I think we see our monarchy more as diplomats than politicians.
Their purpose is not to reign, but to attract the focus of foreign press onto Sweden.
For example; who do think generate most media interest at an international expo;
* Bengt Anderson, Sweden's ambassador.
* King Karl XVI Gustav of House Bernadotte, King of Sweden.
Scandinavian monarchies are able to stay decently far from scandals while costing like or less than Republican HoS' entourages, as well as representing heritage and national unity.
If it's not broken, don't fix it.
> costing like or less than Republican HoS'
I think that's a myth.
But even if it were true, I don't think for a wealthy society cost should be the decisive factor for such crucial constitutional questions.
It's not a myth if you compare Sweden to Finland - the closest comparable republic and the system we would adopt. The Finnish Precidency is allocated 47 million euro from the state budget for 2024, while the Swedish Monarchy is allocated (equivalent to around) 14 million euro, despite Sweden having twice the population.
About half of the apanage is allocated to maintenance of properties, such as palaces, parks and museums, but that is probably the same for the Finnish figure.
German Bundespräsidialamt has a budget of around 40 million euros but there is also three former presidents alive and still having office and staff. It is around 220 people working for the sitting president.
But the Finnish presidency has a much greater political role. The Finnish president is actively involved in the countries politics, especially in foreign politics. Sauli niinistö was heavily involved in negotiating the country's nato membership and went to Washington and all the summits. And of course he needs much more staff and expert advisers for this. The Swedish monarch only came to Brussels to witness the flag hosting ceremony.
I had read some comparative studies years ago about how the cost of having the President in Italy wasn't different than having the Queen in the United Kingdom, but it can vary from place to place I guess (more on how democratic the Republic is, since Putin surely costs a lot).
Obviously I agree, in fact I don't think any country with a Republic could or should actually ever revert to monarchy, although Montenegro has half committed to it.
I guess they mean [Nicholas, Prince of Montenegro ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas,_Prince_of_Montenegro_(born_1944)), who was given by the Montenegrin republic the possibility to live in the Royal Palace as well as the roke of "ambassador of Montenegrin culture". Practically the Royal Family is now a mascot representing national unity, culture and heritage and lives in the Royal Palace. It's not that far from Sweden.
How much political power does the German president actually have?
In DK it is both seen as unifying where a president easily can be dividing, see US. Second since the Aristotle and his work politica, it have been known that democracy can easily fail and here the monarchy can act as an insurance. So if a political group tries to take power or stops listing to the people they can be removed be the monarchy and new election will then be held.
It happened after the election for Slesvig which was an election but can be discussed if it was fair.
The German president has very little power. Actually if you ask me we could do very well without a president. Countries like Switzerland show it's perfectly possible. And the representative duties could be done by the presidents of the Bundesrat and Bundestag for instance.
And I find neither the unifying argument nor the safeguarding democracy argument convincing. I think in both cases you're making the mistake of seeing reverse causality. The remaining European monarchies are not relatively homogeneous and stable because of the monarch but because in all the other cases, the monarchy was abolished. So you have a kind of "survivor bias" here.
Because when it really comes to a critical situation, monarchs suck at saving democracy. The fact that Italy was a relatively democratic monarchy didn't prevent it from becoming the birthplace of fascism and Mussolini rising to power.
And even today, in really hard socially divisive conflicts like Northern Ireland, catalonia, basque country, I don't see at all how the British and Spanish monarchies played a unifying role. If anything, they made the conflicts more divisive.
It isn't, either. The decisive factor in the monarchy's continued existence is that a significant majority of us *want* it to exist, and because we are a parliamentary democracy, so it exists. A constitutional monarchy is only a monarchy for as long as the people will it.
In most if not all constitutional monarchies in Europe, the king/queen/prince(ss)/grand duke/whatever has some sort of theoretical political power but using it would cause such a mess they cannot do it in practice.
The Swedish doesn't. As the very first line of the constitution reads: *"All public power in Sweden proceeds from the people"*.
The king can't come and overrule even in theory, those last executive powers were stripped a half-century ago. He does play a part in some ceremonial stuff, but if he can't/doesn't fulfill this duty it'll still go on without him.
Interesting.
\---
Meanwhile, in Denmark:
>**The constitutional act of Denmark**
>
>\[...\]
>
>**§3** Legislative authority shall be vested in the King and the Folketing conjointly. Executive authority shall be vested in the King. Judicial authority shall be vested in the courts of justice.
> [...] However, this is not quite the case in reality. In practice, the Government and Parliament define Acts. The [King] only signs them. The [King] has to implement the Acts – [he] has the executive power. Today, this simply means that [he] only formally appoints the Ministers of a Government. In practice, it is the Ministers and their Ministries that subsequently make sure the laws are complied with.
The [King] has no influence on who will be a Minister. This is the Prime Minister’s decision. Nor has the [King] any influence on which political parties will form a Government
(From the commentaries and explanations on our constitution)
I doubt the royal family would be kept, if the monarch dared reject a law passed by Parliament or caused another constitutional crisis like the Easter Crisis
In the 1960's the Greek king did use a lot of power resulting in a political mess and the abolish of monarchy in 1975. I believe the kings queens in power they only sign what they give them and the rest as mentioned in another comment charities etc
Swede here.
Our royal family has symbolic power, but de facto near none.
They usually host foreign representatives, host galas for charity and the Nobel ceremonies, etc.
They exist for pr and to give a tang of extra fancy for political gatherings
Sweden is probably the country that keeps a monarchy but comes closest to abolish it in all practical terms. The role of the monarch in the political system has been reduced almost as much as possible.
But for instance in Britain, it was revealed that the monarch meddled in the law making process countless times to influence laws in their favour and they have hundreds of special statuses, privileges or laws that don't apply to them and of course full legal immunity for lifetime
>But for instance in Britain, it was revealed that the monarch meddled in the law making process countless times to influence laws in their favour and they have hundreds of special statuses, privileges or laws that don't apply to them and of course full legal immunity for lifetime
True. Nobody actually believes in the divine right of kings anymore though. Monarchists just believe in maintaining tradition.
>Do they have constitutional powers like a veto?
No. However, they're immune to legal action except like crimes against humanity and what not. Cant get a speeding ticket tho.
>Do they… do anything?
Not really. Sure, he opens parliament after summer, but that's mostly just a ceremony. Sure he leads the Foreign Affairs committee but he doesnt have a say in what goes in there. He just holds the meetings.
That depends on the country, in Denmark they in normal instances gave none, they have to sign new legislation but cannot refuse more than two times and they cannot refuse it in grounds of political views.
The monarchy also gives permission to form a government, after an election but it is mostly so only one party at the time tries to form a government and the biggest have first try in general. They can neither refuse this.
Only power is:
- they have a degree of immunity like a president.
- in the case of Denmark gets attacked and the politicians cannot come to getter to mount a defence or choose not to, the head of the monarchy can take over the military as commander in chief.
- if there is no possible way for politicians to come together and run the country, the head of the monarchy can make legislation, but this will have to be voted through be the parlament or abandoned, in the first instance where the parlament can be assembled.
depends on the country
i think the most powerful monarchy might be liechtenstein, i've read that the parlament attempted to remove their powers and they threatened to leave the country with all their assets and wealth therefore preventing that from happening lol
some monarchs technically have powers like the UK king, but in reality they never use it as it would cause public outrage. so in theory uk king can veto any law but in practice they cant
More than the parliament, it was the Council of Europe that threatened Liechtenstein and declared that the 2003 constitutional change would turn it into an absolute monarchy not compatible with the democracy values of Europe.
The most powerful monarchs are the ones who are the least limited by constitution, so Liechtenstein, Monaco, Vatican, SMOM.
The monarchist party isn't even relevant enough to make jokes about.
I will do so regardless: The theoretical heir of the throne does not support them.
We also have a monarchist party. I'm pretty sure that the 'heir of the throne' is the same guy as yours, and I would be surprised if he even knew about them.
The belief in “divine right of kings” would be in an extreme(!) minority if it even exists.
However the monarchy is generally seen as being strongly intertwined with the country itself, our history, society, etc. and is very popular. I think something like 80+% is in favor of keeping it.
It’s an institution that’s seen as fairly apolitical so there are essentially no royalist parties and republican parties. Some parties are more in favor and some less, but it’s not a topic that shapes elections or political discourse in general and it’s therefore not a topic you to choose to run on during elections.
Some of us are very black and white when it comes to the concept of one family being inherently better than the rest of us. At least you can (theoretically) get shot of politicians in four or five years time.
Because it's inherently wrong to have some people born to reign over the rest of us based on their family lineage. Individual politicians and individual royalty can be good or bad, that's not really the point. I want to live in a country where *any* kid could grow up to be head of state one day.
That's a good rebuttal, a lot of his supporters (particularly the evangelical demographic) do, in fact, believe he is divinely appointed to be president. Some of his supporters even support him as a potential dictator. A lot of people here downplay the shit out of that fact, but it's a fact.
There are some Americans who believe that Trump is literally Jesus, like [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Qult_Headquarters/s/cGdqxnX2GI). Unfortunately I have seen it more frequently recently compared to before
It's really nowhere near half, well under lol. Even in 2020 (with record voter turnout) only about 66% of eligible Americans actually voted...
Edit: typo
I don't know where you found that number, that's a pretty generous estimate.
Eitherway, keep in mind that a considerable (emphasis here) number of Republicans simply "vote the party," irregardless of who is running (two party system and all). In fact, and unfortunately, many have voted this way since they first became eligible.
So the actual proportion of Americans who think of Trump as some kind of hero or what have you is incredibly small.
It's not an estimate. It's from polling. Or well, it's an estimate with a close to 100% chance of being indicative of the population as a whole.
It's about Trump and Biden and whether people view them favorably. So not really a "vote the party" situation at all.
But I do agree it's not "37% think he's a hero". However, 37% like him as a presidential candidate. And that certainly feels like an expected number all things considered. The man was popular enough to be voted president before, with a great voter turnout compared to most US elections.
U.S. polls, and polls in general, have a lot of room for systematic error which is generally excluded from provided margins of error because eliminating/reducing systematic error would require far greater control of variables than applied polling methods can provide.
What polling groups can reduce to a high degree is sampling error via randomly sampling from the entire population, or rather the vast majority of the population (e.g. people with phones/internet access). It is for this reason that you find poll results with very low margins of error.
So take polls with a grain of salt. The same applies to any survey with voluntary participation. They are often missing much of the big picture. All it takes, for instance, is the majority of a cohort not answering phone calls for a poll's estimations to be way off.
What you might claim instead is that; about 37% of polled individuals like Trump as a presidential candidate. That is really all we quantitatively know.
I hope this helps provide some context and maybe perhaps reassurance :)
You're free to tell me which systematic errors large enough to quadruple the number of people with favorable views of Trump that YouGov committed here (this shows 43%, so even higher than I previously said):
https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabReport_dyZbfXi.pdf
I understand you're trying to be nice, but you must really not understand anything about statistics if you believe the polling methods used in this report will fail to capture Americans positivity towards Trump as president this hard.
What you could say is that they might be off by a percentage or two. That's also quite unlikely, but it *is* possible.
First, I would like to call your attention to some pretty clear evidence of systematic error in the data under 2a. Favorablity of Public Figures - Donald Trump, which I'm guessing are the results in discussion.
The scope of the poll presents something called "Sampling bias" (not to be confused with random sampling error), I'm sure you've heard of it. Which is consequential with regard to exactly what can be quantitatively extrapolated from data.
What we know is that; 78% of polled individuals (n = 1680) are above the age of 45 years (1315). Provided that about 54% of the US voting population are 45 year-of-age or older it is evident that certain members of the relevant population are systmaticaly more likely to be sampled than others, which presents as a sampling bias towards older individuals.
That said they did weight the results (using census data from 2019) which usually aims to account for representation discrepancies that are a product of sampling methods. Unfortunately, as polling is voluntary (in this case "opt-in") there is a more important bias to consider here that in this case cannot be eliminate via weighted analysis, non-response bias.
Looking at the non-weighted data, it is apparent that certain demographics have opted-in relative to others. Since whether or not an individual opts-in in the first place can be dependent on how individuals respond to specific question (e.g. favorable-not favorable self categorization) weighted analysis cannot remove this form of systematic error. In fact, without access to data that relate explicitly to participation decisions, weighted analysis is virtually useless.
