The emotional debris from the colonial experience notwithstand ing, it is important that we, as Asian scholars, compare accurately the long-term processes characteristic of Asian societies with those of the West, since ideas, institutions, and styles of functioning drawn from these two sets of traditions are conjoined in the present. The article focuses on medieval and early modern political institutions, and argues that those in India remained cyclical, in the sense of having dynastic ups and downs, while those in Western Europe had an evolutionary course (van Parijs, 1981). Besides that of the state, the evolutionary process is also considered in the contexts of the church and of commerce.
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