National (Institutional / Cultural) Weight = 70–90% of Outcome
Formula:
External Events = Momentum.
Internal Institutions = Direction.
Over millennia, direction dominates.
Internal (Institutional / Cultural) Weight = 70–90 % of Outcome.
Civilizations love to tell stories about what was done to them.
Empires, colonizers, invasions—each leaves scars.
But the longer you zoom out, the more one truth reappears:
external shocks fade; internal structures decide who survives.
The Short Arc of Power
Conquest, exploitation, or occupation can distort a society for decades, sometimes even centuries.
But these are short-arc forces.
They disrupt distribution, not destiny.
The British Raj ended.
The Mongols withdrew.
Trade routes reopened.
What remained afterward—the schools, courts, and habits of adaptation or rigidity—determined which nations rebuilt and which stayed paralyzed.
The Long Arc of Choice
Across five thousand years, the weight shifts decisively inward.
Institutions, incentives, and culture explain 70–90 percent of a civilization’s long-term trajectory.
Egypt unified around stability and ritual; the same order that built pyramids later resisted innovation.
China alternated between openness and closure; each century of invention was followed by one of insulation.
Europe fragmented, competed, and argued—creating an accidental laboratory for progress.
External conquest mattered, but internal adaptation decided the result.
The Modern Example
Today, many states still blame foreign interference or historical exploitation for their stagnation.
Yet the data show that nations with open markets, enforceable laws, and intellectual freedom recover faster from identical shocks.