Clandestine Power Legitimised: Explaining Trust in the Algerian Armed Forces

Sammanfattning: Although there is a well-researched theoretical tradition to explain institutional trust, very little research has been done in authoritarian countries in general, and MENA countries more specifically. This study aims to fill this gap in the literature by identifying the factors that explain institutional trust in Algeria, focused more specifically on Algeria’s armed forces as one of the powerbrokers of the regime. It is found through various statistical tests that both the cultural and institutional theory of institutional trust do not extend well to the Algerian case, with some factors even showing strongly significant results that directly contradict existing theory. Nevertheless, some support is found for cultural and institutional factors identified in other authoritarian contexts. The single best explanatory factor is Algerians’ sense of safety and security, where higher levels of perceived safety and security correlate strongly with higher levels of trust in Algeria’s armed forces. After performing both a binary and a multinomial logistic regression, a final model is created to explain trust in Algeria’s armed forces as accurately as possible.