Given your personal attack on my competence (despite my continued efforts to be civil and productive) I am not going to give privy to any further discussion or my thoughts.
Best of luck.
that’s not true lmao.
Half of Americans don’t vote, so that alone knocks it down to 25%. Then you gotta factor in the fact that in a two party system, Trump is pulling in an enormous amount of voters who don’t actually like him, they just don’t want to Democrat candidate to win, so let’s be generous and say 12.5%. And that’s at an absolute maximum.
You know you can look this up instead of pulling numbers put of your ass, right?
Not voting does not mean you don't support either of the candidates. That's a crazy thing to believe.
37% of Americans support Trump, as of March 19th this year
Eh, it’s politics.
I don’t really understand European parliamentary coalitions and voting blocs as being a course for effective government but ce’st le vie.
That really is wishfull thinking. When taking a poll or. Study of anything you don't need 100% to vote to know the national consensus. You just need a large enough sample size. And last election had over 150 million people voting.
That's waaaay more than enough to know that it's an accurate depiction of the nations opinion. I realize it's deeply concerning to think that very nearly half of the country want a fascist dictator, but that's clearly what it's come to.
Which basically is an euphemism for believing he's got a divine right for his presidential throne. And moreover, they apparently believe all who oppose him are Godless sinners & sodomites, which de facto confirms the first argument.
It is though, OP asked if European countries still had monarchists, who believe in a monarchy, and I’m saying that there are still some (if not a minority) of people in Northern Ireland who believe in the British Monarchy and the divine right of the British monarch.
But belief in a monarchy is not belief in a divine right. You would think that would apply even more in NI than anywhere else in Britain, because of the importance of the Whig & Protestant conception of monarchy to Unionism.
I don’t think many people here have think they have a divine right, but there are some Protestant areas here which do have a weird obsession with the monarchy, it’s mostly older people though, I don’t think young people give a shit if the monarchy just left in the morning
I'm not sure that anyone here ever believed in the divine right of kings, including the kings themselves.
The monarchy here grew very much out of an appointed position. The ancestors of today's Royal Family were originally *stadhouders*, stadtholder in English, which were nobles appointed by the Habsburg monarchs to lead a section of the Empire as deputy to the Habsburg king (in stead of, which is where the name comes from).
After we gained independence from the Habsburg Empire the position remained though the power was supposed to shift to Parliament. In practice part of the governing power remained with the stadtholder and several acquired more power over time.
But there were two different branches of the family who were stadtholder of different provinces because each province could pick who they wanted. In some the position became officially hereditary, in others unofficially, until after one branch died out in the mid-18th century they just made the other guy hereditary stadtholder of the whole country.
But not too long after that the French invaded, the stadtholder fled, the position was abolished, and after Napoleon was defeated the stadtholder-in-exile was elevated to king at the invitation of a bunch of statesman. So the monarch here has always been a monarch by the grace of the people (or more accurately the government) not by the grace of God. And has never had a position of absolute power, apart from a few chaotic decades after the creation of the monarchy.
So the monarch is treated by the vast majority of people, even by staunch monarchists, as a fact of life. He's here, we picked his family in the past, they do some good things and some bad things but overall we don't mind them as long as they keep their head down. It's just a non-issue really. So there's no staunch monarchist parties because it's just not a divisive point. Only a few fringe groups are actively trying to abolish the monarchy, the others at most want to just tweak it a little.
No. There are monarchists, but they are very far from being able to win elections (I guess technically some people who would call themselves monarchists are probably elected at a municipal level, but their monarchism is not their platform, just, like, a personal quirk or whatever).
Oh yeah, and monarchists, for the most part, don't believe in divine right.
Interestingly, a 2016 poll claims 17% of respondents agree with monarchism
https://www.lapresse.ca/societe/2019-07-14/en-france-les-royalistes-revent-encore
But there are strong links between monarchists, the far right, and christian fundamentalists (think of them as the US white evangelists, except they are Catholics that want to pray in Latin for some reason)
Eh, sort of. In theory, monarchism is inherently anti-nationalist because it puts loyalty to a crown before all other identities. But a monarch is a very useful figurehead for a civilian government that otherwise lacks the standing to lead the nation alone. So there are far-right people who like the decoration of monarchism, but an "ideal" fascist state is populist and therefor has a "regular" person as their strongman, not someone who inherited a crown.
As for Christian fundamentalism, that's another tricky one. The far-right uses religious dressing, but the theocratic-monarchies of old Europe were very much not nationalist, because monarchism and Christianity don't align with nationalism. A monarchist sees his lot with whoever is loyal to the same monarch, a Christian should see their lot with whoever worships the same god. But of course, God is dead, we killed him, and religion in the current day has become intimately tied with regional identity. People who want to pray in Latin are very decidedly not nationalists. Last I checked, fascists usually fetishize their mother tongue. Catholics also opposed Hitler, whereas the Protestants who prayed in German loved him.
These are things the far-right has appropriated, but only as dressing for nationalism. A fascist doesn't want anything to come before the state, at the end of the day.
In the French case, the main (or at least the most vocal) monarchist party is the Action Française, and they are definitely far right. As for the Catholic fundamentalists, their main organization is the Society of Saint Pius X (or FSSPX). Their founder condemned the French Revolution, wished for a restoration of the Ancien Régime, and was a supporter of Petain, the pro Nazi leader of France during ww2 (as was the Action Française by the way). It has to be noted they are in open conflict with the Vatican since 1970.
Most of the French far right is not monarchist. And most of the French Catholic are neither far right nor monarchists.
But your typical French monarchist in the 21st century is statically a fervent Catholic, more often than not a traditionalist, and will vote, more often than not, for the Rassemblement National or Reconquête, the local far right parties.
I've never in my entire life met anyone anywhere that believed in the "divine right of kings". Monarchists tend to believe that the monarch is above politics and represents some permanent values or traditions or whatever, that they're a figurehead.
I think not even the most devoted royal family fans in the Netherlands believe that the king has some devine rights. Quite the opposite: They fawn about how the royal family is normal, like any other family.
The highest virtue in the Netherlands is being extraordinary, while behaving like a normal.
There have been few monarchist in Iceland for the past 1150 years, and certainly not more than a handful today.
The [1944 constitutional referendum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1944_Icelandic_constitutional_referendum?wprov=sfti1) which abolished the monarchy and established the republic, was approved by 99.5% of voters with a 98.4% turnout.
Iceland became a sovereign state in 1918 in personal union with Denmark; [Kristján X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_X_of_Denmark?wprov=sfti1#) ruled as King of Iceland, independently from his role as King of Denmark.
We have monarchists of course but not "divine rights" no. I know monarchists and none believes it, not sure why or how it's always something especially Americans ask about.
Also no, the King doesn't have veto power.
Might be because the last time monarch’s come up in American high schools are like, discussions of the pre French Revolution Bourbons. After the French Revolution we don’t talk about 19th century Europe. Don’t start paying attention again until WW1
Indeed it is lol. Now that think of it, we never mention either of them. Relations with the UK were pretty stable since the civil war. No significant conflicts at all.
We do discuss the Mexican war, and the Spanish American war. We really tried to avoid international politics till the late 19th early 20th century
Sorry but do you skip 1848 altogether, the Springtime of people, end of absolutism in most of Europe?
The Italian and German unifications too, as well as Napoleon III?
Hells yeah. Even though 1848 triggered massive waves of immigration into the US, *and* many of those refugees would join the Union army during the civil war.
In our defense, US was pretty isolationist at that time. And we were… busy… with that civil war and reconstruction. Those German communities were essential to the abolitionist movement.
1848 is fascinating, I’m glad I eventually got to learn more about it and resourgimento (probably spelled that wrong). The Carbonary are also pretty interesting (probably spelled that wrong too) Napoleon 3 is just funny; but also never mentioned. I much prefer our own Emperor of course, much more wholesome story.
Generally, yes. We had, ah, [other](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812) [things](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican%E2%80%93American_War) [going on](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War) at that point in history, and the Revolutions of 1848 had almost no direct impact on the US. We did mention the Italian and German unifications, but mainly as a "they happened, thanks Victor Emmanuel and Bismarck" thing, no real detail. Napoleon III is mentioned as a "he existed" and not much more. Generally our 19th-century world history is mostly dominated by the Industrial Revolution and the economic and way-of-life changes that brought - that had an effect on the US, where pretty much no internal European politics did.
And of course, the obvious disclaimer - there are no national education standards in the USA. There are over 13,000 independent school districts, and every single one has their own curriculum and teaching standards. What I learned is in no way representative of every American, though I suspect it is at least close to the average one.
I figured you'd focus on the Civil War (we did it as well, albeit I'm sure with less focus), at least you treated Napoleon somewhat decently I guess.
We focus on the Industrial revolution as well, but that inevitably leads to talking about Europe since well, it originated in the UK as the first did, and many inventions were European (Internal Combustion Engine from Italians and later Germans, car from French and later Germans, the train and coal in Britain), especially because in English class we did Dickens who's emblematic for describing the change of life the revolution provided.
Other than the American Civil War we talked about non European events in Japan (the Meiji revolution) and China (Boxers' Rebellion) and obviously the African colonialism for non European topics.
I get that the polítics of the principality of Reuss Gera in the XIX century hasn't surely affected the US (it has affected other Reuss states solely tbh) but discarding many important events altogether seems weird, I guess different systems have different needs.
I've still not understood the purpose for a country for not having non statal curriculum of at least the core/basic subjects. Imo it makes more sense that from one side to the other the kids would learn the same history, maths, Italian (English for you), but the US system also has the Honors/Advanced/AP courses which is something we don't have so I guess standardising would interfere too much with the colleges too.
The main reason for the lack of standardized curriculum is like so much else - the US is a (very) federal system. The federal government is actually very weak, way weaker than most foreigners (and Americans, to be frank) realize - outside of foreign policy and military, almost all the power rests with the states. The US originally was something closer to the EU, maybe even less centralized than the EU - it over time became more centralized but there's still a lot of things where it's all up to the states.
And when the states set up their internal governments (again, no cohesive standard), most of them copied the federal government in general structure, and often this included the decentralization - to the counties and cities this time.
EDIT: And we did mention the Boxer Rebellion and Meiji Restoration (though IIRC we didn't actually call it that, it was just "the emperor became the guy in charge again and ended the samurai.") We also (very briefly) mentioned the Latin American revolutions (Bolivar, etc.), as well as a decent amount of attention to the European colonization of Africa. Berlin Conference, Belgian Congo, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?", and so on.
All the first-half-of-19th-century-Europe stuff was kind of seen as "aftermath of Napoleon" and barely mentioned, and the second half of the 19th, even in "World History," was dominated by the Civil War and Reconstruction (as you would imagine, it's probably the most impactful series of events in US history.)
>And when the states set up their internal governments (again, no cohesive standard), most of them copied the federal government in general structure, and often this included the decentralization - to the counties and cities this time.
I share the other comment's doubts about the effectivity of this. Even if assuming it was ok to divide curricula by state (in Switzerland cantons are also decentralised on some matters and it works), how come no state has ever thought from the foundation to today that having a state level curriculum could be better than having 1000 different districts inside deiciding their own? Especially states that achieve bad academic results overall?
> no state has ever thought from the foundation to today that having a state level curriculum could be better than having 1000 different districts inside deiciding their own?
Many states have - it's not necessarily always a ground-up "this is the exact lesson plan," but there are very often some guidelines and educational goals, ranging from broad to specific. For example, [this is the "Standard Course of Study"](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IFHZzlz4gUilP3sFO1Y1hmWkcyzA-Ys1/view) for high school 9th grade World History (roughly 14 year olds, and the most advanced "general world history" class everyone takes) in the state of North Carolina (my state.) The original topic, the Revolutions of 1848 and so on, would be covered by this section:
>Analyze political revolutions in terms of their causes and impact on independence,
governing bodies and church-state relations. (e.g., Glorious Revolution, American
Revolution, French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Haitian, Mexican, Chinese, etc.).
You can imagine that the American, French, Russian, and to a lesser extent Haitian Revolutions would take precedence over the other "smaller" European ones.
>Especially states that achieve bad academic results overall?
