This individual is a guest contributor. MEI is not able to assist with contact requests.
Dr. Frédéric Volpi is a senior lecturer at the University of St Andrews. His research focuses on the interaction between Islamism, democratization, and civility. Dr. Volpi’s latest monograph is an examination of the “western” social sciences’ approaches to political Islam and their policy implications, and he is currently working on a new book on the causes and significance of regime change in North Africa during the 2011 “Arab Spring.”
As in many other authoritarian regimes in the region, the Algerian elections are not meant to facilitate a change of leadership through voting, but are merely a vehicle to give some token electoral “legitimacy” to the regime’s candidate. Disqualification of opposition candidates, administrative and financial hindrances, backroom deals, and political cooptation, as well as media control and poll fixing, have been the most common electoral tropes in Algeria since the mid-1990s.
