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

Abstract

The revision of the Algerian Constitution of 30 December 2020 presented the Constitutional response to the institutional roadblocks and incoherencies within the hierarchy of norms brought to light by the Ḥirāk in 2019. The procedure used to revise the Constitution — an initiative of President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, rather than the election of a Constituent Assembly — has largely predetermined its content. The Army’s mission is now to defend “the country’s vital and strategic interests” (Article 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” (Article 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 now also de jure militarised.