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- This does not seem relevant to the article. Path dependence is a special case of contingency. It is not reducible to "something in the past affects something in the future." For this to corroborate path dependence, it would have to demonstrate that there is compelling reason for Polish courts to change, but they are "locked in" by tradition. For all we know, they would adopt German principles, if German principles were objectively better.
So this is empirical evidence for historical contingency, not for path dependence. Cases of path dependence involve some purported inefficiency, like Dvorak supposedly being better than QWERTY but being unable to achieve widespread adoption due to network effects favoring QWERTY. In other words, one product is better than the other, but history constrains its adoption. Is German law objectively better than Austrian law? If not, we can't say history is constraining its adoption. It could just be that both traditions are serviceable, so there's no reason to adopt some other community's tradition.
Each community has its own traditions, but that doesn't mean all its traditions are "locked in." Communities change traditions all the time. Entire languages disappear. What language you speak is contingent on history, but that doesn't mean you can't learn a new language if there's good enough reason to.
This is why path dependence is so hard to empirically test. How do you know history is preventing some change from being made? You'd have to know that that change would be made, but for historical factors. So it's not merely that the current state of affairs is the result of past states of affairs , it's that the current state of affairs is "locked in" by past states of affairs. Something should change, but it can't change, due to historical happenstance. (en)
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