Inheritance activation in post-colonial entry: A two-topology framework

Cross-border firm behaviour within post-colonial communities of states, the Commonwealth, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP), the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, the Iberoamerican Conference, exhibits a convergent anomaly: psychic-distance variables lose predictive power, country-risk classifications fail to discriminate, and firm-level capabilities matter more, not less, where home and host share a colonial history. We develop a community-level theoretical framework that explains this configuration. We theorise at the meso level, separately from the inherited content addressed by the legal origins and comparative colonial development literatures. Nine propositions follow on entry mode, partner choice, location, performance, and transition paths; the eighth specifies a multiplicative CCIA × LCIA interaction, derived from a real-options micro-foundation and empirically distinguishable from a sum of main effects. We illustrate the framework using the contemporary CPLP and the Singapore–UK Commonwealth corridor, and outline an empirical roadmap that exploits within-community variation. The framework gives international business a meso‑level construct between dyadic distance and world-system aggregates.