In Part II, we presented a series of case studies of the regimes and the pivotal elections that serve as the focus of this book. Our goal in all of these analytical narratives was the same: to trace what happened during these electoral confrontations with authoritarian rule and to situate these elections in turn in a broader economic and political, domestic and international context. The story that emerged in those five chapters was a far-from-uniform account of what happened before and during these electoral contests. This is the case whether we focus on all of our case studies or divide them into two groups, depending upon whether oppositions succeeded or failed to win elections and take office.

In this section of the book, we shift our focus from description to explanation. Thus, we merge our nine countries and eleven elections, compare them to one another, and draw some conclusions about the sources of electoral continuity and change in mixed regimes in the postcommunist world. In practice, this means working through the three sets of hypotheses we presented in Chapter 2. We will begin this process by evaluating the role of structural and institutional factors versus shorter-term influences on electoral outcomes.