Is a monarchy good for democracy?

[primavera]

I've been thinking about the UK's constitutional monarchy and the role played by the royal family and their system of knighthoods and OBEs and such. From the outside looking it, it looks rather like the constitutionally constrained monarchy gets to stay more or less aloof from the mosh pit of day to day politics and has at least the potential to act as a sort of moral beacon. Separated from the day to day power struggles, a monarch can simply stand for what they believe is right, and inspire others to follow an example that is more ethical than necessarily pragmatic. Likewise, OBEs give successful members of society a goal to strive for that isn't just about the acquisition of wealth, but again, reflects one's moral stature in society. It occurs to me that perhaps that's an important part of what's missing in our political system: there is no voice of conscience or device for encouraging and rewarding moral conduct. We have no visible spokesperson who encourages us to do the right thing and there is no formal recognition for doing so - the only things that matter in our country are power and money. Since power flows from money, well, it's really ultimately just about the money with us. I wonder if, ironically, our democracy wouldn't be healthier if we had retained some of those monarchical aspects of the UK system when we forged our nation, or, in the alternative, at least established separate offices for a president and prime minister to allow at least one public official to champion the moral integrity that the power players in the trenches cannot afford.

I know, I know, this is all totally academic and irrelevant, but as a former poli sci student, I just find questions of political structures and institutions interesting. Anyone have any thoughts they'd care to share?

[JackRiddler]

1. I'm sorry, is this really an empirical view?

From the outside looking it, it looks rather like the constitutionally constrained monarchy gets to stay more or less aloof from the mosh pit of day to day politics and has at least the potential to act as a sort of moral beacon. Separated from the day to day power struggles, a monarch can simply stand for what they believe is right, and inspire others to follow an example that is more ethical than necessarily pragmatic.

Are you really looking in, or are you devising an ideal unrelated to reality? When do you see this potential, if that even exists, put to any use in Britain? Are we talking about the same family?

.

[MichaelMcGuire]

2. Pro's and Con's

Personally I think republics are head of the curve
The UK needs major reform
House of Lords being one
Can't be right that someone can effect policy having not been voted in by the public

[Glorfindel]

6. The United States Senate is maybe less democratic than the House of Lords

True, they are elected, but the 500,000 people of Wyoming have two US senators; so do the 40,000,000 people of California.

[MichaelMcGuire]

8. House of Lords

The process of having a second chamber has its points
But many of these ex-MPs now lords having lost their seat
effecting policy.


Think of a retirement home for politicians you thought you got rid off

Here Lord Wallace of tankerness

Interfering and losing badly

[jakeXT]

3. MSM vs D-Notice, Wall Street vs City of London, veto power by Prince Charles?

Prince Charles has been offered a veto over 12 government bills since 2005

Ministers sought prince's consent under secretive constitutional loophole on bills covering issues from gambling to the Olympics

Ministers have been forced to seek permission from Prince Charles to pass at least a dozen government bills, according to a Guardian investigation into a secretive constitutional loophole that gives him the right to veto legislation that might affect his private interests.
http://m.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/30/prince-charles-offered-veto-legislation?cat=uk&type=article

[jwirr]

13. Hmmm, why Prince Charles, Elizabeth is the ruling Monarch.

[Glorfindel]

4. I think it's a good idea to separate the functions of chief of state and head of government

A monarchy wouldn't be required. A president who was not also the prime minister would be just fine for giving speeches and dedicating bridges and highways. And let's face it: The President of the US giving out Kennedy Center Honors is just not the same as the King of Sweden presenting Nobel Prizes.

[TheMastersNemesis]

5. Only A Symbol

The UK monarchy is really only just a symbol with little real power. They are a nice ornament to Britain for tourisms sake. They ended up practicing the same kind of "tinkle down" economics that we have been pursuing for over 30 years now. The biggest difference is that they started in a better place with health care and social services. Now Cameron and the conservatives (Tories ie US Republicans are pushing austerity because of debt they caused in the first place.

I see no advantage with monarchy in any form. In a way we have an unofficial monarchy. The billionaires and millionaires are like the monarchs and nobles except they do not have a title. Citizens United was a coup by the rich. It may have taken 30 years to create their form of "economic" monarchy, but they seem to have it now.

The gated communities they live in are the modern day castles that the "new rich aristocracy" inhabit. The 99% are outside of that castle. The rest of us are just peasants. Romney would be King Romney I if he is elected.

[TheMastersNemesis]

7. Addendum To My Reply

One added thing. We have a House of Lords and a House of Commons. They are called the House of Representatives and the Senate. They are the same thing except we have a Republic and they have Parliament.

We could just as easily call the House the House of Nobles. And we could call the Senate the House of Princes or Lords by the way they act.

We have an Aristocracy Of The Rich and we might as well admit it. As I said the 1% are in their modern day castles. The rest ofus are in the countryside economically meant to ONLY SERVE THEIR NEEDS. Think about it the GOP is about establishing a form of monarchy of their choosing.

I would not be surprised if they came out with a dictum of "the divine right to rule" like in medieval Europe.

[primavera]

14. The difference is...

... in the UK, they call the aristocracy what it is, i.e., an aristocracy. Here, we operate under this incredibly misguided illusion that our own aristocracy are just ordinary Americans, just like the rest of us. I dunno, in a way, it might be better to have the aristocracy out in the open where everyone knows them for what they are and knows that they shouldn't be given any huge amount of legislative power. Here, the aristocracy owns us just as surely as any feudal lord ever owned a serf, yet we think it's just democracy and the free market.

