To describe regime change as a political transition is correct but vague; it raises the critical question: In what direction is the regime heading? The simultaneous collapse of undemocratic regimes stimulated a vast literature about change in a single direction, democratization. Samuel P. Huntington (1991) proclaimed a third wave of democracy and Francis Fukuyama (1992), invoking a Hegelian metaphor, described the collapse of the Communist system as “the end of history.” Many quantitative ratings of regime change make democracy their end point (e.g. Vanhanen, 2003; Przeworski et al., 2000). Countries at the other end of the scale are simply treated as “not democracies,” when in fact they may be successfully consolidating undemocratic regimes.

In a totalitarian regime change can go in only one direction: a reduction in the intrusive claims of the state over the lives of its subjects. The abandonment of totalitarian aspirations does not imply a commitment to democratization. Changes within the Soviet Union and its satellites simply made Communist regimes govern in a post-totalitarian manner through institutions that had been created in pursuit of totalitarian goals. Post-Communist transformation was something very different: It involved the simultaneous alteration of the economy and of society as well as the political regime, and the creation of more than a dozen new states (Rose, 2009c). The maelstrom of transformation gave confusing signals about the direction of change. Political and economic imperatives led to reversals in direction and rhetoric in a trial-and-error search for support.