The 2020 Revision of the Algerian Constitution and the Ḥirāk: Returning to Constitutional Order after the Institutional Disorders of 2019

What is it about?

The 30 December 2020, revision of the Algerian Constitution represented the Constitutional response to the institutional roadblocks and incoherencies within the Algerian hierarchy of norms brought to light by the Ḥirāk in 2019. Rather than occurring through the election of a Constituent Assembly, the process of amending the Constitution was initiated by President Abdelmajid Tebboune, who heavily influenced its content. The Army’s mission is now to defend “the country’s vital and strategic interests” (art. 30, para. 4), providing the retrospective legitimisation of its 2019 intervention to drive President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to step down. Furthermore, the amended Constitution makes it possible to pass legislation restricting fundamental rights and freedoms “for reasons linked to maintaining public order, security, and the protection of national constants” (art. 34, para. 2); this provision paves the way for the validation of oppressive laws applied or announced since 2019 with the aim of ending the Ḥirāk. This article argues that the Algerian Constitution no longer merely outlines a constitutionally ultra-Presidentialist regime, largely inherited from the 1976 Constitution, but an ultra-Presidentialist regime that is also de jure militarised.

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