AI 中文总结
本文以喀麦隆英法殖民边界两侧受访者为研究对象，发现英国间接统治保留酋长治理职能，使当地民众对传统领导人的信任比法国直接统治区域高22-26个百分点，且联系传统领导人的可能性更高。
AI 中文摘要
对地方制度的信任关乎贸易、公共产品供给、冲突解决与民主巩固。基于 Afrobarometer 调查第6、7轮的个体数据，本文发现：前英国殖民地的受访者信任传统领导人的可能性显著高于前法国殖民地的受访者。这类跨国比较易受殖民前及殖民后历史中未观测到的异质性干扰，为解决识别问题，本文聚焦喀麦隆——该国境内同时存在英国与法国殖民时期的区域——并利用英-法语区边界这一地理断点，对比居住在该边界两侧附近的受访者。理论依据是，英法两大殖民强权对待习惯权威的方式存在系统性差异：英国的间接统治保留了酋长的治理职能，而法国的直接统治将酋长置于行政体系之下，赋予其最具强制性的任务，尤其是征税与强迫劳动，这些不同的经历通过制度延续与社会化过程，塑造了酋长制度的合法性并延续至今。与该理论一致的是，原英国殖民区一侧的受访者信任传统领导人的可能性比原法国殖民区一侧的邻居高出22至26个百分点，且他们在前一年联系传统领导人的可能性也高得多。
英文摘要
Trust in local institutions matters for trade, public goods provision, conflict resolution, and democratic consolidation. Using individual data from rounds 6 and 7 of the Afrobarometer surveys, I document that respondents in former British colonies are substantially more likely to trust traditional leaders than respondents in former French colonies. Cross-country comparisons of this kind are confounded by unobserved heterogeneity in pre- and post-colonial histories. To make progress on identification, I focus on Cameroon, which contains regions colonized by Britain and regions colonized by France within a single modern state, and I exploit the former colonial partition line as a geographic discontinuity, comparing respondents who live close to either side of the anglophone-francophone boundary. The theoretical argument is that the two colonial powers differed systematically in how they treated customary authority: British indirect rule preserved the governance functions of chiefs, while French direct rule subordinated chiefs to the administration and assigned them its most coercive tasks, taxation and forced labor above all, and these divergent experiences shaped the legitimacy of chieftaincy in ways that persist through institutional continuity and socialization. Consistent with this argument, respondents on the formerly British side are 22 to 26 percentage points more likely to trust traditional leaders than their neighbors on the formerly French side, and they are far more likely to have contacted a traditional leader in the previous year.