[TheMastersNemesis]

16. Correct

That is exactly correct. And that is the problem. We do not call them aristocracy, but that is what they are. Just go to any fancy country club and see how the "help" is created. I worked for a country club briefly in 1964 until I threw my should out of socket. It was a blessing. It was humiliating because when we came to work we had to go into the back door. It was really clear how a black would feel. I was white but it was all about the money. Your unofficial title was about how much money you had even back then.

And in all actuality what we have in this country is more insidious.

[jody]

9. Alexander Hamilton had similar ideas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton#Constitution_and_Federalist_Papers

Early in the Convention he made a speech proposing a President-for-Life; it had no effect upon the deliberations of the convention. He proposed to have an elected President and elected Senators who would serve for life, contingent upon "good behavior" and subject to removal for corruption or abuse; this idea contributed later to the hostile view of Hamilton as a monarchist sympathizer, held by James Madison. During the convention, Hamilton constructed a draft for the Constitution based on the convention debates, but he never presented it. This draft had most of the features of the actual Constitution, including such details as the three-fifths clause. In this draft, the Senate was to be elected in proportion to the population, being two-fifths the size of the House, and the President and Senators were to be elected through complex multistage elections, in which chosen electors would elect smaller bodies of electors; they would hold office for life, but were removable for misconduct. The President would have an absolute veto. The Supreme Court was to have immediate jurisdiction over all law suits involving the United States, and state governors were to be appointed by the federal government

[waddirum]

10. Fook that Shyte

Cut their heads off!

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Fairly neutral, I'd say

If you look at the countries that consistently do best in the tables drawn up by Amnesty, RSF and so on, they tend to be:
Monarchies:
Norway
Sweden
Netherlands
Denmark

Republics:
Finland
Iceland

Possibly a hands-off monarchy is the thing to have; Canada, Australia and New Zealand tend to do a bit better than the UK, despite having the same nominal monarchy; but I don't think they were running government bill past Prince Charles, as mentioned above. The UK normally comes out in the same area as similarly sized European republics - Germany, France, Italy. Or it may be that smaller population sizes help, and that's why those listed above do better than the 'big 4' European countries.

As for the OBE, knighthood etc. system - you can have that without a monarchy (the US has Congressional Medals of Honor etc., France the Legion d'Honeur). Very few of them are actually decided on by the royals (there are one or two special classes for people in the Royal Household). Britain has more grades of awards than most, I think; I think it is a good idea, overall - a community does feel some pride when a head teacher gets an OBE for 20 years' outstanding work, or whatever it is.

The most contentious part of the awards system is peerages, of course, because that (currently) puts them in the House of Lords, able to legislate. In theory, we will soon have a nearly-all-elected House of Lords, but the laws to implement it just seem to get delayed. They've got rid of almost all the hereditary ones now, which is good; they still have the seats for Church of England bishops, which is bad (and I think the current proposals for electing Lords are going to leave them in, incredibly). In the life peers, ie those awarded a peerage in the honours system, you can get a few specialists that it's good to have in there to be authoritative in discussions (eg Robert Winston, pioneering fertility physician). But too many are retired politicians or businessmen (who typically were donors to the Tories or Labour). I want it to become all-elected, with maybe a few spaces for co-opted specialists.

[primavera]

15. Thanks, muriel!

I agree completely that the key is having a hands-off monarchy - if they actually tried to rule the country, well, then you'd just have autocracy, and that's not at all what I'm interested in. Thanks for reminding that the awards system can lead to peerages and ultimately the ability to legislate. Again, I like the idea of having an system of awards that is more oriented towards virtue, but that doesn't necessarily mean I think recipients should become unelected legislators. If they want to run for office like anyone else and their credential gives them a leg up on competing candidates, that's great, but you still need to have an electoral mandate to have legitimacy in a democracy.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

12. No-one suggests it's unpatriotic to criticise the prime minister.

One of the things that convinced me that our constitutional monarchy was a good thing was watching Republicans claiming that it was unpatriotic to be rude about George W Bush, because even if you didn't respect him you had a duty to respect the office of president.

I think that separating the jobs of "head of state who serves as a symbol of the nation and a focus of patriotism" and "person who actually runs the country and makes the decisions" works very well indeed.

And if you want to ensure that the former wields no actual power and no-one will suggest that you could, making the position hereditary is an even better way of depriving it of any kind of mandate than having it chosen by lottery.

Who the monarch actually is doesn't matter much - the majority of Britains, including me, and also including most republicans (small-r) have considerable respect for our current monarch, and that works fine; nearly everyone things that the next in line to the throne is a fat-headed idiot who talks to plants, and that will probably work fine. Their important duty is to be the person who employs the prime minister, so that it's clear that the country is being run by a glorified civil servant, and there's nothing unpatriotic about being rude about them.

[primavera]

17. Good point

I think you're right that the key thing is separation of the differing roles played by heads of state versus leaders of government. That effect could be accomplished without recourse to a monarch, of course, simply by separating out the prime minister's and the president's offices. For instance, I thought Vaclav Havel made a hell of a president of the Czech Republic, even though he would have made a lousy prime minister. He had the ability to explore bigger, more philosophical questions and the popularity and moral authority to persuade people to do the right thing. On the flip side, Vaclav Klaus was able to be the shark in the bloody political waters and do what it took to get laws passed. I think both roles are crucial, but I'm tempted to suspect that they cannot be combined in a single office.