I've often asked what the point of constitutional monarchies were, but this seems like a good one. The king has nearly no power. He's a figurehead. He's just there to press the "STOP" button when things have gotten out of hand. But whenever a king abuses this power, the lawmakers cut it from him. So he just sits there in a palace, living luxuriously from tax money. In good times, we ask why he's allowed to do this (but not out loud, that would be illegal).
Kings have control over the military. The prime minister has control over the police. In absolute monarchies like Saudi Arabia, there's no separation between the police and the army; soldiers are out there enforcing the law. In constitutional monarchies, you can't elect someone into Commander-in-Chief; the prime minister has to convince the king that it's something worthy of military action. As the king is well fed, it's difficult to bribe or blackmail kings into acting against the state.
I'm not saying it's a better system by any means - the US of A has seen plenty of wars and maybe it's best to have an elected Commander-in-Chief. But just some thought from a systems design standpoint.
A constitutional monarchy is not something which has a "point" in some sort of intelligent design sense. You wouldn't design one that way.
A constitutional monarchy is what you get starting from an absolute monarchy and gradually draining the power out of it and transferring it to democratic institutions. It then satisfies the demand of the public who want the roleplay of an absolute ruler, and are scared of a fully egalitarian system, but without letting them actually do any absolutism.
King Charles does not have operational control of the military. He only has a large amount of personal loyalty, which is not quite the same thing. He holds a number of operational ranks from his service, from which he is retired, and a number of honorary senior titles.
The UK is just as vulnerable to troops-on-the-streets fascism as anywhere else. (Bloody Sunday etc)
It's not only about roleplay - it's also an actual power struggle that was never faught to completion, but instead slowed down, paused, or drained as you said. But because the monarchies were never pushed out, they didn't have much reason to play dirty and use their influence and money to regain hard power, in self defence.
The downside is of course, the monetary and social costs of having such an organ. But perhaps it's useful in the same sense the appendix is. When an illness catches the intestines, the appendix can best case be a reservoir of good and recolonize the intestines. Something like that happened in Spain.
> Kings have control over the military. The prime minister has control over the police.
That's not true in the case of European constitutional monarchies. The elected government has total power except for some very specific duties around the administration of government, like dissolving parliament. And even then, those are largely ceremonial.
I do think having so much power with one person who cannot easily be replaced at any point is bad for democratic government. In a parliamentary system a poorly performing PM can be gone in an instant.
True, it doesn't apply everywhere. I'm thinking rights get cut when abused. Under the Meiji Constitution (1889-1947), Japan's emperor was Commander-in-Chief, and after the end of WW2, he was not. But even as a figurehead, he was useful in uniting the factions to end the war when multiple parties wanted to keep it going.
"In a parliamentary system a poorly performing PM can be gone in an instant."
Though it feels like what we have now is poorly performing PMs replaced by another poorly performing PM. Often one that promises to do the opposite of what the previous PM did, then forgets the promises or blames them on something else.
> Though it feels like what we have now is poorly performing PMs replaced by another poorly performing PM
I guess that depends which country you're talking about. The UK has had a bad time of it leadership wise, but I would say this is probably an accurate reflection of the divisions and problems it faces as a country. Or maybe people just remember the stability of Thatcher and Blair and forget that isn't the norm by PM, just the norm by time because those individuals lasted so long. I live in NZ where the system is a bit more coalition driven and that seems more stable between elections (nobody wants to be seen as the one wrecking the current parties power) and less between because everyone can switch sides.
Which current constitutional monarchy gives the monarch power to the same degree that it gives power to the elected head-of-state?
I don't know a single one, maybe Thailand comes close? Though with > 50% of their senate members appointed by the military I would not even call them a democracy, not even close.
There was a popular candidate a party wanted as prime minister, who was not yet allowed to run as senator because of a sodomy conviction. So they tried to get his wife elected into a prominent position to streamline his path to prime minister. The party held the richest state in the country by a large majority and forced the head of state to step down, triggering a by-election. The wife won elections easily in that territory. It was a dick move because she is never physically in the area, but the area also didn't want to elect the Islamist party and voted for this more secular party. So she was voted as senator representing citizens in a region she didn't particular care about.
