Could imperial rule affect state institutions at the national, regional, and local level differently? No systematic theory to answer this question exists, which is surprising given the importance that is attributed to foreign rule for political-administrative organization around the world. The effectiveness of imperial rule may differ along the administrative hierarchy because empires are often subject to financial constraints, limits on organizational capabilities, and informational asymmetries. Therefore, a commonly used approach—aggregation at the national level—may yield erroneous findings about colonial legacies by ignoring vital nuances. To address this gap, I develop a novel theory of imperial pervasiveness and test it through a number of statistical analyses. Leveraging an original dataset of citizen perceptions of state institutions in Romania, this study reveals vastly different long-term effects of historical Habsburg rule at the regional and local levels. The results indicate that we need to rethink the study of colonial origins.

帝国统治会在国家、地区和地方层面对国家机构产生不同的影响吗？不存在回答这个问题的系统理论，考虑到外国统治对世界各地的政治行政组织的重要性，这令人惊讶。帝国统治的有效性可能会随着行政等级的不同而不同，因为帝国经常受到财政限制、组织能力的限制和信息不对称的影响。因此，一种常用的方法——在国家层面进行汇总——可能会忽略重要的细微差别，从而得出关于殖民遗产的错误结论。为了解决这个差距，我开发了一种关于帝国普遍性的新理论并通过一些统计分析对其进行测试。本研究利用罗马尼亚公民对国家机构看法的原始数据集，揭示了历史上哈布斯堡王朝统治在区域和地方层面的巨大不同的长期影响。结果表明，我们需要重新思考对殖民起源的研究。