Algeria Has Written Four Constitutions Since Independence — Each One Built to Stop What the Last One Failed to Prevent
Algeria — Constitution Profile
| 📅 Current Constitution | 1996 — amended 2002, 2008, 2016, and 2020 |
| 🏛️ Government | Presidential Republic (military-backed in practice) |
| 🌍 Capital | Algiers |
| 📄 Total Constitutions Since Independence | Four — 1963, 1976, 1989, 1996 |
| ✏️ Years Without Any Constitution | 11 years — 1965 to 1976, under military decree |
| 👑 Most Dramatic Moment | 2019 — a wheelchair-bound, speechless president tried to run for a fifth term, and millions took to the streets |
In February 2019, Algeria's ruling party announced that President Abdelaziz Bouteflika would seek a fifth term in office. He had suffered a severe stroke in 2013. He had not spoken publicly since 2014. He communicated with his ministers by letter. He could not walk. The constitution he had personally amended in 2008 to remove term limits did not say anything about a president being physically capable of governing — and so his candidacy was, on paper, entirely legal. What followed was six weeks of mass protests across every major city in Algeria, the largest the country had seen since independence. The army eventually told Bouteflika to resign. He did, on April 2, 2019. The constitution that had enabled his twenty-year hold on power had finally produced a crisis too large to manage.
The First Constitution Was Sidelined Before the Ink Was Dry
Algeria's first constitution was adopted by referendum in 1963, following the Algerian War of Independence. The war had ended only the year before, and the country was barely a functioning state. Originally, the constitution was to be drafted by a constitutional assembly led by Ferhat Abbas, but this body was sidelined by Algeria's first President, Ahmed Ben Bella. What emerged instead was a document shaped almost entirely around one man's preferences — a one-party state ruled by the former resistance movement, the National Liberation Front (FLN).
It didn't last two years. On June 19, 1965, Houari Boumedienne deposed Ben Bella in a military coup d'état that was both swift and bloodless. The ousted president was taken into custody and held incommunicado. Boumedienne dissolved the National Assembly, suspended the 1963 constitution, disbanded the militia, and abolished the Political Bureau, which he considered an instrument of Ben Bella's personal rule. The country then operated without a constitution — laws being enacted by the 26-member Council of the Revolution, dominated by the military — for the next eleven years.
The Second Constitution Was Approved by 99 Percent — by a Country That Had No Other Choice
After a decade of ruling by decree, Boumedienne decided Algeria needed a constitutional framework again — on his own terms. The National Charter was approved in June 1976 by 98.5% of the votes cast, and on November 19 the new Constitution was adopted as well. In December of the same year Boumedienne was confirmed as President with 99.38% of the votes.
The constitution created a single-party system and allowed the President to retain many of his sweeping powers. The 1976 document declared Algeria a socialist state, designated the FLN as the only permissible party, and — having spent eleven years governing without a legislature — gave the presidency enormous authority over every institution it created. Boumedienne died just two years later. He had spent more time ruling without a constitution than the document he eventually wrote actually lasted under him.
The Third Constitution Was Born From Street Violence — and Was Cancelled by the Army Three Years After It Enabled Free Elections
By October 1988, Algeria was in crisis. Student strikes and riots broke out amid allegations of corruption, prompting the government to declare a state of emergency. The army opened fire on protesters in the streets of Algiers. Estimates of the dead ranged from several hundred to over five hundred. The brutality shook the government badly enough that President Bendjedid offered genuine reform. On February 23, 1989, the third constitution of Algeria was passed.
For the first time in Algeria's history, the constitution allowed citizens to elect their representatives and to form parties. The one-party rule of the FLN was abolished and all references to it were erased from the constitution, except for a mention of its importance during the war of independence. The reforms were real. By early 1990, Algeria was experiencing remarkable liberalization and freedom. Regional and local elections held in June 1990 astonished observers, as the recently organized Islamist Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) won most of the contests. The military watched those results and made a decision: when the FIS was on track to win the December 1991 parliamentary elections, the army intervened on January 11, 1992, cancelled the second round, forced Bendjedid to resign, and banned the FIS entirely. The constitution that had promised multiparty democracy lasted three years before the army simply suspended the democratic process it had enabled.
The Decade of Civil War That Produced the Fourth Constitution
What followed the cancelled elections was a civil war that lasted most of the 1990s. The FIS, denied its electoral victory, fractured — with some factions forming armed groups that carried out massacres of civilians, and the army carrying out its own campaign of killings and disappearances. Estimates of the dead range from 100,000 to 200,000 people killed over roughly a decade. The violence was characterized by atrocities so extreme that some villages were entirely wiped out overnight, their populations murdered in ways designed to maximize terror. Algeria's press was tightly controlled throughout, and much of what happened remains only partially documented to this day.
