factions in the local, regional and national assembly elections held in Kabylia between 1967 and 1977 and argues that the Boumediene regime followed a complex and subtle strategy that allowed for a genuine element of democracy within the formally monolithic framework of the FLN-state.

This paper will examine the nature of political dynamics during the Boumediene period 1965 to 1978. In particular it will underline the importance of the Algerian Communist Party (PCA). Although banned by the Ben Bella in 1962 regime in reality the PCA became an important ally as his regime moved to the left. For this reason the PCA opposed the Boumediene coup in June 1965. However, reconstituted as the Parti de l’Avant Garde Socialiste (PAGS) in 1966 the party steadily swung behind Boumediene in the late 1960s as the latter took a pro-Soviet and anti-imperialist stance in international relations. This, paper, therefore will analyse the party’s evolving relationship with the Boumediene regime as it became an enthusiastic champion of the agricultural revolution and the close relationship with Castro. In conclusion the paper will examine how Islamists, viewing this alliance with growing horror, used the communist connection as a way of challenging Boumediene’s legitimacy as a whole.