Institutions, histoire et développement dans le monde arabe et musulman.

Can the quality of institutions explain the economic ‘backwardness' of Middle-East and North Africa? Recent work tries to answer this question using the Douglas North neo-institutionnalist theory that explains the rise of the Western world by the emergence in the North of Europe with Xth century of original institutions, which spread out in the West thanks to competition between nations. To explain the development differences between nations and civilizations, North built a vision of the world history centred on the West and neglected the contribution of the other worlds, in particular multitude of exchanges and contacts between East and West which did not stop until the dark ages to the modern period. This step is challenged in the light of the contributions of historical knowledge to the study of the Arab and Moslem world economy.