The civil war of the 1990s influenced the framing of the fourth and present constitution. The 1996 constitution was adopted in November that year by referendum, and it reintroduced a two-term limit on the presidency — one of the few genuine structural constraints the document contained. It also created a second chamber of parliament, the Senate, with one-third of its members appointed directly by the president. The war had produced a document designed to restore legitimacy to a government that had suspended democracy to fight the war. The two-term limit was the concession. The appointed Senate was the insurance policy.
Bouteflika Removed the Term Limit — and Then Couldn't Leave Even When He Could No Longer Speak
Abdelaziz Bouteflika became president in 1999, running in an election where all six other candidates withdrew on the eve of the vote, citing fraud. He ended the civil war, rebuilt Algeria's international standing, and presided over an oil-fuelled economic expansion. He also systematically dismantled the constitutional structure designed to limit his power. In November 2008, parliament approved a constitutional amendment abolishing presidential term limits. The two-term limit the 1996 constitution had built specifically to prevent indefinite rule was removed by the man it was designed to constrain — through a parliamentary vote in a legislature his party dominated.
In April 2013, Bouteflika suffered a major stroke, which, coming on top of his already declining health, physically incapacitated him as president to the point that he was rarely seen in public thereafter. He was reliant on a wheelchair and had not given a speech in public since 2014 due to aphasia following his stroke. In 2014, he ran for a fourth term anyway and won with 81 percent of the vote. Protesters began staging weekly demonstrations in February 2019 after the ruling party announced that Bouteflika, a wheelchair-bound 82-year-old rarely seen in public since his stroke, would seek a fifth term in office. The constitution he had amended to remove term limits said nothing about a president needing to be physically capable of governing. It was, technically, silent on the matter.
The Army That Made Him Resign Had Kept Him in Power for Six Years After He Stopped Speaking
The ailing president resigned on April 2, 2019, after the powerful army chief, General Ahmed Gaid Salah, asked him to stand down. The framing in most international coverage described this as the army siding with the people. The reality was more complicated: the military kept hold of power and enforced the appointment of former housing minister Abdelmadjid Tebboune as the new president in late 2019. The Hirak protesters, whose slogan had become "Yetnahaw Gaa" — "They all must go" — had not wanted a managed transition supervised by the same military establishment that had backed Bouteflika for two decades.
A new constitution was adopted in 2020 in a national referendum that had very low turnout. Changes included adding term limits for the president as well as new powers for the parliament and judiciary. The term limits that Bouteflika had removed in 2008 were reinstated. The constitution Algeria adopted in 2020 to end the crisis looked, in its presidential term provisions, almost identical to the one that had existed before Bouteflika amended it away. The country had spent twelve years, a mass uprising, and a forced resignation getting back to approximately where it had started.
Constitution at a Glance
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Independence from France | July 5, 1962 |
| First Constitution (Ben Bella) | September 1963 — FLN one-party state |
| Boumedienne Coup / Constitution Suspended | June 19, 1965 |
| Years Without Constitution | 1965–1976 (11 years, ruled by decree) |
| Second Constitution (Boumedienne) | November 19, 1976 — 99.38% approval |
| October Riots / Army Opens Fire | October 1988 (hundreds killed) |
| Third Constitution (Multiparty) | February 23, 1989 |
| Elections Cancelled / Civil War Begins | January 11, 1992 (est. 100,000–200,000 killed) |
| Fourth Constitution (Current) | November 1996 — two-term presidential limit |
| Term Limits Removed by Parliament | November 2008 |
| Bouteflika Stroke / Becomes Incapacitated | April 2013 |
| Hirak Protests Begin | February 22, 2019 |
| Bouteflika Resigns | April 2, 2019 |
| 2020 Constitution — Term Limits Restored | November 1, 2020 (low turnout) |
📥 Read the Constitution of Algeria
Read the complete, official text of the Constitution of the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria:
👉 Read the Constitution of Algeria — Full Text (Constitute Project)
A first constitution sidelined before it was two years old. An eleven-year gap of military rule with no constitution at all. A third constitution that enabled the first free elections in the country's history — and lasted three years before the army cancelled the results. A president who removed his own term limits, suffered a stroke, lost the ability to speak, and still tried to run again. What part of Algeria's story surprised you most? Tell us in the comments below.
This article reflects an editorial reading of publicly available constitutional text and reporting, intended for general understanding rather than legal interpretation. Readers are encouraged to consult the original constitutional text linked above to form their own view.
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