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I was curious about what americans think about monarchies. Since the US has always been a Federal Republic with no king, I though you guys might have different views form say a Englishman, or a Saudi.  I mainly want to focus on constitutional monarchies, but other types are welcome to discuss too.  If you are from another country feel free to drop by too.

This thread was created to share opinions of monarchies, and not to be political.  So please do not start a flame war about crowing Trump king of America or something along that line. 

 

What inspired was a radical left movement in Norway that wants to abolish the monarchy, and I though why not learn about peoples opinions of monarchies, should the question ever arise. 
Note, the radical right also has a movement to abolish the king, but it currently has about as much traction as a M2 Bradly up a snowy hill. :P

 

Also a side question, a federation is a union of states, what is a union of kingdoms? A elective monarchy like the Holy Roman Empire? 

 

Keep it civil, and keep it clean. 

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I'm from Canada and we're technically a Constitutional Monarchy.  It's almost entirely ceremonial at this point though.  The Monarch is viewed as mostly irrelevant at this point, but not worth the effort of getting rid of by most people I know. The Governor General (representative of the Queen)is viewed as a check/balance for something truly stupid happening.

 

 

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In France it's mostly viewed as a cultural thing.

It's part of the history of the country that still have a king, just the same way that we got rid of our, and that's about it.

Do whatever you want as long as it's democratic.

 

We still do have royalist party (mostly right to far right wing) but they are too busy fighting between each other to do something significant:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orléanist

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimists

 

Other than that the vast majority of the population is attached to the Republic.

 

Fun fact, our executive have a huge power (compared to the Legislative and Judiciary power) to the point that our government is often described as a "republican monarchy" in France.

And you can also see that in the fact that the president lives in l'Elysée which is a royal palace and that a lot of place of powers are strongly linked to the past monarchy.

We still cling a lot to the concept of the "providential man" and thus constitution of the Vth Republic give the president a huge power compared to other democracy, and we are attached to it (although there is a significant will from the far left to go toward a more parliamentary system)

 

Since we had bad experiences with the 3rd and 4th republic, that through the inherent instability of parliamentary system coupled with petty alliances between numerous party led to passivity during both WWII and the Algeria war, we (generally) have a profound distrust for parliamentary system.

 

The good points of the current system is that it keeps the extremes (both far left and far right) away from power and allow the ruling party to implement it's policy without too much interference.

The major drawback being that if one extreme party ever win both the presidential and the legislative election (the later generally giving a large majority to the party of the president) it will be very hard to completely stop them within the rules of the constitution.

 

But we still have ways to slow them down, as the parliament can destitute the government (not the president though) but the president can dissolve the parliament in retaliation provoking anticipated elections.

Every president that tried to do so that ended up losing his bet as the opposition won the election forcing him to take a prime minister from the opposition.

From that point the president cannot do much in terms of proposing laws but  can merely delay the application of the laws made by the opposition by delaying the signature of the application decree

 

And by that point I'm seriously off-topic^^

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I'm no expert here, but what T___A said is more or less the answer I'd give.  I'd add that it also seems like it's generally considered archaic and usually tyrannical to varying degrees.  Probably is that when people here think of monarchy, they think of how it was during the American Revolution more than how it generally is now in Europe.  However, the monarchy in the UK as it is today is seen favorably and is considered more of a cultural thing by most Americans from what I can tell. 

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If you are very curious about the topic I recommend Bernard Bailyn's Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.  T___A's account is basically accurate.

Colonial Americans (that is, Americans before the war of independence from Britain) had different political views than an average British citizen.  This was because the American colonies were used as a dumping ground for British citizens with radical political and religious views.  In the short term, this was an excellent way to get rid of people who were annoying to the government.  In the long term, it all but guaranteed the loss of the colonies.

One of the most important political questions before and after the revolution was the question of what was constitutional.  The general idea was that every free government had a constitution, and that there were certain enumerated powers bestowed on the government by that constitution.  Should a government act outside the purview of those powers, it was no longer a free government, but a tyrannical one.

At the time there was controversy over whether a constitution ought to be explicitly written or not.  It was generally agreed that the British government had a constitution, even if that constitution was not explicitly written down.  This "constitution" consisted essentially of a traditional, common-law legal framework based on legal precepts and historical precedent.  A large number of scholars at the time considered a written constitution to be a bad idea, as explicitly laying out the rules would encourage legal sophistry in order to skirt the constitution until the actual text was laughable compared to practice.  Another faction contended that the constitution would have to be written, because points of contention in an unwritten constitution would be a recipe for endless conflict and deadlock.  In retrospect, both sides were right.

