Algeria is perplexing. Like Tunisia, it has defied expectations. Yet it has done so in very different ways. For, unlike its near neighbour, it has not succumbed to dramatic or fundamental political change. Certainly, it was affected by the Arab Spring. Its protests were sufficiently large, frequent and angry to frighten the regime into making several noteworthy concessions. Opposition parties were promised more media coverage. A new job-creation scheme was launched. And most significant of all, the nineteen-year-long state of emergency was lifted. Yet the regime did not fall. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika not only survived but went on to win an unprecedented fourth term in office. Algeria is puzzling, therefore, not for how it has changed but the reasons why it has remained the same.

Paradoxically, some of the main factors that were initially highlighted as likely reasons why Algeria would soon follow Tunisia down the path of decisive unrest were quickly recast as impediments to its political transformation. Commenting on the growing expectations of specialists that Bouteflika's regime would be one of the next to fall, James Gelvin notes the high level of expert emphasis placed on Algeria as a trendsetter. The country, so the argument ran, had been here before. In the late 1980s it had been one of the very few Arab states to form part of the so-called Third Wave of democratisation that had been triggered by the end of the Cold War. In June 1990 and December 1991 it had held free and fair multiparty elections which had been won by the opposition Islamic Salvation Front (Front Islamique du Salut, FIS). By the time the Arab Spring began, therefore, Algeria had already experimented with democracy. Its citizens had demanded and won greater political freedoms once before. Moreover, they had done so in a way similar to that in which Tunisians had during the Arab Spring. They had experience of pressuring their government into introducing democratic reforms.

Furthermore, Algerians bore many of the same burdens in 2011 that had prompted them to act before and which had driven their neighbours to oust Ben Ali. Conditions in the country, therefore, appeared propitious to decisive unrest. Gelvin argues that four factors in particular encouraged this perception.