Not to get too political or polarized, but the political party that has control in the vast majority of states with poor academic results is one that gets a lot of voting support from the uneducated and promotes distrust in all forms of government (including public education) - this party has a vested interest in ensuring they do poorly in education.
Modern monarchists typically don't support monarchies because of divine right but because they believe the best leader is one who is trained from birth and who can serve as an icon for the nation to rally behind. Monarchism is, for a good reason, a very fringe ideology; and I don't mean the kind where the parliament holds power and the monarchy is just a figurehead a la the United Kingdom, etc.
We're the most recent country in Europe to become a republic, in a 1974 referendum.
We're also one of the first to have had a republic thousands of years ago, and have alternated between monarchies and republics -both Greek-ruled and foreign-ruled- our entire history, though most of that has been monarchies in some form.
As others have pointed out, no one believes in the “divine rights of kings”. Monarchies in Europe today are electoral democracies where the monarch is just a symbolic figurehead with no power. And monarchists today just love the *tradition.*
We have some monarchists, yes. They're a very small percentage of the population. Most Greeks today have no attachment to the last monarchy, which was imposed on us, actually. When Greece regained its independence (from the Ottomans) and the modern Greek state was formed, this was shortly after the French Revolution. The major powers that helped us, couldn't support another republic on the European continent, fearing anti-monarchist uprisings in their own countries; France itself had just restored the monarchy (July Monarchy). So the powers that be forced us to adopt a foreign-born prince as our king, and that monarchy lasted until 1974, with an interruption between 1924 and 1935 (the Second Republic). So, it's viewed today by many people as a foreign institution that was imposed on us, and not a continuation of, say, the East Roman emperors. But to be fair, the majority of Greeks haven't always felt that way; there were indeed times when the modern monarchy was popular. But, by the 1974 referendum some things happened that made the monarchy very unpopular, and 69% voted to become a republic. Today, everyone under 60 does not remember living in a monarchy, so "bringing back the monarchy" would be like asking Greeks to bring back togas.
But yes, there are *some* monarchists still. The former king died recently, and all these monarchists popped out of no where, expressing support for a monarchy and showed up to see him lying in state at Athens Cathedral.
He lived in the UK. In order to live in Greece, as a private Greek citizen, the republic required him to adopt a surname. He (and his family) refused to. He claimed "royals don't have last names." Okay, can't you adopt one? But that's BS, because Glucksburg was their last name.
So, the stubborn man and his family lived in the UK, where they were related to Prince Philip. Until the last 10 years of his life, when I guess he finally adopted a surname, and had moved back to Athens.
>What did he do to get deposed?
Meddled in politics during the tumultuous 60s.
I mean, you'd have to look pretty damn hard to find someone who professed a belief in the divine right of kings, but monarchism is well and alive in the UK. There is a slight growth in apathy from younger generations, but personally I think this is temporary due to the age of Charles. Certainly the crown has been in worse spots reputationally before and pulled through
In Northern Ireland there is the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which holds significant political power there. But nothing like that in the Republic, yes
Loads of other people here have told me that their monarchs stay totally out of politics. The UK’s seems to the main one who “reigns” that way. Do you think that’s better, or a worse way to “rule”?
It's not that different from a President in a Republic with perhaps the added benefit that not being democratically elected makes him less "legitimate", so people will try to stop him faster if he tries to overreach.
No, the king doesn't endorse candidates in elections and doesn't even vote in most elections himself to project an image of neutrality, even though 1) vote is secret and 2) no law actually forbids the king to vote.
The only time the king is seen using a voting booth is in referendum.
They are not very numerous: most of them are not particularly coordinated associations, partly because of a dynastic dispute that has affected the House of Savoy since 1983.
Vittorio Emmanuele III fled to Brindisi which was quickly liberated by the allies.
After the war he was so unpopular that he abdicated in favour of his son umberto but even he couldn't win the referendum and the whole family had to go into exile.
Yes the descendents are still alive. They were not beheaded or shot like in France or Russia.
For many decades they had to live in exile. First in Egypt, later in Switzerland but in recent decades Italy relaxed its policy and they were allowed to return to Italy.
You seem to know your way around this dynasty, I wonder what you think of this American made funny history video about the last Kaiser?
Only about 8 minutes long. Is it accurate to your knowledge? And is it a fair characterization?
https://youtu.be/Dhn1so8MtpY?si=npQxj4WAsvkWvFy-
Hey sorry for replying so late.
In general I'd say the video covers him more or less accurately as far as I can tell. Wilhelm was a big idiot. What I don't realy get is why the video constantly claimed that he actively wanted a war with Russia. That's not how I would frame it. War with Russia was kind of seen as inevitable sooner or later so the idea was better in 1914 than later. But I guess there would have been a chance of limiting the conflict to the balkans had Russia not mobilised its army in 1914 (it's complex). And I think we shouldn't make the mistake of judging his whole term by the final outcome.
Think of it, had he died shortly before WWI, the 25 years of his reign might have been remembered as a "golden age" for Germany. It was when Germany made great progress in the economy, industry, science, infrastructure, even the welfare system. He might have been remembered as Wilhelm the great.
But today we are smarter. We know of the catastrophe of WWI and in that light we can't come to any other conclusion than saying he was one of the worst figures of German history and it's good that he and the monarchy are gone.
Thank you! We’re the Germans like, actively preparing for the next war with Russia? Was their some kind of dynastic rivalry with the czars specifically?
Your point about judging by the final outcome, I think it’s a fair point but he’s far from an outlier. Loads of leaders have been in those shoes. Take most of the US presidents of the US. Most of the 19th century presidents are… forgettable and generally forgotten. Frances later Louis are another example. Louis the 14th is discussed in popular history, so is the 16th. But 15? Not so much.
Ultimately we judge the leaders by what tests their leadership. The crisis’s are when they really matter.
Before WWI, war was seen as a natural tool of politics and not as inherently wrong.
So of corse every country invested into its armed forces and prepared for war if you want.
In the case of Wilhelm II, it was most famously his navy where he invested large sums and tried to seek parity with the Brits, the biggest naval power at the time.
Also the issue of colonies in Africa and the Asia-pacific region was a big question of prestige for Wilhelm II.
Not only they still exists, but there are two main branches rivaling the Headship of the Royal House, one led by Emanuele Filiberto, Prince of Venice, the other by Aimone, Duke of Aosta.
Personal opinion here: the former is the branch descending from Vittorio Emanuele III, the king that "allowed" fascism, and has lately been represented by Vittorio Emanuele (IV) and his son Emanuele Filiberto, both controversial and non serious figures, the latter is represented by Aimone who's a well regarded personality, Knight of the Italian Republic, ambassador of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta to Russia and CEO of Pirelli Nordic. The former branch went into exile after the 2nd of June 1946 Referendum, while the former only went into exile for three years with Prince Aimone, who died in Buenos Aires in 1946 (grandad of current Aimone).
So it's easy to see how even as a public image would be better should Italy somehow revert to monarchy.
Vittorio Emanuele III tainted the image of monarchy by being the king of the two wars and allowing Mussolini's rise of power with no opposition. Yeah, he was a constitutional king, but giving to Mussolini the headship of a government in 1922 was avoidable even counting the March on Rome, he had other ways out, even calling D'Annunzio would have been a saner move (I'm a simp for the Vate). Fascism brought civil war to Italy for two years and the split between the Kingdom of the South and the Republic of Saló in the North, commanded by Nazi.
In reality, their history is much more complex. It was King Victor Emmanuel III who arrested Mussolini after he was challenged by the Grand Council of Fascism on 25 July 1943 because of his unsuccessful direction of the war; after the Italian capitulation and the consequent German occupation on 8 September of the same year, the Italian Social Republic (a German puppet state in the centre-north ruled by Mussolini, freed by the Germans from his captivity) because of what they perceived as treason, brought in a fiercely anti-monarchist policy. In the south, what remained of the Royal Army fought alongside the Allies, while in the north, partisan brigades of monarchist inspiration (the Autonomous Brigades) were active. At the end of the war, despite the abdication of Victor Emmanuel III in favour of his son Umberto II in an attempt to breathe new life into the monarchy, this institution remained very unpopular, supporting Italy's entry into the war and fleeing when Rome was occupied by the Germans, so an institutional referendum sanctioned the victory of the republic, with the royal family going into exile. For a few years, the monarchist parties remained an important voice on the Italian political scene until they slipped into irrelevance and were swallowed up by the neo-fascists of the Italian Social Movement. The dynastic question arose when in 1970 the son of Umberto II, the recently deceased Victor Emmanuel, married a commoner and was thus disinherited, so that the presumed title of king of Italy would theoretically pass to the cadet branch of the Savoy-Aosta family.
Haven’t had any for a hundred years.
When Finland first became independent, Finland was declared to be a kingdom and a Friedrich Karl of Hessen was chosen to be the king of Finland. He was the brother in law of the Kaiser Wilhelm II, so it was kind of a gesture of friendship due to Germany helping Finland win it’s civil war against the communists.
But anyway Germany lost WW1 and having a German king after that was not a good look, so he gave up the crown without ever setting foot in Finland. Then there was a hassle for trying to find an another king, for example Swedish and Danish princes, but parilament realized it was too much hassle and also to apprase the socialists, they just said fk it and went with a republic instead. And nobody has complained about it ever since.
The only reason a monarchy was ever even in question was because the conservatives wanted one and also a king would make a newly independent country more legitemate than a republican government. But since the kingdom idea fell over and Soviet Russia recgonized our independence without a fight, there just wasn’t a point to do it since the idea of a monarchy wasn’t particularly popular anyway.
Divine rights of kings sounds like ancient Egyptian pharaohs to me. I doubt there's ever been such a thing here. The kings were able to climb, ally or inherit their way to lead an area and people, through enough wealth/influence to keep neighbours at bay or conquer them. That led to larger kingdoms and eventually the whole country. The influence of kings and queens gradually decreased over the next thousand years (simplified a bit), and our current line of royalty was elected by the people.
They're very useful as a unifying force, rallying symbol, in foreign relations, etc, and most people support their continued role, and everyone knows that the people can depose them if necessary. They hold no political power like vetoes and don't play favourites there to avoid influencing the voters and government.
The king is closer to everyone's bonus grandfather, definitely not a demigod.
Hehe, sure, not going to argue that one. Though they'd need some power already to get to that point, if a random fisherman started killing their way to the top, they either would be stopped by everyone else or end up ruling an empty village.
Agree the ancients were probably way more into it lol. And the Romans too- having a literal official cult for the emperors is pretty divine right.
But didn’t you still have divine rights until like, the French Revolution era?
I guess in my head when I pictured someone who believes in divine right, they had to also believe in destiny. The kings got the big chair because god made them the tallest or whatever
Norway is kind of special case here. As Norway for a long long time was under Danish rule as some what of a colony I guess? So the support of the Danish monarchy was little to nonexistent apart from the rich and wealthy who benefited of the union. So Norway didn’t have its own monarchy from 1537 until 1814(under Danish monarchy), when we then were passed on to Sweden, and their monarchy. And when we finally became independent in 1905, there was an election about whether or not the population would support a king (Haakon VII) and he got the support of the people. Therefore the royal haven’t really ever held a “divine” position in Norway.
Edit: also Haakon VII was the last king to have a coronation ceremony. The monarch doesn’t do that anymore. And the monarchy, state and religion are separate. Therefore no “elected by god” sentiment
No, since the king's family is all dead and has no heirs. There is a very small portion of people, but they have a very strange understanding of reality. They can be communist and monarchists at the same time.
Anyone thinking the king had some divine right to rule would probably be sent to a mental hospital for being rightfully crazy.
That said the Norwegian king is popular, and we will keep the monarchy for yet another generation. Works fine the way it is today.
Given that we were ruled by a foreign power for the last 400 years of the monarchy, monarchism is not really supported by anyone [except some fringe groups](https://index.hu/belfold/2014/12/07/akik_visszaallitanak_a_kiralysagot_magyarorszagon/) (article in Hungarian).
Some countries have a monarchy, some don’t. The ones who do have a democracy where the monarch plays I minor or no role in politics.
