The conference proposes a comprehensive and detailed study of the everyday functioning of politics and dissent in North Africa. Moving away from normative and abstract claims about the so-called ‘authoritarian’ aspect of North African regimes, this conference takes up an ethnographic approach. Its objective is to underline the various and complex mechanisms through which North African regimes have been able to survive in the past decades. Drawing upon a broad range of case studies, participants will examine the complex interaction between various types of actors within specific contexts. Rather than looking for a single-cause explanation of North African politics, the conference will emphasize the multifaceted relations between and among State and society, governments and opposition parties, nation-states and the international community.

This interdisciplinary conference has important practical consequences for a better understanding of a region that tends to be less studied than the Middle East. It will also provide scholars from Europe, North Africa and the U.S. with a unique opportunity to meet, exchange and confront their views and methodologies.

SPONSORS | The Council on Middle East Studies at the MacMillan Center with Department of Education Title VI Funding | Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund