Monarchism

Part of a series of articles on
Monarchy
Central concepts Monarch Monarchism Divine right of kings Mandate of Heaven
Types Absolute Composite Constitutional Diarchy Dual Elective Emirate Ethnarch Federal Hereditary Legalist (Chinese) Non-sovereign Popular Regency Tetrarch Universal
History Birth of the Roman Empire Magna Carta Foundation of the Ottoman Empire Glorious Revolution French Revolution Trienio Liberal First French Empire Liberal Wars Second French Empire Italian unification Meiji Restoration Austro-Hungarian Compromise German unification 5 October 1910 Revolution Proclamation of the Republic in Brazil Xinhai Revolution Russian Revolution Siamese revolution of 1932 Birth of the Italian Republic Spanish transition to democracy Iranian Revolution Modern Cambodia Nepalese Civil War
Related topics Aristocracy Nobility Autocracy Crowned republic Conservatism Thomas Hobbes Legitimists Orléanist Oligarchy Philosopher king Primogeniture Royalism Regicide Regnal number Royal family Style (manner of address) Ultra-royalist
Politics portal
v t e

Part of the Politics series on
Toryism
Characteristics Monarchism Traditionalism High Church Anglicanism Traditional Catholicism Loyalism Royalism Interventionism Agrarianism/Self-sufficiency Counterrevolution Classicism High culture Noblesse oblige Organic unity Unionism
General topics Cavaliers Cavalier Parliament Château Clique Jacobitism Divine right of kings Corporatism Family Compact Oxford Movement Powellism
People Robert Filmer 1st Earl of Clarendon Roger L'Estrange 1st Earl of Rochester 1st Viscount Bolingbroke 3rd Earl of Bute 1st Duke of Wellington Walter Scott Stanley Baldwin G. K. Chesterton Winston Churchill Enoch Powell George Grant
Related topics Conservatism Distributists Miguelism Vendéens Chouans Legitimism Carlism Sanfedismo Viva Maria Cristeros Reactionary High Tory Red Tory Loyalism Royalism Veronese Easter Tory corporatism Tory socialism Pink Tory Ultra-Tories
v t e

Part of the Politics series
Basic forms of government
Power structure
Separation Associated state Dominion Chiefdom Federalism Federation Confederation Devolution Integration Empire Hegemony Unitary state Administrative division
Power source
Democracy power of many Direct Representative Liberal Social Demarchy Others Oligarchy power of few Anocracy Aristocracy Plutocracy Kleptocracy Kakistocracy Kraterocracy Stratocracy Synarchy Timocracy Meritocracy Technocracy Geniocracy Gerontocracy Noocracy Kritarchy Particracy Ergatocracy Netocracy Capitalist state Socialist state Theocracy Autocracy power of one Despotism Dictatorship Military dictatorship Anarchism power of none Anarchy Free association Stateless
Power ideology
Monarchy vs. republic socio-political ideologies Absolute Legalist Constitutional Parliamentary Directorial Semi-presidential Presidential Authoritarian vs. libertarian socio-economic ideologies Tribalism Despotism Feudalism Colonialism Distributism Anarchism Socialism Communism Totalitarianism Global vs. local geo-cultural ideologies Commune City-state National government Intergovernmental organisation World government
Politics portal
v t e

Monarchism is the advocacy of a monarch or monarchical rule.^[1] A monarchist is an individual who supports this form of government, independent of any specific monarch; one who espouses a particular monarch is a royalist. Conversely, the opposition to monarchical rule is sometimes referred to as republicanism.

Depending on the country, a monarchist may advocate for the rule of the person who sits on the throne, a pretender, or someone who would otherwise occupy the throne but has been deposed.

History[edit]

Monarchical rule is among the oldest political institutions.^[2] Monarchy has often claimed legitimacy from a higher power (in early modern Europe the divine right of kings, and in China the Mandate of Heaven).

In England, royalty ceded power elsewhere in a gradual process. In 1215, a group of nobles forced King John to sign the Magna Carta, which guaranteed its barons certain liberties and established that the king's powers were not absolute. In 1687-88, the Glorious Revolution and the overthrow of King James II established the principles of constitutional monarchy, which would later be worked out by Locke and other thinkers. However, absolute monarchy, justified by Hobbes in Leviathan (1651), remained a prominent principle elsewhere. In the 18th century, Voltaire and others encouraged "enlightened absolutism", which was embraced by the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II and by Catherine II of Russia.

