The factor people tend to be blind to (I was) is the magnitude of the effect of historical institutions to current state of affairs. American perhaps are more blind to this than others as their institutions start at a point when the relevant research material concerns things which at that point (18th century) were already centuries old.

Old institutions affect the prosperity and quality of current institutions surprisingly much:

Hapsburg empire:

https://voxeu.org/article/habsburg-empire-and-long-half-life...

An old inca highway:

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/07/31/an-inca-...

LOTS of old borders which obviously demarcate centuries old polities, treaties and circles of influence (you need to know what they are to observe them in this map) - mapped nicely into how strongly higher education is inherited:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23780231211019890

As an example we can take Finland that has an obvious area more dark in the east than rest of the country. The funny thing is this area delineates a territory that fell under the Novgorod sphere of influence in 14th century in the treaty of Nöteborg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_N%C3%B6teborg

Daron Acemoglu has a fantastic book discussing the tenacity of historical institutions make or brake current affairs centuries after: Acemoglu: Why Nations Fail (e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/d... and so on)