The political crisis today shaking Algeria did not fall from the sky. After a long crisis in the ruling regime, everything now suggests that the current political order is reaching its end. Indeed, president Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s promises of constitutional reform indicate the authorities’ own awareness that their regime no longer corresponds to the interests of the dominant forces in Algerian society. Yet they are also mounting a final bid to maintain control of the now-inevitable reform process.

Indeed, if the turning point is now upon us, many questions remain unresolved. It is unclear if this change will indeed, come, or if the country will again fall under the control of a dictatorship. And it is also unclear how exactly the change will take place: something which remains hard to predict in a fast-moving situation. There may be blood and tears, or else a reform without too much upheaval and fallout. With Algeria in the balance, the way has been opened to a coup de force within the regime, change through popular mobilization — or, perhaps, both at once.