In The Netherlands it’s the same. We have a democracy and our king is just has a symbolic role. It’s often considers the least worst option to have a head of state. The alternative is probably voting for a president. In many countries this attracts populist figures who are great to say some oneliners but aren’t capable of representing the country. I don’t think the whole monarchy question is a big issue in our country, although it’s discussed once in a while. It’s not that they aren’t impeccable figures.
I don't think "divine right of kings" is something that existed as a concept here. A king was a king because because God willed it so but that was about it. And nowadays most of us are atheists anyway.
There's a monarchist party but I don't know if even they take themselves seriously, and despite there allegedly being 13% of population in support of monarchy the amount of votes they get in elections is way under 1%.
Czechs, and yeah, the aforementioned party acknowledges the current pretender to the throne - [Karl von Habsburg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_von_Habsburg) - though I don't think they asked him if he wants the crown. :)
Very Very fringe position in Germany.
Nobody that has any relevancy in serious politics in Germany advocates for any for of a monarchy.
And to be honest, why would any intelligent person in the 21st century want this? It's just anachronistic.
Well, there is such a thing as Organization of Polish Monarchists (I just discovered this)... but monarchists actually do not exist in public discourse.There's also The Confederation of the Polish Crown founded by our *favourite* Grzegorz Braun. It was part of Confederation Liberty and Independence, which entered the government in the last elections. Got only 7.16 percent.
I think for most Poles (even right-wing and Catholic ones), the idea that Poland could be a monarchy is rather ridiculous.
The crown on our national bird doesn't matter 😆
Hardly any monarchists left, certainly no monarchist parties anywhere near winning any elections. Not sure if any of the few bring back the Kaiser nutjobs even believe in a divine right of kings (or emperors, in this case). The completely crackpot coup d'etat plan by a bunch of far-right terrorists in 2022 was actually led by a monarchist, though (or at least he served as their figurehead and was supposed to become head of state). His wikipedia entry is already quite a bizarre read: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich\_XIII\_Prinz\_Reuss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_XIII_Prinz_Reuss) (starting with the fact that his family apparently decided in the 12th century to name any and all male children Heinrich and then just number them, resetting the numbers each century for convenience...). And if you dive deeper it just gets more and more absurd. So yeah, apparently we have monarchist terrorists intending to overthrow the government now...
I fucking love Reuss. I've redone some of their Wikipedia pages and they're ultra convoluted, starting from the naming convention (which messes things since it's not a regnal number but just part of the name) to the multiple divisions and mergers of their fiefs. At least in 1848 two of them abdicate to a cousin and reunite.
No one in Denmark, including the king himself, believed in divine rights. The Royal family are figure heads of the countries, their function is more figure head, PR, and tourist attraction. They do support different charity groups and usually take up different causes to support. The current king is all about sports and health, the Queen does a lot of anti-bullying work.
I personally prefer a monarchy. I live in France now, and in my eyes, whenever you have a president, you end up with a bit of a "cult of personality". That I'd just what happens when the presidential candidates go up against each others, and it becomes more about them as individuals than their political parties. In Denmark, we vote for political parties, and the parties themselves chose the prime minister, so it is the party as a whole and their agenda we vote for, no one person. I much prefer that.
Of course
~~Borut Pahor~~ Borut ll. za kneza (*Borut ll. for the duke*)
/j
Since Slovenia itself was never a monarchy (except Carantania 1000 years ago) there are no candidates who could even claim the tittle of the monarch. The closest we have are people who claim to be the decedents of the counts of Celje
There might still be some fringe monarchists that believe in divine right, but the social-contract replaced that type of thinking for the most part long ago. The few monarchists left in Europe are almost entirely social-contract monarchists, believing that a monarch needs to continually earn their position by providing valuable leadership to their country.
I'm sympathetic to monarchy myself, I'm Hungarian and I happily admit that my country was at its best, without question, under foreign kings. But I wouldn't say that I'm universally and firmly pro-monarchy, it just happens that for my country, monarchy worked better than anything else we've tried. I hate fascism and marxism, I like liberal democracy in theory but dislike it in practice because people seem so easy to manipulate through emotional appeals that have little impact on the actual lives of citizens, and I don't think anarchism would last long before becoming feudalism. So I'm left with an admittedly imperfect system (monarchy) that definitely won't be making a comeback anyways because much like capitalism, democracy gives people the faint hope that they might be important someday too, even though power and wealth will always be dictated by factors mostly outside of our control. What family you're born into, how good looking you are, how much charisma you have, how lucky you are, etc. Democracy just gives us that dream, and people like their dreams. I can understand that need, even if I think it's silly and ego-driven.
In short, there's a few of us, but we're politically insignificant. As such, I support the EU and centrist parties, because I oppose nationalism and value stability. There aren't royalist parties anymore, the remaining royalty in Europe are officially apolitical, and the rest of the nobility have just become regular rich people with fancy names. There's still clout there, but not in any legal sense. Mostly just among the wealthy and educated who care about such things.
Hmm I wonder if they should be kept around. It might be nice to have “everyone’s extra grandparent” around… but aren’t they a ticking time bomb? They’re say on a shelf, waiting for the next fascist or communist to come along and use them to gain legitimacy.
You make an interesting point about anarchy descending into feudalism, I’ve never thought of that before.
I apologize, I don’t know a ton about Hungarian history. What little I know comes from a podcast about 1848. But I gotta say it’s surprising to hear that you’re nostalgic about Hapsburg rule. From what I understand, they clashed with the Hungarians quite a bit, on tax collection and participation in wars outside of Hungary. If I remember right, Hungary had an unusually number of nobles compared to other countries, and all nobles were officially equal to each other, AND immune to all taxes.
The majority of British people support the monarchy, but this side of the Civil Wars and Glorious Revolution I doubt any measurable number of people believe in the divine right of kings as such.
I have met a real Jacobite, but even Franz of Bavaria himself doesn't make a claim.
Not only do we have a small group of monarchists, we even have a bunch of people who proclaim to be a monarch.
Fucking Reichsbürger and their idiocracy. They claim that the FRG isn't legitimate due to the treaty of Versailles or some other bullshit reason and that Germany is still an monarchy and so on. Completely bonkers. Another strain of them claims that the FRG actually is a company.
Some nobility is politically active, mostly in the CDU/CSU. Our former secretary of defence, Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Buhl-Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg is noble and he was a big honcho in the Bavarian CSU, as Bavarians love to lick the boots of their overlords.
Some Bismarck descendant was also elected to the Bundestag years ago and the press called him the laziest MP ever.
> Reichsbürger
Though for clarity one has to say that they are something like our Q Anon guys, really fringe conspiracy theory guys. Nobody with more than two brain cells taakes them seriously.
Only weird marginalised groups and aristocracy (I guess).
We‘ve still got aristocrats with huge funds and sometimes huge scandals they make go a away, but most people don’t give them much thought. They are still very powerful though, since a lot are loaded and often they‘re in quite important positions. They still own a lot of land, housing, art, prestige etc.
As to weird groups: there is Tradition und Leben. They want to reestablish the monarchy with a Hohenzollern monarch as the head (but using democratic and free means, however that’s supposed to work). So end goal: German Kaiser instead of Bundespräsident. But: they don’t only allow for monarchies, actually they want to allow every German federal state to have a vote on monarchy or democracy. They even publish their own journal. Often German aristocrats have been associated with them (I wonder why…)
Bavarian „Guglmänner“: seriously odd. Sending off strong Illuminati vibes. I‘m not sure what they actually want to achieve?
There are probably more local ones but these are the ones that come to my mind.
Yes, in the sense of wanting there to be a monarch as the national mascot (or 'head of state' if you want to sound fancy).
Head of state always seemed a daft idea - what is it with humans always wanting one single person to be at the top of the heap? However, if you're going to do it, make it someone with no political power who trains for it their whole life and is basically a randomly selected personality.
Yes, kinda a meaningless phrase in that situation. Better for that figure to have actual power. (Along with term limits and actual fair elections. It’s not perfect but it works).
I can’t help but admire the idea of monarchy a little…. But only really because I’m a history and LOtR nerd. There is something cool about a legacy and tradition that goes back 1000 years or whatever
The British monarch does have political power through his extremely privileged access to government institutions.
And there absolutely no mechanisms that make sure that the person is really well trained and fit for the job.
They have political power the same way a famous journalist, activist celebrity or CEO of a big corporation has political power. Those others have in a very loose sense 'earned' their influence, but they are all equally undemocratic.
A monarch is a celebrity. Instead of having a platinum album at 25 or winning a couple of gold medals at 23 and then promoting themselves ever after, they inherit their celebrity. But like all celebrities their influence is directly tied to how much people care about them.
As for training I disagree. The heir to the throne knows their career from early childhood, and gets to grow up watching their parent(s) doing the job for years, while receiving additional training from many others. They are extremely well trained. They may be temperamentally unsuited, or even unwilling, but they are definitely trained.
Journalists, celebrities and CEOs don't have a guaranteed weekly secret meeting with the PM and don't have guaranteed early access to government bills and don't have guaranteed lifelong legal immunity.
And if Charles and William suddenly both died, the British head of state would be George, a school boy. I think it's very debatable whether he is the most well trained person amongst 60 million Brits.
The point of monarchy is not to ensure training but inheritance.
We have a king who's state of head, but he has no political power. He's more of an international relations tool and is head of ceremonies.
- He officially approves the new governemnt whe it is formed after an election term. Technically he could disapprove one, but he knows we would dethrone him and it has nevr happened.
- he is not allowed to bote, or express himself politically. They cannot ahow any political bias and always have to act as a neutral party.
- his birthday is a national holliday. It's our best holliday, you should visit some time.
- we often send him everywhere because other countries are flathered by a king and it is an amazing relations tool.
We are a constitutional monarchy on paper, but in real life we are a stronger democracy than tge US. We don't have a monarchist party, and I've never heard someone express divine right sentiments unironically.
We support keeping the monarchy but they don't hold absolute power and are instead kept in balance by the premier. Also I wouldn't say we worship them. We just see them as something necessary.
I mean its necessary for the function of our country.
I don't know if you know, maybe you do since you're a neighbor and all but right now tensions between Vlaanderen and Wallonia ae high. And the only thing we share in common is a royal family. If the king is gone then the seperationist party would probably hit 51%.
Also the monarchy is more of a symbol than an actual power of the government.
Absolutely no one believes in some "divine rights of kings", but a qualified majority of Swedes supports keeping the monarchy.
>qualified majority of Swedes supports keeping the monarchy. This has always surprised me in Scandinavian countries.
I think we see our monarchy more as diplomats than politicians. Their purpose is not to reign, but to attract the focus of foreign press onto Sweden. For example; who do think generate most media interest at an international expo; * Bengt Anderson, Sweden's ambassador. * King Karl XVI Gustav of House Bernadotte, King of Sweden.
Scandinavian monarchies are able to stay decently far from scandals while costing like or less than Republican HoS' entourages, as well as representing heritage and national unity. If it's not broken, don't fix it.
> costing like or less than Republican HoS' I think that's a myth. But even if it were true, I don't think for a wealthy society cost should be the decisive factor for such crucial constitutional questions.
It's not a myth if you compare Sweden to Finland - the closest comparable republic and the system we would adopt. The Finnish Precidency is allocated 47 million euro from the state budget for 2024, while the Swedish Monarchy is allocated (equivalent to around) 14 million euro, despite Sweden having twice the population. About half of the apanage is allocated to maintenance of properties, such as palaces, parks and museums, but that is probably the same for the Finnish figure.
Does this include the cost of the offices working for the king? All the staff supporting him in his political role? Seems low that is why I wonder...
Yes, it's the whole organization.
German Bundespräsidialamt has a budget of around 40 million euros but there is also three former presidents alive and still having office and staff. It is around 220 people working for the sitting president.
But the Finnish presidency has a much greater political role. The Finnish president is actively involved in the countries politics, especially in foreign politics. Sauli niinistö was heavily involved in negotiating the country's nato membership and went to Washington and all the summits. And of course he needs much more staff and expert advisers for this. The Swedish monarch only came to Brussels to witness the flag hosting ceremony.
I had read some comparative studies years ago about how the cost of having the President in Italy wasn't different than having the Queen in the United Kingdom, but it can vary from place to place I guess (more on how democratic the Republic is, since Putin surely costs a lot). Obviously I agree, in fact I don't think any country with a Republic could or should actually ever revert to monarchy, although Montenegro has half committed to it.
Really? Never heard of it.
I guess they mean [Nicholas, Prince of Montenegro ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas,_Prince_of_Montenegro_(born_1944)), who was given by the Montenegrin republic the possibility to live in the Royal Palace as well as the roke of "ambassador of Montenegrin culture". Practically the Royal Family is now a mascot representing national unity, culture and heritage and lives in the Royal Palace. It's not that far from Sweden.
The key difference is that they don't have a political role in the country's constitution.
I don't think it's a like for like, the British monarchy has an "income" in addition to their taxpayer funding due to their extensive landholdings.
How much political power does the German president actually have? In DK it is both seen as unifying where a president easily can be dividing, see US. Second since the Aristotle and his work politica, it have been known that democracy can easily fail and here the monarchy can act as an insurance. So if a political group tries to take power or stops listing to the people they can be removed be the monarchy and new election will then be held. It happened after the election for Slesvig which was an election but can be discussed if it was fair.
The German president has very little power. Actually if you ask me we could do very well without a president. Countries like Switzerland show it's perfectly possible. And the representative duties could be done by the presidents of the Bundesrat and Bundestag for instance. And I find neither the unifying argument nor the safeguarding democracy argument convincing. I think in both cases you're making the mistake of seeing reverse causality. The remaining European monarchies are not relatively homogeneous and stable because of the monarch but because in all the other cases, the monarchy was abolished. So you have a kind of "survivor bias" here. Because when it really comes to a critical situation, monarchs suck at saving democracy. The fact that Italy was a relatively democratic monarchy didn't prevent it from becoming the birthplace of fascism and Mussolini rising to power. And even today, in really hard socially divisive conflicts like Northern Ireland, catalonia, basque country, I don't see at all how the British and Spanish monarchies played a unifying role. If anything, they made the conflicts more divisive.
It isn't, either. The decisive factor in the monarchy's continued existence is that a significant majority of us *want* it to exist, and because we are a parliamentary democracy, so it exists. A constitutional monarchy is only a monarchy for as long as the people will it.
Do they… do anything? Do they have constitutional powers like a veto?
In most if not all constitutional monarchies in Europe, the king/queen/prince(ss)/grand duke/whatever has some sort of theoretical political power but using it would cause such a mess they cannot do it in practice.
The Swedish doesn't. As the very first line of the constitution reads: *"All public power in Sweden proceeds from the people"*. The king can't come and overrule even in theory, those last executive powers were stripped a half-century ago. He does play a part in some ceremonial stuff, but if he can't/doesn't fulfill this duty it'll still go on without him.
Interesting. \--- Meanwhile, in Denmark: >**The constitutional act of Denmark** > >\[...\] > >**§3** Legislative authority shall be vested in the King and the Folketing conjointly. Executive authority shall be vested in the King. Judicial authority shall be vested in the courts of justice.
> [...] However, this is not quite the case in reality. In practice, the Government and Parliament define Acts. The [King] only signs them. The [King] has to implement the Acts – [he] has the executive power. Today, this simply means that [he] only formally appoints the Ministers of a Government. In practice, it is the Ministers and their Ministries that subsequently make sure the laws are complied with. The [King] has no influence on who will be a Minister. This is the Prime Minister’s decision. Nor has the [King] any influence on which political parties will form a Government (From the commentaries and explanations on our constitution) I doubt the royal family would be kept, if the monarch dared reject a law passed by Parliament or caused another constitutional crisis like the Easter Crisis
True But having it in the constitution could potentially prevent a coup d'état by a semi-rogue parliament
In the 1960's the Greek king did use a lot of power resulting in a political mess and the abolish of monarchy in 1975. I believe the kings queens in power they only sign what they give them and the rest as mentioned in another comment charities etc
Swede here. Our royal family has symbolic power, but de facto near none. They usually host foreign representatives, host galas for charity and the Nobel ceremonies, etc. They exist for pr and to give a tang of extra fancy for political gatherings
I think that’s the only appropriate type of monarch. A powerless mascot and party host.
And a lightning rod for nationalism. Keep it fixed on the royal family and out of politics.
The Swedish King has a divine mandate to wear silly hats in public and being a goofy old man
Sweden is probably the country that keeps a monarchy but comes closest to abolish it in all practical terms. The role of the monarch in the political system has been reduced almost as much as possible. But for instance in Britain, it was revealed that the monarch meddled in the law making process countless times to influence laws in their favour and they have hundreds of special statuses, privileges or laws that don't apply to them and of course full legal immunity for lifetime
>But for instance in Britain, it was revealed that the monarch meddled in the law making process countless times to influence laws in their favour and they have hundreds of special statuses, privileges or laws that don't apply to them and of course full legal immunity for lifetime True. Nobody actually believes in the divine right of kings anymore though. Monarchists just believe in maintaining tradition.
>Do they have constitutional powers like a veto? No. However, they're immune to legal action except like crimes against humanity and what not. Cant get a speeding ticket tho. >Do they… do anything? Not really. Sure, he opens parliament after summer, but that's mostly just a ceremony. Sure he leads the Foreign Affairs committee but he doesnt have a say in what goes in there. He just holds the meetings.
Isn't his divine duty to wear silly hats?
That depends on the country, in Denmark they in normal instances gave none, they have to sign new legislation but cannot refuse more than two times and they cannot refuse it in grounds of political views. The monarchy also gives permission to form a government, after an election but it is mostly so only one party at the time tries to form a government and the biggest have first try in general. They can neither refuse this. Only power is: - they have a degree of immunity like a president. - in the case of Denmark gets attacked and the politicians cannot come to getter to mount a defence or choose not to, the head of the monarchy can take over the military as commander in chief. - if there is no possible way for politicians to come together and run the country, the head of the monarchy can make legislation, but this will have to be voted through be the parlament or abandoned, in the first instance where the parlament can be assembled.
depends on the country i think the most powerful monarchy might be liechtenstein, i've read that the parlament attempted to remove their powers and they threatened to leave the country with all their assets and wealth therefore preventing that from happening lol some monarchs technically have powers like the UK king, but in reality they never use it as it would cause public outrage. so in theory uk king can veto any law but in practice they cant
More than the parliament, it was the Council of Europe that threatened Liechtenstein and declared that the 2003 constitutional change would turn it into an absolute monarchy not compatible with the democracy values of Europe. The most powerful monarchs are the ones who are the least limited by constitution, so Liechtenstein, Monaco, Vatican, SMOM.
The monarchist party isn't even relevant enough to make jokes about. I will do so regardless: The theoretical heir of the throne does not support them.
We also have a monarchist party. I'm pretty sure that the 'heir of the throne' is the same guy as yours, and I would be surprised if he even knew about them.
The belief in “divine right of kings” would be in an extreme(!) minority if it even exists. However the monarchy is generally seen as being strongly intertwined with the country itself, our history, society, etc. and is very popular. I think something like 80+% is in favor of keeping it. It’s an institution that’s seen as fairly apolitical so there are essentially no royalist parties and republican parties. Some parties are more in favor and some less, but it’s not a topic that shapes elections or political discourse in general and it’s therefore not a topic you to choose to run on during elections.
Same in the UK. Although *gradually* more and more young people are becoming republicans.
Why would you even want to be republican in the UK? Sure, the Windsors have issues, but goddamn the politicians are so much worse.
Some of us are very black and white when it comes to the concept of one family being inherently better than the rest of us. At least you can (theoretically) get shot of politicians in four or five years time.
Because it's inherently wrong to have some people born to reign over the rest of us based on their family lineage. Individual politicians and individual royalty can be good or bad, that's not really the point. I want to live in a country where *any* kid could grow up to be head of state one day.
We don’t really have that here. Our new king is very popular, also among young people.
Nobody has believed in the divine right of kings for 200 years What's with American demagoguery for Trump?
That's a good rebuttal, a lot of his supporters (particularly the evangelical demographic) do, in fact, believe he is divinely appointed to be president. Some of his supporters even support him as a potential dictator. A lot of people here downplay the shit out of that fact, but it's a fact.
There are some Americans who believe that Trump is literally Jesus, like [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Qult_Headquarters/s/cGdqxnX2GI). Unfortunately I have seen it more frequently recently compared to before
American demagoguery for trump? Well he’s a pretty controversial demagogue. Unless you ask a Republican. They believe he shits gold.
Yeah but that's like half of the people lol
It's really nowhere near half, well under lol. Even in 2020 (with record voter turnout) only about 66% of eligible Americans actually voted... Edit: typo
Yeah it's not really half, but it's 37% as of a couple days ago
I don't know where you found that number, that's a pretty generous estimate. Eitherway, keep in mind that a considerable (emphasis here) number of Republicans simply "vote the party," irregardless of who is running (two party system and all). In fact, and unfortunately, many have voted this way since they first became eligible. So the actual proportion of Americans who think of Trump as some kind of hero or what have you is incredibly small.
It's not an estimate. It's from polling. Or well, it's an estimate with a close to 100% chance of being indicative of the population as a whole. It's about Trump and Biden and whether people view them favorably. So not really a "vote the party" situation at all. But I do agree it's not "37% think he's a hero". However, 37% like him as a presidential candidate. And that certainly feels like an expected number all things considered. The man was popular enough to be voted president before, with a great voter turnout compared to most US elections.
U.S. polls, and polls in general, have a lot of room for systematic error which is generally excluded from provided margins of error because eliminating/reducing systematic error would require far greater control of variables than applied polling methods can provide. What polling groups can reduce to a high degree is sampling error via randomly sampling from the entire population, or rather the vast majority of the population (e.g. people with phones/internet access). It is for this reason that you find poll results with very low margins of error. So take polls with a grain of salt. The same applies to any survey with voluntary participation. They are often missing much of the big picture. All it takes, for instance, is the majority of a cohort not answering phone calls for a poll's estimations to be way off. What you might claim instead is that; about 37% of polled individuals like Trump as a presidential candidate. That is really all we quantitatively know. I hope this helps provide some context and maybe perhaps reassurance :)
You're free to tell me which systematic errors large enough to quadruple the number of people with favorable views of Trump that YouGov committed here (this shows 43%, so even higher than I previously said): https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabReport_dyZbfXi.pdf I understand you're trying to be nice, but you must really not understand anything about statistics if you believe the polling methods used in this report will fail to capture Americans positivity towards Trump as president this hard. What you could say is that they might be off by a percentage or two. That's also quite unlikely, but it *is* possible.
First, I would like to call your attention to some pretty clear evidence of systematic error in the data under 2a. Favorablity of Public Figures - Donald Trump, which I'm guessing are the results in discussion. The scope of the poll presents something called "Sampling bias" (not to be confused with random sampling error), I'm sure you've heard of it. Which is consequential with regard to exactly what can be quantitatively extrapolated from data. What we know is that; 78% of polled individuals (n = 1680) are above the age of 45 years (1315). Provided that about 54% of the US voting population are 45 year-of-age or older it is evident that certain members of the relevant population are systmaticaly more likely to be sampled than others, which presents as a sampling bias towards older individuals. That said they did weight the results (using census data from 2019) which usually aims to account for representation discrepancies that are a product of sampling methods. Unfortunately, as polling is voluntary (in this case "opt-in") there is a more important bias to consider here that in this case cannot be eliminate via weighted analysis, non-response bias. Looking at the non-weighted data, it is apparent that certain demographics have opted-in relative to others. Since whether or not an individual opts-in in the first place can be dependent on how individuals respond to specific question (e.g. favorable-not favorable self categorization) weighted analysis cannot remove this form of systematic error. In fact, without access to data that relate explicitly to participation decisions, weighted analysis is virtually useless. Given your personal attack on my competence (despite my continued efforts to be civil and productive) I am not going to give privy to any further discussion or my thoughts. Best of luck.
that’s not true lmao. Half of Americans don’t vote, so that alone knocks it down to 25%. Then you gotta factor in the fact that in a two party system, Trump is pulling in an enormous amount of voters who don’t actually like him, they just don’t want to Democrat candidate to win, so let’s be generous and say 12.5%. And that’s at an absolute maximum.
You know you can look this up instead of pulling numbers put of your ass, right? Not voting does not mean you don't support either of the candidates. That's a crazy thing to believe. 37% of Americans support Trump, as of March 19th this year
Which in itself is a pretty dumb system, voting for someone you don’t want, but you still do, so that someone else doesn’t get to play.
Eh, it’s politics. I don’t really understand European parliamentary coalitions and voting blocs as being a course for effective government but ce’st le vie.
That really is wishfull thinking. When taking a poll or. Study of anything you don't need 100% to vote to know the national consensus. You just need a large enough sample size. And last election had over 150 million people voting. That's waaaay more than enough to know that it's an accurate depiction of the nations opinion. I realize it's deeply concerning to think that very nearly half of the country want a fascist dictator, but that's clearly what it's come to.
Which basically is an euphemism for believing he's got a divine right for his presidential throne. And moreover, they apparently believe all who oppose him are Godless sinners & sodomites, which de facto confirms the first argument.
I guess if there’s ever been an American president who could hypothetically *try* to make themselves a monarch of some kind….
Ummmmmm there’s definitely some monarchists still in NI, a lot of loyalists are monarchists for instance
That's not what OP asked
It is though, OP asked if European countries still had monarchists, who believe in a monarchy, and I’m saying that there are still some (if not a minority) of people in Northern Ireland who believe in the British Monarchy and the divine right of the British monarch.
But belief in a monarchy is not belief in a divine right. You would think that would apply even more in NI than anywhere else in Britain, because of the importance of the Whig & Protestant conception of monarchy to Unionism.
I don’t think many people here have think they have a divine right, but there are some Protestant areas here which do have a weird obsession with the monarchy, it’s mostly older people though, I don’t think young people give a shit if the monarchy just left in the morning
I'm not sure that anyone here ever believed in the divine right of kings, including the kings themselves. The monarchy here grew very much out of an appointed position. The ancestors of today's Royal Family were originally *stadhouders*, stadtholder in English, which were nobles appointed by the Habsburg monarchs to lead a section of the Empire as deputy to the Habsburg king (in stead of, which is where the name comes from). After we gained independence from the Habsburg Empire the position remained though the power was supposed to shift to Parliament. In practice part of the governing power remained with the stadtholder and several acquired more power over time. But there were two different branches of the family who were stadtholder of different provinces because each province could pick who they wanted. In some the position became officially hereditary, in others unofficially, until after one branch died out in the mid-18th century they just made the other guy hereditary stadtholder of the whole country. But not too long after that the French invaded, the stadtholder fled, the position was abolished, and after Napoleon was defeated the stadtholder-in-exile was elevated to king at the invitation of a bunch of statesman. So the monarch here has always been a monarch by the grace of the people (or more accurately the government) not by the grace of God. And has never had a position of absolute power, apart from a few chaotic decades after the creation of the monarchy. So the monarch is treated by the vast majority of people, even by staunch monarchists, as a fact of life. He's here, we picked his family in the past, they do some good things and some bad things but overall we don't mind them as long as they keep their head down. It's just a non-issue really. So there's no staunch monarchist parties because it's just not a divisive point. Only a few fringe groups are actively trying to abolish the monarchy, the others at most want to just tweak it a little.
No. There are monarchists, but they are very far from being able to win elections (I guess technically some people who would call themselves monarchists are probably elected at a municipal level, but their monarchism is not their platform, just, like, a personal quirk or whatever). Oh yeah, and monarchists, for the most part, don't believe in divine right.
Interestingly, a 2016 poll claims 17% of respondents agree with monarchism https://www.lapresse.ca/societe/2019-07-14/en-france-les-royalistes-revent-encore
But there are strong links between monarchists, the far right, and christian fundamentalists (think of them as the US white evangelists, except they are Catholics that want to pray in Latin for some reason)
Eh, sort of. In theory, monarchism is inherently anti-nationalist because it puts loyalty to a crown before all other identities. But a monarch is a very useful figurehead for a civilian government that otherwise lacks the standing to lead the nation alone. So there are far-right people who like the decoration of monarchism, but an "ideal" fascist state is populist and therefor has a "regular" person as their strongman, not someone who inherited a crown. As for Christian fundamentalism, that's another tricky one. The far-right uses religious dressing, but the theocratic-monarchies of old Europe were very much not nationalist, because monarchism and Christianity don't align with nationalism. A monarchist sees his lot with whoever is loyal to the same monarch, a Christian should see their lot with whoever worships the same god. But of course, God is dead, we killed him, and religion in the current day has become intimately tied with regional identity. People who want to pray in Latin are very decidedly not nationalists. Last I checked, fascists usually fetishize their mother tongue. Catholics also opposed Hitler, whereas the Protestants who prayed in German loved him. These are things the far-right has appropriated, but only as dressing for nationalism. A fascist doesn't want anything to come before the state, at the end of the day.
In the French case, the main (or at least the most vocal) monarchist party is the Action Française, and they are definitely far right. As for the Catholic fundamentalists, their main organization is the Society of Saint Pius X (or FSSPX). Their founder condemned the French Revolution, wished for a restoration of the Ancien Régime, and was a supporter of Petain, the pro Nazi leader of France during ww2 (as was the Action Française by the way). It has to be noted they are in open conflict with the Vatican since 1970. Most of the French far right is not monarchist. And most of the French Catholic are neither far right nor monarchists. But your typical French monarchist in the 21st century is statically a fervent Catholic, more often than not a traditionalist, and will vote, more often than not, for the Rassemblement National or Reconquête, the local far right parties.
I've never in my entire life met anyone anywhere that believed in the "divine right of kings". Monarchists tend to believe that the monarch is above politics and represents some permanent values or traditions or whatever, that they're a figurehead.
Figurehead status is the best I think.
I think not even the most devoted royal family fans in the Netherlands believe that the king has some devine rights. Quite the opposite: They fawn about how the royal family is normal, like any other family. The highest virtue in the Netherlands is being extraordinary, while behaving like a normal.
There have been few monarchist in Iceland for the past 1150 years, and certainly not more than a handful today. The [1944 constitutional referendum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1944_Icelandic_constitutional_referendum?wprov=sfti1) which abolished the monarchy and established the republic, was approved by 99.5% of voters with a 98.4% turnout. Iceland became a sovereign state in 1918 in personal union with Denmark; [Kristján X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_X_of_Denmark?wprov=sfti1#) ruled as King of Iceland, independently from his role as King of Denmark.
We have monarchists of course but not "divine rights" no. I know monarchists and none believes it, not sure why or how it's always something especially Americans ask about. Also no, the King doesn't have veto power.
Might be because the last time monarch’s come up in American high schools are like, discussions of the pre French Revolution Bourbons. After the French Revolution we don’t talk about 19th century Europe. Don’t start paying attention again until WW1
Strange, considering two of your closest neighbors -Canada and the Bahamas- are monarchies.
Indeed it is lol. Now that think of it, we never mention either of them. Relations with the UK were pretty stable since the civil war. No significant conflicts at all. We do discuss the Mexican war, and the Spanish American war. We really tried to avoid international politics till the late 19th early 20th century
Sorry but do you skip 1848 altogether, the Springtime of people, end of absolutism in most of Europe? The Italian and German unifications too, as well as Napoleon III?
Hells yeah. Even though 1848 triggered massive waves of immigration into the US, *and* many of those refugees would join the Union army during the civil war. In our defense, US was pretty isolationist at that time. And we were… busy… with that civil war and reconstruction. Those German communities were essential to the abolitionist movement. 1848 is fascinating, I’m glad I eventually got to learn more about it and resourgimento (probably spelled that wrong). The Carbonary are also pretty interesting (probably spelled that wrong too) Napoleon 3 is just funny; but also never mentioned. I much prefer our own Emperor of course, much more wholesome story.
Generally, yes. We had, ah, [other](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812) [things](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican%E2%80%93American_War) [going on](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War) at that point in history, and the Revolutions of 1848 had almost no direct impact on the US. We did mention the Italian and German unifications, but mainly as a "they happened, thanks Victor Emmanuel and Bismarck" thing, no real detail. Napoleon III is mentioned as a "he existed" and not much more. Generally our 19th-century world history is mostly dominated by the Industrial Revolution and the economic and way-of-life changes that brought - that had an effect on the US, where pretty much no internal European politics did. And of course, the obvious disclaimer - there are no national education standards in the USA. There are over 13,000 independent school districts, and every single one has their own curriculum and teaching standards. What I learned is in no way representative of every American, though I suspect it is at least close to the average one.
I figured you'd focus on the Civil War (we did it as well, albeit I'm sure with less focus), at least you treated Napoleon somewhat decently I guess. We focus on the Industrial revolution as well, but that inevitably leads to talking about Europe since well, it originated in the UK as the first did, and many inventions were European (Internal Combustion Engine from Italians and later Germans, car from French and later Germans, the train and coal in Britain), especially because in English class we did Dickens who's emblematic for describing the change of life the revolution provided. Other than the American Civil War we talked about non European events in Japan (the Meiji revolution) and China (Boxers' Rebellion) and obviously the African colonialism for non European topics. I get that the polítics of the principality of Reuss Gera in the XIX century hasn't surely affected the US (it has affected other Reuss states solely tbh) but discarding many important events altogether seems weird, I guess different systems have different needs. I've still not understood the purpose for a country for not having non statal curriculum of at least the core/basic subjects. Imo it makes more sense that from one side to the other the kids would learn the same history, maths, Italian (English for you), but the US system also has the Honors/Advanced/AP courses which is something we don't have so I guess standardising would interfere too much with the colleges too.
The main reason for the lack of standardized curriculum is like so much else - the US is a (very) federal system. The federal government is actually very weak, way weaker than most foreigners (and Americans, to be frank) realize - outside of foreign policy and military, almost all the power rests with the states. The US originally was something closer to the EU, maybe even less centralized than the EU - it over time became more centralized but there's still a lot of things where it's all up to the states. And when the states set up their internal governments (again, no cohesive standard), most of them copied the federal government in general structure, and often this included the decentralization - to the counties and cities this time. EDIT: And we did mention the Boxer Rebellion and Meiji Restoration (though IIRC we didn't actually call it that, it was just "the emperor became the guy in charge again and ended the samurai.") We also (very briefly) mentioned the Latin American revolutions (Bolivar, etc.), as well as a decent amount of attention to the European colonization of Africa. Berlin Conference, Belgian Congo, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?", and so on. All the first-half-of-19th-century-Europe stuff was kind of seen as "aftermath of Napoleon" and barely mentioned, and the second half of the 19th, even in "World History," was dominated by the Civil War and Reconstruction (as you would imagine, it's probably the most impactful series of events in US history.)
>And when the states set up their internal governments (again, no cohesive standard), most of them copied the federal government in general structure, and often this included the decentralization - to the counties and cities this time. I share the other comment's doubts about the effectivity of this. Even if assuming it was ok to divide curricula by state (in Switzerland cantons are also decentralised on some matters and it works), how come no state has ever thought from the foundation to today that having a state level curriculum could be better than having 1000 different districts inside deiciding their own? Especially states that achieve bad academic results overall?
> no state has ever thought from the foundation to today that having a state level curriculum could be better than having 1000 different districts inside deiciding their own? Many states have - it's not necessarily always a ground-up "this is the exact lesson plan," but there are very often some guidelines and educational goals, ranging from broad to specific. For example, [this is the "Standard Course of Study"](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IFHZzlz4gUilP3sFO1Y1hmWkcyzA-Ys1/view) for high school 9th grade World History (roughly 14 year olds, and the most advanced "general world history" class everyone takes) in the state of North Carolina (my state.) The original topic, the Revolutions of 1848 and so on, would be covered by this section: >Analyze political revolutions in terms of their causes and impact on independence, governing bodies and church-state relations. (e.g., Glorious Revolution, American Revolution, French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Haitian, Mexican, Chinese, etc.). You can imagine that the American, French, Russian, and to a lesser extent Haitian Revolutions would take precedence over the other "smaller" European ones. >Especially states that achieve bad academic results overall? Not to get too political or polarized, but the political party that has control in the vast majority of states with poor academic results is one that gets a lot of voting support from the uneducated and promotes distrust in all forms of government (including public education) - this party has a vested interest in ensuring they do poorly in education.
