Heightened anxiety about the inability of traditional powers to exert control over North Africa feeds into narratives of disintegrating Western hegemony and the rise of regional actors. But behind the headlines is there a real qualitative shift in North Africa’s politics of neo-colonialism?

Libya, Tunisia, Western Sahara – recent developments in all three North African crises fuel the idea of a new international order defined by competition and chaos.

Writing in Foreign Policy this week, one analyst compared the international order able to birth Libya’s 1951 constitutional monarchy with the fragmentation of its post-2011 transition. According to the analysis there is now a “free for all among a wide range of actors who do not necessarily seek to promote order.”

Gaining traction with a wider range of commentators, this characterisation of a newly regionalised international system is being used to explain disorder across North Africa.

It was joined by Crisis Group, in its discussion of deteriorating peace in Western Sahara. Here too it seems the capabilities of ‘mid-level players’, the likes of the UAE, Turkey, and Israel, to shape outcomes detrimental to an ‘old guard’ of northern Mediterranean powers is under inspection.

With Algeria-Morocco tensions culminating in Wednesday’s accusation of a deadly airstrike on Algerian citizens, and with possible collapse of democracy in neighbouring Tunisia, there are real questions as to whether Europe has lost grip of its ‘backyard’ entirely.

But are almost two centuries of European domination really drawing to a close? And what exactly are the roles of Middle Eastern powers in North Africa?

Asides from promoting a causal link between disorder and retreating Western power that is perhaps more ideological than evidenced, the narrative of decline misreads what Western hegemony always was. Far-reaching, invasive, and effectual, the influence practiced by Europe’s ‘old powers’ has always been contested.

Indeed, from nationalism to non-alignment, Arab socialism to modern jihadism, competition to Europe’s hold on North Africa is nothing new. On the contrary, European policy to post-colonial North Africa is constantly animated by a fear of losing its grip.

What is remarkable about Europe’s influence over North Africa is not its totality, but its endurance. Built on deeper structures of economic, political and geopolitical influence, neocolonialism exists outside of the particular policy and ideological configurations of the moment.

It is for this reason that North African leaders are able to denounce the imperialism of former colonial powers while continuing to rely on business with them.

Nor is the presence of ‘mid-level’ regional players entirely new. From the Ottomans to Nasser’s Egypt, Middle Eastern states have always been in a position to disrupt the operation of European power in this region.

But though regional powers certainly have an interest in North Africa, and above all Libya, this should not be exaggerated. Strategic significance for this region derives first and foremost from its perception as a backdoor to battlegrounds in the Middle East. It is Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Palestine and a host of low-level Middle Eastern conflicts that really concern the region’s players, and of which the Maghreb has always been peripheral.

Indeed, the entire premise of North Africa’s supposed imbrication within a system of competition between mid-level powers in the eastern Mediterranean and Gulf rests, in part, on a conflation of Middle East and North Africa politics, common within the aegis of the MENA studies framework. While the role of proxies is in vogue within Middle Eastern studies, North Africa has been, and is likely to remain, more influenced by developments in its immediate vicinities, of which the role of Europe is paramount.

In North Africa, neocolonialism may be in a new era, but the story is much the same.

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