Within this context, the British citizens who were for the monarchy saw the monarch as a guarantor of the constitution.  Not only in the sense that the King was supposed to be another layer of checks and balances, but in the sense that since "constitution" meant in effect continuing to govern in the way that they had been governed before, it only made sense to keep the King around.

The revolution did a lot to put more radical people in power, and as a result the USA was very anti-monarchy for some decades.  The USA was also very anti-nobility as well, in fact, there was an unratified constitutional amendment that would strip US citizenship from anyone who accepted a foreign title.  Until the early 20th century the USA was fiercely socially egalitarian, and any sort of formalized social hierarchy was seen as anathema to that republican ethos.

But Americans have basically stopped caring about any of that, and I would guess that the majority do not have strong feelings about monarchy anymore.

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2 hours ago, Alzoc said:

In France it's mostly viewed as a cultural thing.

It's part of the history of the country that still have a king, just the same way that we get rid of our, and that's about it.

Do whatever you want as long as it's democratic.

 

We still do have royalist party (mostly right to far right wing) but they are too busy fighting between each other to do something significant:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orléanist

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimists

 

Other than that the vast majority of the population is attached to the Republic.

 

Fun fact, our executive have a huge power (compared to the Legislative and Judiciary power) to the point hat our government is often described as a "republican monarchy" in France.

And you can see that in the fact that the president lives in l'Elysée which is a royal palace and that a lot of place of powers are strongly linked to the past monarchy.

We still cling a lot to the concept of the "providential man" and thus constitution of the Vth Republic give the president a huge power compared to other democracy, and we are attached to it (although there is a significant will from the far left to go toward a more parliamentary system)

 

Since we had bad experiences with the 3rd and 4th republic that through the inherent instability of parliamentary system coupled with petty alliances between numerous party led to passivity during both WWII and the Algeria war and so we (generally) have a profound distrust for parliamentary system.

 

The good points of the current system is that it keeps the extremes (both far left and far right) away from power and allow the ruling party to implement it's policy without too much interference.

The major drawback being that if one extreme party ever win both the presidential and the legislative election (the later generally giving a large majority to the party of the president) it will be very hard to completely stop them within the rules of the constitution.

 

But we still have ways to slow them down, as the parliament can destitute the government (not the president though) but the president can dissolve the parliament in retaliation provoking anticipated elections.

Every president that tried to do so that ended up losing his bet as the opposition won the election forcing him to take a prime minister from the opposition.

From that point the president cannot do much in terms of proposing laws but  can merely delay the application of the laws made by the opposition by delaying the signature of the application decree

 

And by that point I'm seriously off-topic^^

 

The French Republic is sometimes considered in the US to be a copycat of the USA, and I think that's fair to a degree. Now you just need to complete it by passing a constitutional right to arms. ;)

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I think the idea of still having a monarch, just some person who came out of the right uterus, as your head of state when it's been demonstrated that republics work fine is so absurd that it's almost comical. Baffling that the states where the monarchs have been reduced to figureheads won't finish the job. At least catch up with America circa 1776.

Edited by SergeantMatt
Finishing the thought
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The feelings of the average American citizen is that kings are a thing of the past and basically a form of tyranny.  That said, the view of the American government toward monarchies is much more nuanced.  We were perfectly fine with the French Monarchs when they were helping up win the US War of Independence.  We seem to have no problem with the Royal House of Saud these days.  We also propped up the Shah of Iran back in the day.  I'm sure there are plenty of other examples of America being fine with Monarchs as long as it aligned with our "national interest."

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15 hours ago, Walter_Sobchak said:

The feelings of the average American citizen is that kings are a thing of the past and basically a form of tyranny.  That said, the view of the American government toward monarchies is much more nuanced.  We were perfectly fine with the French Monarchs when they were helping up win the US War of Independence.  We seem to have no problem with the Royal House of Saud these days.  We also propped up the Shah of Iran back in the day.  I'm sure there are plenty of other examples of America being fine with Monarchs as long as it aligned with our "national interest."

 

That reads to me like americans don't like being told what to do by royalty, but don't really care if other people get repressed.

