Half a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Linz and Stepan noticed the divergent destinies of new regimes in the postcommunist world. Whereas, in East Central Europe, open politics and free markets were “near to becoming the only game(s) in town,” the newly independent states of Central Asia clung to staged elections and economic planning. These distinct paths were all the more intriguing because they emerged against a monolithic background of communist rule. The fact that regime change proceeded smoothly in some parts of the former Soviet empire, yet was derailed in others, draws attention to:

This chapter takes national histories into account. African countries underwent liberalization during much the same period as Eurasia and also embarked on paths of change defined jointly by shared and special legacies. Across the continent, Africans had long endured a debilitating economic crisis, a deep dependence on external finance, and a pervasive culture of neo-patrimonial rule. This common ecology helps to explain why, in every country we have studied, mass satisfactions with regime reforms are heavily influenced by popular impressions of the economic performance of national presidents. As in other world regions, however, national political and economic legacies are not constant across sub-Saharan Africa. Even crisis-ridden African states diverge in their levels of wealth and trajectories of growth.