WHEN TAKING TO THE STREETS DELIVERS THE GOODS: PROTESTS, VIOLENCE AND PUBLIC SERVICE DELIVERY IN ALGERIA (1999-2019)
DISSERTATION BY ARTICLES
My dissertation investigates the relationship between protests and autocratic resilience in Algeria. It examines local governance in non-democratic settings where protests and violence are said to be commonplace and common practice for a broad range of actors, against mainstream theoretical expectations. Indeed, what explains that Algeria —a rentier state supposedly well equipped to both prevent and suppress unrest— is described as an “equilibrium of instability”, where a “culture of riots” exists and where contention is said to be “routinized”? Under which conditions do protests acquire a routine character under authoritarian rule? How does this tension inform our understanding of political order in autocracies? ​I treat Algeria as a heuristic site to engage with and theorize recurring contestation, its significance and its implication for our understanding of postconflict political order, particularly in autocracies.
FIELDWORKS
To substantiate my theory, I conducted two fieldworks in Algiers' popular neighborhoods (Algeria) and over six months of archival research in the National Archives at College Park (Maryland, United States) with the support of funds from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Joseph Armand Bombardier Doctoral Scholarship), the Center for International Studies at the Université de Montréal, the Schull Yang International Experience Award, the George Washington University’s Project on Middle East Political Science Travel Research and Engagement Grant, the BEAR Network Mobility Award and several McGill University internal scholarships. ​​​
CATALOGUE OF PROTEST NARRATIVES
I conducted a social narrative analysis of 2937 protest events and 76 protest waves held in Algeria during the presidency of Abdelaziz Bouteflika (1999-2019). A catalogue of protest narratives was built by intersecting protest event analysis methodology with what critical theorist and historians call an "anarchival approach" (Brozgal 2020; Jarvis 2021; Hartman 2019). The latter was developed by scholars studying violence targeting marginalized communities in Algeria and elsewhere to generate a diverse corpus of data by first building an archive (reflecting mainstream accounts) and an "anti-archive" based on competing voices on the same events or phenomena. The goal is to put in dialogue competing accounts and memories of the same event, in view of generating theories that systematically account for the effects of violence on knowledge production.
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PUBLICATIONS
WORK IN PROGRESS
Navigating Ambiguity: What Counts as Protests? Journal article submitted.
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Protesting as Everyday Life: Can Strong Communities Stabilize Weak States? Working paper available upon request.
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When Taking to the Streets Delivers the Goods: the Politics of Getting By in Post-civil War Algeria, Journal article under review.
BOOK CHAPTERS
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Discomfort in the field: Navigating family politics, the streets and the state in Algeria. In Doing Research as a Native, Eds. Kira Jumet and Merouan Mekouar, Oxford University Press, 2025.
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With Lucile Dartois and Vicky Laprade, « La haine dans l’ambiguïté: les stratégies de contestation anti-genre dans le contexte canadien », in Libertés plurielles et résistances féministes : convergences, tensions et transversalité. An edited book for the 20th anniversary of l’Université féministe d’été, Research Chair Claire Bonenfant for feminist studies, at the Department of sociology, Université Laval, In press : 2026.​
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