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(we could probably do with this as an emoticon)

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On 2/24/2018 at 10:12 PM, SergeantMatt said:

I think the idea of still having a monarch, just some person who came out of the right uterus, as your head of state when it's been demonstrated that republics work fine is so absurd that it's almost comical. Baffling that the states where the monarchs have been reduced to figureheads won't finish the job. At least catch up with America circa 1776.

Adding to this, there was a chance for an American monarchy when Washington(As in George, not the place filled with leftists or the other place filled with leftists) was setting precedent. But there have been very few figures that have been so polarizing in a universal and positive manner as him, and even then it was also because it was unsure if such a large Democratic Republic could maintain it's integrity the way the sprawling European Empire's claimed territories were.

 

With some variation of the republican model becoming the status quo for most of the world, the advancement of genetics and the knowledge of the consequences of inbreeding, an incredibly high response rate to favoring individualism in the US, and perhaps also the general secularization of the developed world, I don't think the establishment of a monarchy in a massive nation like the United States could possibly maintain effective political rule.

 

On 2/24/2018 at 1:02 PM, Xoon said:

Also a side question, a federation is a union of states, what is a union of kingdoms? A elective monarchy like the Holy Roman Empire? 

I suppose it depends on where the central authority is placed? Thinking back through the major nations in or around Europe, the things that spring to mind are:

  • Subordinate princes/states under one king. Maybe the King on the biggest throne and the Princes on lesser ones. Or something like the Roman assimilation/semi-colonization of lesser kingdoms in it's domain
  • One king with multiple hats/chairs. The Austria-Hungary after the reforms I suppose, but going so far back as Ancient Egypt with the conflicts between Upper and Lower Egypt
  • A confederation of equal authorities with an elected leader like the HRE
  • An alliance of equal authorities
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16 hours ago, Legiondude said:

I suppose it depends on where the central authority is placed? Thinking back through the major nations in or around Europe, the things that spring to mind are:

  • Subordinate princes/states under one king. Maybe the King on the biggest throne and the Princes on lesser ones. Or something like the Roman assimilation/semi-colonization of lesser kingdoms in it's domain
  • One king with multiple hats/chairs. The Austria-Hungary after the reforms I suppose, but going so far back as Ancient Egypt with the conflicts between Upper and Lower Egypt
  • A confederation of equal authorities with an elected leader like the HRE
  • An alliance of equal authorities

I was thinking about a merger between kingdoms. I guess one king or emperor could rule over them all, but that would either require the royal families to merge, or the other to be subdued, which would not really work out if the kingdoms wanted to have equal representation. 

 

I guess a elected monarchy like the HRE is the best option for fair representation of the kingdoms, of course, the downside being that the emperor has to die before a new emperor can be appointed. 

 

I have been thinking on how a Scandinavian federation would work out with the current monarchies. If the kings serves as a representative of each country, the same role as the US president, though without the extra power.  A federation would undermine this culture, so a common "king" would be the best. Just appointing one of the kings "emperor" would undermine the other royal families and cause unrest. Also, forcefully merging the royal families does not seem like a good idea. 

 

I guess a democratic elective monarchy system would work, in which the people would chose who would be "king of kings". Naturally over time, the royal families would merge to one.
Though note, this has nothing actually to do with the supposed country's political system, they would still be just symbolic.

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On ‎27‎/‎02‎/‎2018 at 10:07 PM, Xoon said:

I was thinking about a merger between kingdoms. I guess one king or emperor could rule over them all, but that would either require the royal families to merge, or the other to be subdued, which would not really work out if the kingdoms wanted to have equal representation. 

 

Historically, in this field 'Mergers' have usually been preceded by 'Hostile Takeover Bids'.....'Mergers' are subsequently offered up as a form of pacification in the newly acquired holdings.

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2 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

 

Historically, in this field 'Mergers' have usually been preceded by 'Hostile Takeover Bids'.....'Mergers' are subsequently offered up as a form of pacification in the newly acquired holdings.

A democratic elective monarchy seems like the best idea then. 

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46 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Personally I'm looking forward to being able to sit back and let the machines run things.....Monkeys are just too tribal for anything more serious than sport (& they even try to f**k that up with drugs & politics).

 

I think the machines would probably fuck it up even worse at first, and then public response would be so negative we'd never achieve a glorious AI-curated pony paradise.

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