But senator wasn't enough, they wanted her in a head of state position. The sultan called out this BS and requested three names for candidates. The party submitted only one name. Sultan insisted on three names, and when they submitted three, he picked the second name as head of state.
So while kings don't have the power to block a democratic process, in this case, it prevented nepotism, which would also have messed up democracy.
In 2022, none of the three major coalitions won enough seats to form the government. Votes were split 38%, 30%, 22%. They all hated each other and part of the campaign promises were to bring down the other coalitions for corruption. The monarch ended up combining the parties into a unity government, which also entailed picking the Prime Minister.
To this day, bullet holes remain in the ceiling of the Spanish parliament building to remind them of the coup attempt. I can't find it anymore, but there was a good drama movie about these events on Netflix a while ago.
> I've often asked what the point of constitutional monarchies were, but this seems like a good one.
Bagehot divided the dignified and the efficient. I've long thought that one glaring downside of the American presidential system is that it tries to combine the two roles in one office.
Non-monarchic parliamentary democracies often separate the head of government (prime minister) and chief of state (president); it’s not exclusively a thing done by Constitutional monarchies. Instead, lacking the separation is, among representative democracies, a distinguishing (mis)feature of Presidential systems.
The majority of non-monarchic parliamentary systems still have a separate chief of state and head of government (including semi-presidential systems, which are basically parliamentary democracies but the chief of state has a wider set of formal powers without being head of government).
In the EU, for instance, excluding monarchies and presidential systems, every single member state fits the pattern of having a separate chief of state and head of government, mostly with the same titles. Here's a list of EU states that aren't monarchies or presidential systems, identifying whether they are parliamentary or semi-presidential and, if the separated CoS and HoG have titles other than the most common, what those titles are. Unless noted, in the examples, the usual English title of the CoS is "President" and the HoG is "Prime Minister", exceptions have the HoG title in parens (there are not exceptions for the CoS title.)
> the prime minister has to convince the king that it's something worthy of military action. As the king is well fed, it's difficult to bribe or blackmail kings into acting against the state.
This only works on paper, and on paper congress or SCOTUS would've stepped in much sooner.
In practice, the monarch either has a lot of power, or does whatever the real head of government wants. Especially with how Trump can claim that he has the mandate of the people given that he won the election, and it's not like he doesn't wrap his motives behind legitimate claims. It's pretty easy to just claim that he has to do X for the security of the nation.
In reality, if the US had a monarch, they too would've gone along with whatever Trump wanted because to not do so is the nuclear option. It would be the equivalent of states trying to secede or not recognizing the current administration as legitimate and choosing to declare Harris as the real POTUS.
The mere existence of a king does provide some check, because at the back of the mind of the “real” government is the question - if the king rebelled against us, would we win?
We can't really speculate what the US would be like as a constitutional monarchy, as it's just very culturally anti-monarchic. The Second Amendment and free speech, for example.
In a monarchy, laws often restrict people from insulting the monarch. Not in UK, I believe, but even British culture pays their respects to the king. As a result, the king's words hold a lot of power. A president can "talk down" to congress, but a PM is still a servant of the king.
Let's say someone like Sir Richard Branson decides to do a Trump. If he claimed that he had to do X for the security of the nation, the king would be able to call him out on it. As head of military, the king has access to all the confidential data. The Supreme Court and Congress may be missing data. As the PM has to get the king to rubber stamp military actions, the king still has the right to veto it.
Kings have control over the military. The prime minister has control over the police. In absolute monarchies like Saudi Arabia, there's no separation between the police and the army; soldiers are out there enforcing the law. In constitutional monarchies, you can't elect someone into Commander-in-Chief; the prime minister has to convince the king that it's something worthy of military action. As the king is well fed, it's difficult to bribe or blackmail kings into acting against the state.
I'm not saying it's a better system by any means - the US of A has seen plenty of wars and maybe it's best to have an elected Commander-in-Chief. But just some thought from a systems design standpoint.