Colonies of receding empires?

[sktarq]

It also matters why the Empire is falling.

If it due to complexity issues and being generally overstretched the colonial government may well be more active in people's day to day lives anyway and the transition could just be a series of laws allowing the local governor more autonomy...repeat until defacto independence is reached.

if for example the the heart of the empire hits a crisis and civil war breaks out, or even power struggles paralyses the place the "colonists" could consider themselves to be a more true heir to the Empire than the original seat.

Or the imperial heart could be trying to draw in resources to themselves to try and fix their own issues this will of course cause resentment and more likely to lead to the breakdown and warlordisms that have been discussed above.

There are also tones of questions based on if there are other power centres and how they see things...perhaps a rival who is happy to take the new independent colonies as vassal states....or equally some power centre who wants to kill/crush/absorb those same states and now sees an opportunity.

Also how much autonomy the colonies had makes a huge difference...if the locals had to have decision making ability due to the separation from the imperial seat then they are much more likely to be able to handle independence....if they had lower autonomy much of the governmental systems would be about local control, saying "no" a lot until you paid them not to, and passing more serious decisions up to the home nation/imperial seat...and thus when they gain independence they tend to still say no a lot to anyone who wants to do anything, arguing with themselves, bumping into the furniture, and when they can get the firepower shoot themselves in the foot. (quote-ish from Douglas Adams last chance to see, chapter Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat-I highly highly recommend but a separate discussion)