الإسلام والغرب: نحو عالم أفضل

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Islam and the West

eve of the 20 th century. From the point of view of the model, they are “belated” or “weak” parliamentary democracies. Allegedly as a consequence, they were later hit by what I call the curse of the Model (with a capital M). I mean that it is common sense in the political science to associate the weakness or tardiness of the parliamentary systems in the two countries – Germany and Italy – with the establishment there, a couple of decades later, of two authoritarian regimes, namely with the errors and horrors of Nazism and Fascism respectively. The easy to spell lesson reads: you do not follow the Model, you get into trouble. Alas, what models take into account is the result of a selection – and not always an unbiased one. For example, can the model of a parliamentary democracy discard the existence of a real, effective local self-government? Can it downplay the presence of a legal framework able to protect the citizens’ rights before the decision of the public administration? My personal answer is negative. I believe that centralism is a non democratic trait in a constitution, as well as the lack of an effective defense of the citizen against the wrongdoings of a public administration. In sum, I think these two factors should count as indicators of a parliamentary democracy. But both indicators tell us that France and the United Kingdom, that so well fit into the current pattern of parliamentary democracy, were by far weaker and tardier than 19 th century and indeed 20 th century Germany. I hope my perplexity with regard to political science models is now clearer. My sense is that they are fragile creatures, especially if we cherish the hope of transplanting them as if they were real creatures or if we expect them to teach us lessons and even to become political watchwords. This is why I think that institutional development, the practical enterprise of designing and implementing institutional arrangements responding to the common good of a people is not much the business of political science but of political wisdom.

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