The Role of Violence within the Algerian Economy

Algeria’s economic crisis parallels and is an intrinsic part of its political crisis over the past decade. It consists, furthermore, of an interrelated crisis over control of the economic rent and the activities of an informal parallel economy originally based on smuggling and now sustained through violence which is legitimised by Islamist rhetoric. Economic reform, therefore, cannot be meaningfully achieved until appropriate institutions are constructed and a dysfunctional state has been successfully reformed___________________________________________________________________________