Little of the standard literature on Sierra Leone is comparative, with the notable exception of Martin Kilson's seminal but dated volume, and Christopher Clapham's recent short monograph, the framework of which is geographically and conceptually too narrow. The remaining general literature tends to rely too much for explanation on idiosyncratic features of Sierra Leone, or on an excessively narrow set of factors, as with the material on local politics discussed below. To avoid these problems while not denying any specificity to Sierra Leone politics, this chapter concentrates on four areas or phenomena which are common to West Africa, and attempts to show to what extent Sierra Leone's experience resembles that of the rest of West Africa (especially the coastal states) and why in some respects it is, or seems, unlike its neighbours.

The four areas are: economic dependency, the growth of authoritarian political behaviour, the role in national politics of local political arenas, and class. Since Sierra Leone is a typical instance of the presence and effect of economic dependency and of the growth of authoritarianism, the account of these phenomena is mainly descriptive. The importance of local political loyalties and alignments and the complexity of their influence on local–central relations in West Africa has had greater attention recently, notably in Ghana with Martin Staniland's entertaining monograph on Yendi, the impressive study of Ahafo politics by John Dunn and Sandy Robertson, and Richard Crook's fine doctorate on Ofinso in Ashanti.