Houari Boumediene - Domestic Policy

Domestic Policy

Economically, Boumédienne turned away from Ben Bella's focus on rural Algeria and experiments in socialist cooperative businesses (l'autogestion). Instead, he opted for a more systematic and planified programme of state-driven industrialization. Algeria had virtually no advanced production at the time, but in 1971 Boumédienne nationalized the Algerian oil industry, increasing government revenue tremendously (and sparking intense protest from the French government). He then put the soaring oil and gas resources—enhanced by the oil price shock of 1973—into building heavy industry, hoping to make his country the Maghreb's industrial centre. His years in power were in fact marked by a reliable and consistent economic growth, but after his death in the 1980s, the drop in oil prices and increasingly evident inefficiency of the country's state-run industries, prompted a change in policy towards gradual economical liberalization.

In the 1970s, along with the expansion of state industry and oil nationalization, Boumédienne declared a series of socialist revolutions, and strengthened the leftist aspect of his regime. A side-effect of this was the rapprochement with the hitherto suppressed remnants of the Algerian Communist Party (the PAGS), whose members were now co-opted into the regime, where it gained some limited intellectual influence, although without formal legalization of their party. Algeria formally remained a single-party state under the FLN, but Boumédienne's personal rule had marginalized the ex-liberation movement, and little attention was paid to the affairs of the FLN in everyday affairs.

Pluralism and opposition were not tolerated in Boumédienne's Algeria, which was characterized by government censorship and rampant police surveillance by the powerful Sécurité militaire, or Military Security. Political stability reigned, however, as attempts at challenging the state were generally nipped in the bud. As chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, Boumediene and his associates ruled by decree. During the 1970s, constitutional rule was gradually reinstated and civilian political institutions were restored and reorganized. Efforts were made to revive activity within the FLN, and state institutions were reestablished systematically, starting with local assemblies and moving up through regional assemblies to the national level, with the election of a parliament. The process culminated with the adoption of a constitution (1976) that laid down Algeria's political structure. This was preceded by a period of relatively open debate on the merits of the government-backed proposal, although the constitution itself was then adopted in a state-controlled referendum with no major changes. The constitution reintroduced the office of president, which Boumedienne entered after a single-candidate referendum in 1978.

At the time of his death, later that year, the political and constitutional order in Algeria was virtually entirely of Boumediene's own design. This structure remained largely unchanged until the late 1980s, when political pluralism was introduced and the FLN lost its role as dominant single party. (Many basic aspects of this system and the Boumedienne-era constitution are still in place.) However, throughout Boumedienne's era, the military remained the dominant force in the country's politics, and military influence permeated civilian institutions such as the FLN, parliament and government, undercutting the constitutionalization of the country's politics. Intense financial or political rivalries between military and political factions persisted, and was kept in check and prevented from destabilizing the government mainly by Boumedienne's overwhelming personal dominance of both the civilian and military sphere.