Thank you too!! Also for inviting me to join here :) :)

Absolutely :) done!

Thank you! :)

Hence, certain hierarchies and leadership roles may persist as relics of precolonial times across colonial regimes. However, persistent functional governing activity and relevance are more restricted to areas previously under indirect colonial rule. /end

The most pronounced differences in persistence between former French and British colonies are in 1) functional differentiation and 2) the importance of traditional authorities for the everyday lives of group members.

We find a robust link between past and present institutions that is almost exclusively driven by the institutions of ethnic groups in former British colonies.

We match Murdock’s famous “ethnographic atlas” data on precolonial jurisdictional hierarchy with contemporary measures of the political complexity of ethnic groups’ traditional institutions.

Furthermore, we differentiate between two previously conflated dimensions of political complexity: political hierarchy and functional differentiation, arguing that the latter — closely related to actual governing practices — should be more susceptible to the impact of direct rule.

We argue that the reliance on indigenous institutions under (British) indirect rule should have led to some persistence, while (French) direct rule made it harder for precolonial institutions to survive.

Without such evidence on persistence, “institutional persistence” is observationally equivalent to “persistent effects” of precolonial institutions -- historical effects of institutions (e.g., leading to past development) that have persisted independent of the institutions themselves. 2/