SFF and RCD : National Party or Kabylia regional party ?

After October 1988 and the establishment of a "new political formula" sanctioning a multi-party system, the Berber identity became a major issue for the partisan strategies of two Algerian parties: the Socialist Forces Front and the Rally for Culture and Democracy. The former is older and played a role in the emergence of the Berber cultural movement of the 1980's. The latter is an offspring of the SFF movement and institutionalised with the introduction of the multi-party system in 1989. The article examines the identification strategies deployed by these two rival groups. They compete with public authorities and position themselves in the national political arena all the while appealing to community and ethnic roots and employing indigenous arguments. Completed in the late 1990's, the study ultimately questions the diverse attitudes of Berber political actors who face increasing risks of regional and ethnic isolation: How can such parties rise above the regional context to represent a viable democratic alternative for Algeria?