Principles of Parliamentarism in the Context of Western Armenian Constitutional Culture
The Western Armenian constitutional movement was a singular attempt in the East to modernize a national administrative system on parliamentary principles. Against the political realities of the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire, foreign authors tried to gauge the Armenian nation's constitutional and legal consciousness, its capacity for self-government, and its absorption of European culture; within Armenian circles constitutionalism was studied from several angles, often with an eye to forecasting the nation's political prospects. Sarvazyan sets out the goals and patterns of the movement, the philosophical and ideological foundations of the 'National Constitution', and assesses the possibility and the outcomes of parliamentary governance in Western Armenia.