In the late 18th century, the American Revolution and the French Revolution were both additional steps in the weakening of power of European monarchies. Each in its different way exemplified the concept of popular sovereignty upheld by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 1848 then ushered in a wave of revolutions against the continental European monarchies.

World War I and its aftermath saw the end of three major European monarchies: the Russian Romanov dynasty, the German Hohenzollern dynasty, including all other German monarchies and the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg dynasty.

The rise of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919 provoked an increase in support for monarchism; however, efforts by Hungarian monarchists failed to bring back a royal head of state, and the monarchists settled for a regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy, to represent the monarchy until it could be restored. Horthy was regent from 1920 to 1944. In similar wise the 1938 autocratic state of Franco in Spain claimed to have reconstituted the Spanish monarchy in absentia (and in this case ultimately yielded to a restoration, in the person of King Juan Carlos). In 1920s Germany a number of monarchists gathered around the German National People's Party which demanded the return of the Hohenzollern monarchy and an end to the Weimar Republic; the party retained a large base of support until the rise of Nazism in the 1930s.

With the arrival of socialism in Eastern Europe by the end of 1947, the remaining Eastern European monarchies, namely the Kingdom of Romania, the Kingdom of Hungary, the Kingdom of Albania, the Kingdom of Bulgaria and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, were all abolished and replaced by socialist republics.

The aftermath of World War II also saw the return of monarchist and republican rivalry in Italy, where a referendum was held on whether the state should remain a monarchy or become a republic. The republican side won the vote by a narrow margin, and the modern Republic of Italy was created.

Monarchism as a political force internationally has substantially diminished since the end of the Second World War, though it had an important role in the 1979 Iranian Revolution and also played a role in the modern political affairs of Nepal. Nepal was one of the last states to have had an absolute monarch, which continued until King Gyanendra was peacefully deposed in May 2008 and the country became a federal republic. One of the world's oldest monarchies was abolished in Ethiopia in 1974 with the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie.

Current monarchies[edit]

The majority of current monarchies are constitutional monarchies. In most of these, the monarch wields only symbolic power, although in some, the monarch does play a role in political affairs. In Thailand, for instance, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who reigned from 1946 to 2016, played a critical role in the nation's political agenda and in various military coups. Similarly, in Morocco, King Mohammed VI wields significant, but not absolute power.

Liechtenstein is a democratic principality whose citizens have voluntarily given more power to their monarch in recent years.

There remain a handful of countries in which the monarch is the true ruler. The majority of these countries are oil-producing Arab Islamic monarchies like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. Other strong monarchies include Brunei and Swaziland.

Justifications for monarchism[edit]

Absolute monarchy stands as an opposition to anarchism and, additionally from the Age of Enlightenment, liberalism, and communism.

Otto von Habsburg advocated a form of constitutional monarchy based on the primacy of the supreme judicial function, with hereditary succession, mediation by a tribunal is warranted if suitability is problematic.^[3][4]

Nonpartisan head of state[edit]

A monarchy has been justified on the grounds that it provides for a nonpartisan head of state, separate from the head of government, and thus ensures that the highest representative of the country, at home and internationally, does not represent a particular political party, but all people.^[5]

Safeguard for liberty[edit]

The International Monarchist League, founded in 1943, has always sought to promote monarchy on the grounds that it strengthens popular liberty, both in a democracy and in a dictatorship, because by definition the monarch is not beholden to politicians.

British-American libertarian writer Matthew Feeney, on the occasion of the birth of Prince George of Cambridge, the likely future king of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Commonwealth Realms, in 2013, wrote:^[6]

“

In the last hundred years many European nations have experienced fascism, communism, and military dictatorships. However, countries with constitutional monarchies have managed for the most part to avoid extreme politics in part because monarchies provide a check on the wills of populist politicians. European monarchies--such as the Danish, Belgian, Swedish, Dutch, Norwegian, and British--have ruled over countries that are among the most stable, prosperous, and free in the world. Constitutional monarchs make it difficult for dramatic political changes to occur, oftentimes by representing traditions and customs that politicians cannot replace and few citizens would like to see overthrown.

