« Enlever les casquettes politiques ». Rhétorique gestionnaire et euphémisation du politique chez les élus locaux du Front des forces socialistes algérien

• Main Author: Layla Baamara
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: CNRS Éditions 2017-07-01
• Series: L’Année du Maghreb
• Subjects: Local elected officials; Local political space; Coalition; Political party; Opposition; Algeria
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/anneemaghreb/3039
• ISSN: 1952-8108; 2109-9405

Based on a field study of the Socialist Forces Front (FFS) carried out between 2009 and 2013, this article proposes to examine the representations and practices of elected representatives in Algerian’s local assemblies. While the FFS deputies are opposed to the political action of the government and the parliamentary majority, local elected officials of the FFS cooperate with members of partisan organizations of this majority, mainly the National Liberation Front (RND) and the National Democratic Congregation (RND), which are the traditional targets of the party. The local alliance of this party with its adversaries appears symptomatic of the paradoxes and ambivalences which characterize the participation, in the regime, of an opposition party to the Algerian regime. To understand them, we postulate that it is necessary to analyze how the integration of the FFS into the local institutional political space goes hand in hand with a euphemization of the oppositional register, and more broadly of the partisan register, in favor of the adoption of a managerial rhetoric. The article contributes, on the one hand, to understand the conceptions and the practices of the role of local elected officials in Algeria. On the other hand, it sheds light on the modalities of action of partisan oppositions in authoritarian contexts, and moreover, fuels reflections on the processes of depoliticizing local political action.