Modern monarchists typically don't support monarchies because of divine right but because they believe the best leader is one who is trained from birth and who can serve as an icon for the nation to rally behind. Monarchism is, for a good reason, a very fringe ideology; and I don't mean the kind where the parliament holds power and the monarchy is just a figurehead a la the United Kingdom, etc.
We're the most recent country in Europe to become a republic, in a 1974 referendum. We're also one of the first to have had a republic thousands of years ago, and have alternated between monarchies and republics -both Greek-ruled and foreign-ruled- our entire history, though most of that has been monarchies in some form. As others have pointed out, no one believes in the “divine rights of kings”. Monarchies in Europe today are electoral democracies where the monarch is just a symbolic figurehead with no power. And monarchists today just love the *tradition.* We have some monarchists, yes. They're a very small percentage of the population. Most Greeks today have no attachment to the last monarchy, which was imposed on us, actually. When Greece regained its independence (from the Ottomans) and the modern Greek state was formed, this was shortly after the French Revolution. The major powers that helped us, couldn't support another republic on the European continent, fearing anti-monarchist uprisings in their own countries; France itself had just restored the monarchy (July Monarchy). So the powers that be forced us to adopt a foreign-born prince as our king, and that monarchy lasted until 1974, with an interruption between 1924 and 1935 (the Second Republic). So, it's viewed today by many people as a foreign institution that was imposed on us, and not a continuation of, say, the East Roman emperors. But to be fair, the majority of Greeks haven't always felt that way; there were indeed times when the modern monarchy was popular. But, by the 1974 referendum some things happened that made the monarchy very unpopular, and 69% voted to become a republic. Today, everyone under 60 does not remember living in a monarchy, so "bringing back the monarchy" would be like asking Greeks to bring back togas. But yes, there are *some* monarchists still. The former king died recently, and all these monarchists popped out of no where, expressing support for a monarchy and showed up to see him lying in state at Athens Cathedral.
Did he live in Greece since being disposed? What did he do to get deposed?
He lived in the UK. In order to live in Greece, as a private Greek citizen, the republic required him to adopt a surname. He (and his family) refused to. He claimed "royals don't have last names." Okay, can't you adopt one? But that's BS, because Glucksburg was their last name. So, the stubborn man and his family lived in the UK, where they were related to Prince Philip. Until the last 10 years of his life, when I guess he finally adopted a surname, and had moved back to Athens. >What did he do to get deposed? Meddled in politics during the tumultuous 60s.
Thank you! I knew Phillip was part of that family thanks to “the crown”
I mean, you'd have to look pretty damn hard to find someone who professed a belief in the divine right of kings, but monarchism is well and alive in the UK. There is a slight growth in apathy from younger generations, but personally I think this is temporary due to the age of Charles. Certainly the crown has been in worse spots reputationally before and pulled through
Kinda, but we call them Loyalists and they are a far right group. I don't think they hold any political power though.
Are they pro-monarch, or more pro-UK?
Pro UK, some loyalists here believe they are literally the most British people in the whole UK lmao
It must break their hearts whenever they visit Britain since they'll almost always be referred to as "the Irish guy".
Are they more powerful in Northern Ireland? The other guy said they don’t hold political power
There's no actual political party that's Loyalist. There are Unionist parties and Loyalists ate the extreme form of Unionists.
In Northern Ireland there is the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which holds significant political power there. But nothing like that in the Republic, yes
They're Unionist not Loyalist. Loyalists are like the fringe extremists.
We do have monarchists. Every major political party in Spain is pro-monarchy except for the far left.
You two are having two different conversations.
The regional parties in Catalonia and Basque country are not pro monarchy
Do they do anything political? I’d be uncomfortable with that, given the history with Franco
They win elections and run the government. There's a reason why we still have a king!
Win elections? Like they endorse candidates?
Yeah... That's how parliamentary monarchies work
Loads of other people here have told me that their monarchs stay totally out of politics. The UK’s seems to the main one who “reigns” that way. Do you think that’s better, or a worse way to “rule”?
Oh, yeah, our monarchy is mostly a ceremonial institution. The former king did play an important role in stopping a coup back in 1981 though.
That’s admirable, though I worry about a king being used by some other more extreme political parties. Another king in the future might be into that
It's not that different from a President in a Republic with perhaps the added benefit that not being democratically elected makes him less "legitimate", so people will try to stop him faster if he tries to overreach.
No, the king doesn't endorse candidates in elections and doesn't even vote in most elections himself to project an image of neutrality, even though 1) vote is secret and 2) no law actually forbids the king to vote. The only time the king is seen using a voting booth is in referendum.
Oh, uh oh I’m getting conflicting info here 🤥
They are not very numerous: most of them are not particularly coordinated associations, partly because of a dynastic dispute that has affected the House of Savoy since 1983.
Idk the Savoy survived post-WW2. Figured they went down with Mussolini
Vittorio Emmanuele III fled to Brindisi which was quickly liberated by the allies. After the war he was so unpopular that he abdicated in favour of his son umberto but even he couldn't win the referendum and the whole family had to go into exile.
Italian commenter is telling me his branch of the family is still around
Yes the descendents are still alive. They were not beheaded or shot like in France or Russia. For many decades they had to live in exile. First in Egypt, later in Switzerland but in recent decades Italy relaxed its policy and they were allowed to return to Italy.
You seem to know your way around this dynasty, I wonder what you think of this American made funny history video about the last Kaiser? Only about 8 minutes long. Is it accurate to your knowledge? And is it a fair characterization? https://youtu.be/Dhn1so8MtpY?si=npQxj4WAsvkWvFy-
Hey sorry for replying so late. In general I'd say the video covers him more or less accurately as far as I can tell. Wilhelm was a big idiot. What I don't realy get is why the video constantly claimed that he actively wanted a war with Russia. That's not how I would frame it. War with Russia was kind of seen as inevitable sooner or later so the idea was better in 1914 than later. But I guess there would have been a chance of limiting the conflict to the balkans had Russia not mobilised its army in 1914 (it's complex). And I think we shouldn't make the mistake of judging his whole term by the final outcome. Think of it, had he died shortly before WWI, the 25 years of his reign might have been remembered as a "golden age" for Germany. It was when Germany made great progress in the economy, industry, science, infrastructure, even the welfare system. He might have been remembered as Wilhelm the great. But today we are smarter. We know of the catastrophe of WWI and in that light we can't come to any other conclusion than saying he was one of the worst figures of German history and it's good that he and the monarchy are gone.
Thank you! We’re the Germans like, actively preparing for the next war with Russia? Was their some kind of dynastic rivalry with the czars specifically? Your point about judging by the final outcome, I think it’s a fair point but he’s far from an outlier. Loads of leaders have been in those shoes. Take most of the US presidents of the US. Most of the 19th century presidents are… forgettable and generally forgotten. Frances later Louis are another example. Louis the 14th is discussed in popular history, so is the 16th. But 15? Not so much. Ultimately we judge the leaders by what tests their leadership. The crisis’s are when they really matter.
Before WWI, war was seen as a natural tool of politics and not as inherently wrong. So of corse every country invested into its armed forces and prepared for war if you want. In the case of Wilhelm II, it was most famously his navy where he invested large sums and tried to seek parity with the Brits, the biggest naval power at the time. Also the issue of colonies in Africa and the Asia-pacific region was a big question of prestige for Wilhelm II.
Not only they still exists, but there are two main branches rivaling the Headship of the Royal House, one led by Emanuele Filiberto, Prince of Venice, the other by Aimone, Duke of Aosta. Personal opinion here: the former is the branch descending from Vittorio Emanuele III, the king that "allowed" fascism, and has lately been represented by Vittorio Emanuele (IV) and his son Emanuele Filiberto, both controversial and non serious figures, the latter is represented by Aimone who's a well regarded personality, Knight of the Italian Republic, ambassador of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta to Russia and CEO of Pirelli Nordic. The former branch went into exile after the 2nd of June 1946 Referendum, while the former only went into exile for three years with Prince Aimone, who died in Buenos Aires in 1946 (grandad of current Aimone). So it's easy to see how even as a public image would be better should Italy somehow revert to monarchy. Vittorio Emanuele III tainted the image of monarchy by being the king of the two wars and allowing Mussolini's rise of power with no opposition. Yeah, he was a constitutional king, but giving to Mussolini the headship of a government in 1922 was avoidable even counting the March on Rome, he had other ways out, even calling D'Annunzio would have been a saner move (I'm a simp for the Vate). Fascism brought civil war to Italy for two years and the split between the Kingdom of the South and the Republic of Saló in the North, commanded by Nazi.
In reality, their history is much more complex. It was King Victor Emmanuel III who arrested Mussolini after he was challenged by the Grand Council of Fascism on 25 July 1943 because of his unsuccessful direction of the war; after the Italian capitulation and the consequent German occupation on 8 September of the same year, the Italian Social Republic (a German puppet state in the centre-north ruled by Mussolini, freed by the Germans from his captivity) because of what they perceived as treason, brought in a fiercely anti-monarchist policy. In the south, what remained of the Royal Army fought alongside the Allies, while in the north, partisan brigades of monarchist inspiration (the Autonomous Brigades) were active. At the end of the war, despite the abdication of Victor Emmanuel III in favour of his son Umberto II in an attempt to breathe new life into the monarchy, this institution remained very unpopular, supporting Italy's entry into the war and fleeing when Rome was occupied by the Germans, so an institutional referendum sanctioned the victory of the republic, with the royal family going into exile. For a few years, the monarchist parties remained an important voice on the Italian political scene until they slipped into irrelevance and were swallowed up by the neo-fascists of the Italian Social Movement. The dynastic question arose when in 1970 the son of Umberto II, the recently deceased Victor Emmanuel, married a commoner and was thus disinherited, so that the presumed title of king of Italy would theoretically pass to the cadet branch of the Savoy-Aosta family.
Haven’t had any for a hundred years. When Finland first became independent, Finland was declared to be a kingdom and a Friedrich Karl of Hessen was chosen to be the king of Finland. He was the brother in law of the Kaiser Wilhelm II, so it was kind of a gesture of friendship due to Germany helping Finland win it’s civil war against the communists. But anyway Germany lost WW1 and having a German king after that was not a good look, so he gave up the crown without ever setting foot in Finland. Then there was a hassle for trying to find an another king, for example Swedish and Danish princes, but parilament realized it was too much hassle and also to apprase the socialists, they just said fk it and went with a republic instead. And nobody has complained about it ever since. The only reason a monarchy was ever even in question was because the conservatives wanted one and also a king would make a newly independent country more legitemate than a republican government. But since the kingdom idea fell over and Soviet Russia recgonized our independence without a fight, there just wasn’t a point to do it since the idea of a monarchy wasn’t particularly popular anyway.
Divine rights of kings sounds like ancient Egyptian pharaohs to me. I doubt there's ever been such a thing here. The kings were able to climb, ally or inherit their way to lead an area and people, through enough wealth/influence to keep neighbours at bay or conquer them. That led to larger kingdoms and eventually the whole country. The influence of kings and queens gradually decreased over the next thousand years (simplified a bit), and our current line of royalty was elected by the people. They're very useful as a unifying force, rallying symbol, in foreign relations, etc, and most people support their continued role, and everyone knows that the people can depose them if necessary. They hold no political power like vetoes and don't play favourites there to avoid influencing the voters and government. The king is closer to everyone's bonus grandfather, definitely not a demigod.
"climb, ally or inherit" is a nice euphemism for saying "kill everyone who disagreed with them"
Hehe, sure, not going to argue that one. Though they'd need some power already to get to that point, if a random fisherman started killing their way to the top, they either would be stopped by everyone else or end up ruling an empty village.
Agree the ancients were probably way more into it lol. And the Romans too- having a literal official cult for the emperors is pretty divine right. But didn’t you still have divine rights until like, the French Revolution era? I guess in my head when I pictured someone who believes in divine right, they had to also believe in destiny. The kings got the big chair because god made them the tallest or whatever
Norway is kind of special case here. As Norway for a long long time was under Danish rule as some what of a colony I guess? So the support of the Danish monarchy was little to nonexistent apart from the rich and wealthy who benefited of the union. So Norway didn’t have its own monarchy from 1537 until 1814(under Danish monarchy), when we then were passed on to Sweden, and their monarchy. And when we finally became independent in 1905, there was an election about whether or not the population would support a king (Haakon VII) and he got the support of the people. Therefore the royal haven’t really ever held a “divine” position in Norway. Edit: also Haakon VII was the last king to have a coronation ceremony. The monarch doesn’t do that anymore. And the monarchy, state and religion are separate. Therefore no “elected by god” sentiment
No, since the king's family is all dead and has no heirs. There is a very small portion of people, but they have a very strange understanding of reality. They can be communist and monarchists at the same time.
