An advantage of choosing a person with ZERO obvious qualifications to be constitutional Head of State is that his opinions can be ignored! By choosing someone with wealth and prestigious ancestry, the “King” might be motivated to preserve respect for his family rather than motivated by greed. Some 20th-century Scandinavian monarchs “reigned” with a sense of duty and attraced great admiration and respect, as did Elizabeth II and her father.
Great wealth, which reduces the risk of corruption, is part of this approach. The Windsors may have more wealth than they “need” but then they DID inherit it legitimately, much as the Walton and Mars families have in U.S., and those families are MUCH richer than the Windsors.
The balance of power between Monarch and Nobles fluctuated back and forth over the centuries. IIUC the Tudors had the most authority of English monarchs. I agree that the Magna Carta, whatever importance it might have had at the time, is over-emphasized in the “big picture” of things.
Queen Elizabeth II was a useful monarch; although she had no power whatsoever, she could give advice to new Prime Ministers, drawn from her long, long experience in Parliamentary affairs.
King Charles III is also experienced, but maybe a bit more opinionated. This doesn’t matter, because Prime Ministers and the body politic in general can ignore him without consequence.
Even if a dickhead like Andrew were made king, he could be entirely ignored and ridiculed, and the political system would still work. But I doubt that the Monarchy would survive such an incumbent. The whole system nearly fell apart with George III and George IV, an incapable king followed by an appalling king, but the system re-established itself with the relatively sensible Victoria.
I’d be happy with a stochocracy, where the Head of State is chosen at random from the population - but only if that Head was completely powerless.
I am not overly familiar with the Canadian Constitution, but the reserve powers of the Australian Governor General (which are substantial) are not codified in either constitution or legislation and probably can’t be codified.
Can the representatives of the People not, at any time, install whomever they want as monarch, or declare a new British republic? Who is going to stop them?
The US Government is made up of three branches - Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. Citizens don’t vote for the Judicial branch. Rather, they are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Is this still democratic?
Always a tough question to answer. Are the people acting within the existing system to change from a monarchy to a republic? Or are they tossing out the existing system and replacing it with a different system?
I don’t know enough about the details of the British government system to say whether or not it encompasses that kind of change within it. I believe it does but I’m not certain.
The idea is that we have an indirect democracy. Citizens don’t vote directly on government policies. Citizens instead vote on representatives and those representatives run government policies.
So we don’t vote on presidents or supreme court justices. But we vote on the people who vote on presidents and supreme court justices.
If somebody wants to argue that indirect democracy isn’t real democracy, I’ll listen. But I feel it’s not the topic of this thread.
I want to explain this, but I feel like I’d just be retyping my earlier posts again mostly word for word, so I’m wondering if I’m wasting my time here.
But are you saying that the monarchy is not a part of the British system of government?
Because if you acknowledge that the monarchy is a part of the British system of government, then the fact that nobody votes for the monarch means that it is a non-democratic part of the British system of government.
Go back to the quote in the OP. If somebody wanted to demonstrate how democratic the British system of government was, why point to the non-democratic part of that system?
If in exchange Trump gets all their power removed, and he gets to sit in his marble bathroom far from the levers of power, occasionally wheeled out to say inappropriate things to visiting dignatories. While the true power rests with congressional leaders (who form a government based on the electoral majority and can be removed at any time by a vote of no confidence). Yeah I’d say that would be more democratic in theory.
So I’m Canadian, and as most people are aware our head of state is King Charles. Given he resides thousands of kilometres away, we have a Governor General that acts in his stead. The GG is appointed by the King on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, which is a direct parallel to the US Supreme Court. The GG is bound by The Constitution Act and convention to fulfill the objectives of the elected Parliament.
Is the argument here that the mere existence of a hereditary official — no matter how powerless that official might be in any exercise of any government function, and no matter how much the definition of that individual’s office might be constrained by constitutional terms written by democratically elected representatives — makes the country with that official non-democratic?
I don’t think we are in disagreement about the facts. It seems we have a different interpretation of what it means to say that a constitutional monarch went against his government. That is fair, but in the sense that is relevant to this discussion, it is important to say that H7 did not go against his government; by acting on the advice of his ministers, he maintained the continuity of the constitutional framework, ensured the legitimacy of the government in exile and denied legitimacy to the de facto government.
In Uzbekistan Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan’s authoritarian president since 1990, was re-elected for another five years winning 90.4% of the vote. Karimov’s hand-picked opponents all praised the incumbent as the best candidate @Little_Nemo says the citizens voted so this is democratic.
In Singapore the ruling People’s Action party, not adverse to thuggish suppression of opponents dominates the political landscape since winning a landslide victory in 1959. In 1968, 1972, 1976 and 1980 they won every seat. @Little_Nemo says the citizens voted so this is democratic.
While Beijing agreed to grant Hong Kong universal suffrage in the 2017 election, meaning that more than 5 million eligible voters will have their say on who is chosen as Hong Kong’s leader, but all candidates are screened by a majority pro-Beijing committee. @Little_Nemo says the citizens voted so this is democratic.
Vladimir Putin was re-elected as Russian president in 2024 winning almost 90 per cent of the vote. A result materially assisted with pliant opposing candidates and with leading anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny dying in custody in the lead-up. @Little_Nemo says the citizens voted so this is democratic.
Cite any other number of authoritarians who claim authorisation and legitimacy via expedient election processes.
In the US, via the partisan application of gerrymander, representatives chose their voters, rather than voters chosing their representative. @Little_Nemo says the citizens voted so this is democratic.
My take is that a democratic system may still contain within it a figure that is not placed in their billet as a result of a free expression of popular will such as suffrage (directly or indirectly), as long as the overall body politic’s policymaking, law/regulatory enforcement, administrative management, etc. ARE a product of the free democratic expression of popular will tempered by the Rule of Law.
“In a modern constitutional monarchy, the Head of State…” – more accurately.
Lots of people, including me, define democracy as including rule of law and fundamental freedoms, including freedom of the press, in addition to free and fair elections. If free and fair elections result in SDMB being closed, the U.S. will be less democratic than the UK, king or no king.
In Pennsylvania, our judges are all selected in partisan elections.
In Hawaii, there is a judicial selection commission. While most of the members are selected by elected politicians, two members are selected by the Hawaii Bar Association. The Bar Association, good as it may be, is not the product of normal free and fair elections. For one thing, Hawaii lawyers have to pay bar association dues to be members.
Does this make Hawaii a smidgen less democratic than Pennsylvania? No! While democracy requires free and fair elections, having every last decision directly or indirectly made by elected officials does not make a state more democratic. If Hawaii gets better judges than Pennsylvania, this enhances the rule of law and so could make Hawaii a smidgen more democratic.
Relevance to constitutional monarchy: Suppose that there is an extremely unusual constitutional crisis, as in Norway in World War II, when the King actually exercises a bit of power. Did that make Norway less democratic? Of course not.
Now, if the King of Norway routinely overruled a fairly elected legislature, that would make him a barrier to democracy.
Yes, of course, democracy requires that citizens have choices when they vote and they have to be able to vote freely without fear of the consequences. And the votes have to be counted fairly and the results of the vote have to be applied.
Why didn’t I mention all of this? Because it has nothing to do with the topic of whether a hereditary monarch is democratic.