”

Connection to the past[edit]

Since the middle of the 19th century, some monarchists have stopped defending monarchy on the basis of abstract, universal principles applicable to all nations or even on the grounds that a monarchy would be the best or most practical government for the nation in question but prefer invoking local symbolic grounds that they would be a particular nation's link to the past.

Hence, post-19th century debates on whether to preserve a monarchy or to adopt a republican form of government have often been debates over national identity, with the monarch generally serving as a symbol for other issues.

For example, in countries like Belgium and the Netherlands anti-monarchist talk is often centered on the perceived symbolism of a monarch contrasting with those nation's political culture of egalitarianism. In Belgium, another factor are the anti-Belgian sentiments of the separatist Flemish movement. The latter see the monarchy as a predominantly francophone institution of which the historical roots lie in the French-speaking elite that ruled Belgium until circa 1950s.

In Canada and Australia, by contrast, debates over monarchy represent or represented debates whose driving force concerned each nation's relationship with the United Kingdom and the cultural heritage that this relationship represents.

Human desire for hierarchy[edit]

In a 1943 essay in The Spectator, "Equality", British author C.S. Lewis criticized egalitarianism, and its corresponding call for the abolition of monarchy, as contrary to human nature, writing, "Where men are forbidden to honour a king they honour millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison."^[7]

Support for the restoration of monarchy[edit]

This is a list of countries showing support for the restoration of a previously abolished monarchy.

Rank	Country	Supporters	% of country population	Source
1	Romania	4,123,980	37%	[8]
2	Albania	1,389,275	33%	[9]
3	Russia	31,781,959	28%	[10]
4	Hawaii	355,123	25%	[11]
5	Austria	1,754,600	20%	[12]
6	Germany	15,646,310	19%	[13]
7	France	11,053,890	17%	[14]
8	Italy	12,000,000	15%	[15]
9	Portugal	1,546,435	15%	[16]
10	Greece	1,342,046	14%	[17]
11	Brazil	31,236,957	13%	[18]
12	Czech Republic	1,379,423	13%	[19]
13	Mexico	6,500,000	5%	[20]

Monarchists[edit]

American[edit]

• Charles A. Coulombe (born 1960)

Australian[edit]

• Dame Joan Sutherland (1926–2010)^[21]
• Tony Abbott (born 1957)^[22]
• Russell Crowe (born 1964)^[23]

Austrian[edit]

Brazilian[edit]

British[edit]

Canadian[edit]

Croatian[edit]

Czech[edit]

• Adolf Born (1930-2016)
• Miroslav Štěpánek (1923-2005)

Fiji[edit]

Georgian[edit]

• Ilia II, Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia (born 1933)
• Salome Zourabichvili (born 1952)

German[edit]

Greek[edit]

Hungarian[edit]

• József Mindszenty (1892–1975)
• István Bethlen (1874–1946)
• Albert Apponyi (1846–1933)
• Gyula Cseszneky (1914–?)
• Margit Slachta (1884–1974)

Japan[edit]

• Yoshiko Sakurai (born 1945)
• Yukio Mishima (1925-1970)

Malaysia[edit]

• Onn Jaafar (1895-1962)

Mauritius[edit]

• Navin Ramgoolam (born 1947)

Polish[edit]

Portuguese[edit]

Russian[edit]

• Anton Bakov (born 1965)
• Nikolai Tolstoy (born 1935)
• Natalia Poklonskaya (born 1980)
• Vladimir Zhirinovsky (born 1946)

Turkish[edit]

• Nazım Kıbrısî (1922-2014)
• Abdülkerim Kıbrısî (1957-2012)
• Kadir Mısıroğlu (born 1933)

Yugoslav[edit]

• Dimitrije Ljotić (1891-1945)
• Draža Mihajlović (1893-1946)

See also[edit]

• Abolished monarchy
• Dark Enlightenment
• Legitimists
• List of kingdoms and royal dynasties
• Neoreactionary movement
• Reactionary modernism
• Royalism

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• The Monarchist League
• IMC, official site of the International Monarchist Conference.
• SYLM, Support Your Local Monarch, the independent monarchist community.