Although Algeria and Mexico reside on opposites hemispheres they both experience similar struggles with democracy and whether the government is considered legitimate. Both have dominating religions that have influenced the different political regimes. A differences between the two countries is the way they have dealt with semi-authoritarian rule. Mexicans used their democratic system to reform their government which had been ruled by a single party for seventy-one years. While Algeria had a civil war that began in 1992, and Algeria still struggles with semi-authoritarian rule. I believe that Algeria can learn from Mexico about how to transition governmental systems as Algeria is currently in a similar situation as Mexico in the 1980’s.
Mexico, although rigged elections in favor of the PRI candidate; never had a legitimacy problem until the 1980’s when the Mexican economy crashed because the …show more content…
Algeria in the 1990’s was in a power struggle between Islamic groups and the Algerian military. In 1992 events exalted when Algerian military prevented the Islamic Salvation Front; a Islamic extremist group, from winning the country's first democratic elections by staging a coup d’état. This coup lead to the Algerian civil war between the many Islamic parties and the Algerian military. In 1999 Algerian held its first presidential election in which President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was supported by the military. Prior to the election the six other candidates withdrew from the election. Bouteflika is still the president of Algeria and in 2009 passed a constitutional amendment getting ride of term limits. He won the 2014 election with 90% of the vote despite having a stoke two years earlier and had not been seen in public since the stroke. The last election, along with the spread of the “Arib Spring” has started to spark more questioning by the people of Algeria on where or not the government is