ABSTRACT
A party is a durable, differentiated organization seeking popular support for the conquest or direct exercise of power (Charlot 1985:432). Because the party may already be in power, it need not be autonomous. It may simply mobilize support for the incumbent rulers. On this reading the Algerian Front of National Liberation qualifies as a party, as does Tunisia’s ruling Rassemblement Démocratique Constitutionnel, the eventual successor of the NeoDestour. Apart from these and some Moroccan entities, however, few North African parties have had time to develop durable, differentiated structures, much less to empower people. Thirteen of them were founded in Tunisia after 1987, and some fifty-eight have legally surfaced in Algeria since 1989, but their very novelty makes it difficult to determine how many really qualify as parties rather than as transient groups of personalities.