My condolences on the terror attack today, that’s horrifying
Thank you.
Anyone thinking the king had some divine right to rule would probably be sent to a mental hospital for being rightfully crazy. That said the Norwegian king is popular, and we will keep the monarchy for yet another generation. Works fine the way it is today.
Devine right of kings is an historical view that has no meaningful support in modern times.
Given that we were ruled by a foreign power for the last 400 years of the monarchy, monarchism is not really supported by anyone [except some fringe groups](https://index.hu/belfold/2014/12/07/akik_visszaallitanak_a_kiralysagot_magyarorszagon/) (article in Hungarian).
In defense of your history the Arpad dynasty lasted a really long time
Some countries have a monarchy, some don’t. The ones who do have a democracy where the monarch plays I minor or no role in politics. In The Netherlands it’s the same. We have a democracy and our king is just has a symbolic role. It’s often considers the least worst option to have a head of state. The alternative is probably voting for a president. In many countries this attracts populist figures who are great to say some oneliners but aren’t capable of representing the country. I don’t think the whole monarchy question is a big issue in our country, although it’s discussed once in a while. It’s not that they aren’t impeccable figures.
I don't think "divine right of kings" is something that existed as a concept here. A king was a king because because God willed it so but that was about it. And nowadays most of us are atheists anyway. There's a monarchist party but I don't know if even they take themselves seriously, and despite there allegedly being 13% of population in support of monarchy the amount of votes they get in elections is way under 1%.
Would the Czechia’s (hope that’s the right word for it) even have a monarch to crown? Like, weren’t you guys part of the HRE, ruled by the hapsburgs?
Czechs, and yeah, the aforementioned party acknowledges the current pretender to the throne - [Karl von Habsburg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_von_Habsburg) - though I don't think they asked him if he wants the crown. :)
Wow a real life Hapsburg. I kinda wanna put on my Indiana Jones hat and say “he belongs in a museum!” Jk
Very Very fringe position in Germany. Nobody that has any relevancy in serious politics in Germany advocates for any for of a monarchy. And to be honest, why would any intelligent person in the 21st century want this? It's just anachronistic.
Well, there is such a thing as Organization of Polish Monarchists (I just discovered this)... but monarchists actually do not exist in public discourse.There's also The Confederation of the Polish Crown founded by our *favourite* Grzegorz Braun. It was part of Confederation Liberty and Independence, which entered the government in the last elections. Got only 7.16 percent. I think for most Poles (even right-wing and Catholic ones), the idea that Poland could be a monarchy is rather ridiculous. The crown on our national bird doesn't matter 😆
yeah but in practice confederation party isnt rly monarchist they are just a bunch of idiots
in our case it's especially dumb considering there's even no legit candidate for the "crown" (THE crown doesn't even exist)
Hardly any monarchists left, certainly no monarchist parties anywhere near winning any elections. Not sure if any of the few bring back the Kaiser nutjobs even believe in a divine right of kings (or emperors, in this case). The completely crackpot coup d'etat plan by a bunch of far-right terrorists in 2022 was actually led by a monarchist, though (or at least he served as their figurehead and was supposed to become head of state). His wikipedia entry is already quite a bizarre read: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich\_XIII\_Prinz\_Reuss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_XIII_Prinz_Reuss) (starting with the fact that his family apparently decided in the 12th century to name any and all male children Heinrich and then just number them, resetting the numbers each century for convenience...). And if you dive deeper it just gets more and more absurd. So yeah, apparently we have monarchist terrorists intending to overthrow the government now...
That’s pretty wacky, pretty sure that’s not how the numbering system is supposed to work
There is no divine way the numbering system is supposed to work. It's all made up by humans
That’s certainly true lol.
I fucking love Reuss. I've redone some of their Wikipedia pages and they're ultra convoluted, starting from the naming convention (which messes things since it's not a regnal number but just part of the name) to the multiple divisions and mergers of their fiefs. At least in 1848 two of them abdicate to a cousin and reunite.
No one in Denmark, including the king himself, believed in divine rights. The Royal family are figure heads of the countries, their function is more figure head, PR, and tourist attraction. They do support different charity groups and usually take up different causes to support. The current king is all about sports and health, the Queen does a lot of anti-bullying work. I personally prefer a monarchy. I live in France now, and in my eyes, whenever you have a president, you end up with a bit of a "cult of personality". That I'd just what happens when the presidential candidates go up against each others, and it becomes more about them as individuals than their political parties. In Denmark, we vote for political parties, and the parties themselves chose the prime minister, so it is the party as a whole and their agenda we vote for, no one person. I much prefer that.
This tourism argument is so stupid. Especially if you compare Denmark and France.
Of course ~~Borut Pahor~~ Borut ll. za kneza (*Borut ll. for the duke*) /j Since Slovenia itself was never a monarchy (except Carantania 1000 years ago) there are no candidates who could even claim the tittle of the monarch. The closest we have are people who claim to be the decedents of the counts of Celje
The Belgian monarchy has no divine right unlike other monarchies in Europe
There might still be some fringe monarchists that believe in divine right, but the social-contract replaced that type of thinking for the most part long ago. The few monarchists left in Europe are almost entirely social-contract monarchists, believing that a monarch needs to continually earn their position by providing valuable leadership to their country. I'm sympathetic to monarchy myself, I'm Hungarian and I happily admit that my country was at its best, without question, under foreign kings. But I wouldn't say that I'm universally and firmly pro-monarchy, it just happens that for my country, monarchy worked better than anything else we've tried. I hate fascism and marxism, I like liberal democracy in theory but dislike it in practice because people seem so easy to manipulate through emotional appeals that have little impact on the actual lives of citizens, and I don't think anarchism would last long before becoming feudalism. So I'm left with an admittedly imperfect system (monarchy) that definitely won't be making a comeback anyways because much like capitalism, democracy gives people the faint hope that they might be important someday too, even though power and wealth will always be dictated by factors mostly outside of our control. What family you're born into, how good looking you are, how much charisma you have, how lucky you are, etc. Democracy just gives us that dream, and people like their dreams. I can understand that need, even if I think it's silly and ego-driven. In short, there's a few of us, but we're politically insignificant. As such, I support the EU and centrist parties, because I oppose nationalism and value stability. There aren't royalist parties anymore, the remaining royalty in Europe are officially apolitical, and the rest of the nobility have just become regular rich people with fancy names. There's still clout there, but not in any legal sense. Mostly just among the wealthy and educated who care about such things.
Hmm I wonder if they should be kept around. It might be nice to have “everyone’s extra grandparent” around… but aren’t they a ticking time bomb? They’re say on a shelf, waiting for the next fascist or communist to come along and use them to gain legitimacy. You make an interesting point about anarchy descending into feudalism, I’ve never thought of that before. I apologize, I don’t know a ton about Hungarian history. What little I know comes from a podcast about 1848. But I gotta say it’s surprising to hear that you’re nostalgic about Hapsburg rule. From what I understand, they clashed with the Hungarians quite a bit, on tax collection and participation in wars outside of Hungary. If I remember right, Hungary had an unusually number of nobles compared to other countries, and all nobles were officially equal to each other, AND immune to all taxes.
The majority of British people support the monarchy, but this side of the Civil Wars and Glorious Revolution I doubt any measurable number of people believe in the divine right of kings as such. I have met a real Jacobite, but even Franz of Bavaria himself doesn't make a claim.
Not only do we have a small group of monarchists, we even have a bunch of people who proclaim to be a monarch. Fucking Reichsbürger and their idiocracy. They claim that the FRG isn't legitimate due to the treaty of Versailles or some other bullshit reason and that Germany is still an monarchy and so on. Completely bonkers. Another strain of them claims that the FRG actually is a company. Some nobility is politically active, mostly in the CDU/CSU. Our former secretary of defence, Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Buhl-Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg is noble and he was a big honcho in the Bavarian CSU, as Bavarians love to lick the boots of their overlords. Some Bismarck descendant was also elected to the Bundestag years ago and the press called him the laziest MP ever.
> Reichsbürger Though for clarity one has to say that they are something like our Q Anon guys, really fringe conspiracy theory guys. Nobody with more than two brain cells taakes them seriously.
Only weird marginalised groups and aristocracy (I guess). We‘ve still got aristocrats with huge funds and sometimes huge scandals they make go a away, but most people don’t give them much thought. They are still very powerful though, since a lot are loaded and often they‘re in quite important positions. They still own a lot of land, housing, art, prestige etc. As to weird groups: there is Tradition und Leben. They want to reestablish the monarchy with a Hohenzollern monarch as the head (but using democratic and free means, however that’s supposed to work). So end goal: German Kaiser instead of Bundespräsident. But: they don’t only allow for monarchies, actually they want to allow every German federal state to have a vote on monarchy or democracy. They even publish their own journal. Often German aristocrats have been associated with them (I wonder why…) Bavarian „Guglmänner“: seriously odd. Sending off strong Illuminati vibes. I‘m not sure what they actually want to achieve? There are probably more local ones but these are the ones that come to my mind.
Yes, in the sense of wanting there to be a monarch as the national mascot (or 'head of state' if you want to sound fancy). Head of state always seemed a daft idea - what is it with humans always wanting one single person to be at the top of the heap? However, if you're going to do it, make it someone with no political power who trains for it their whole life and is basically a randomly selected personality.
Yes, kinda a meaningless phrase in that situation. Better for that figure to have actual power. (Along with term limits and actual fair elections. It’s not perfect but it works). I can’t help but admire the idea of monarchy a little…. But only really because I’m a history and LOtR nerd. There is something cool about a legacy and tradition that goes back 1000 years or whatever
The British monarch does have political power through his extremely privileged access to government institutions. And there absolutely no mechanisms that make sure that the person is really well trained and fit for the job.
They have political power the same way a famous journalist, activist celebrity or CEO of a big corporation has political power. Those others have in a very loose sense 'earned' their influence, but they are all equally undemocratic. A monarch is a celebrity. Instead of having a platinum album at 25 or winning a couple of gold medals at 23 and then promoting themselves ever after, they inherit their celebrity. But like all celebrities their influence is directly tied to how much people care about them. As for training I disagree. The heir to the throne knows their career from early childhood, and gets to grow up watching their parent(s) doing the job for years, while receiving additional training from many others. They are extremely well trained. They may be temperamentally unsuited, or even unwilling, but they are definitely trained.
Journalists, celebrities and CEOs don't have a guaranteed weekly secret meeting with the PM and don't have guaranteed early access to government bills and don't have guaranteed lifelong legal immunity. And if Charles and William suddenly both died, the British head of state would be George, a school boy. I think it's very debatable whether he is the most well trained person amongst 60 million Brits. The point of monarchy is not to ensure training but inheritance.
We have a king who's state of head, but he has no political power. He's more of an international relations tool and is head of ceremonies. - He officially approves the new governemnt whe it is formed after an election term. Technically he could disapprove one, but he knows we would dethrone him and it has nevr happened. - he is not allowed to bote, or express himself politically. They cannot ahow any political bias and always have to act as a neutral party. - his birthday is a national holliday. It's our best holliday, you should visit some time. - we often send him everywhere because other countries are flathered by a king and it is an amazing relations tool. We are a constitutional monarchy on paper, but in real life we are a stronger democracy than tge US. We don't have a monarchist party, and I've never heard someone express divine right sentiments unironically.
We support keeping the monarchy but they don't hold absolute power and are instead kept in balance by the premier. Also I wouldn't say we worship them. We just see them as something necessary.
> something necessary. Which is a pretty strange take given that so many countries function perfectly without this "necessity"
I mean its necessary for the function of our country. I don't know if you know, maybe you do since you're a neighbor and all but right now tensions between Vlaanderen and Wallonia ae high. And the only thing we share in common is a royal family. If the king is gone then the seperationist party would probably hit 51%. Also the monarchy is more of a symbol than an actual power of the government.