Monarchy and Political Adaption

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A large part of the answer to this question, though not all of it, has to do with the ability or willingness of the particular monarch and their successors to accept a progressive reduction in their political power.

The classic example is that of England, following the establishment of William and Mary on the throne in 1689. Their coronation was contingent on their acceptance of parliamentary supremacy over the monarchy in the critical areas of public policy which includes taxation, finances, the military and its command, and the religion adopted by the monarch (This agreement between the English parliament and the monarch may be thought of as a social contract, although it was a social contract that excluded the participation of the majority of the people).

Much of the subsequent political history England is the story of the increasing power of the parliament, especially the House of Commons, along with the declining power of monarchy.

Today, it is fair to say that the British King and Queen reigns rather than rules and that the primary functions of the monarchy are symbolic. It represents the continuity of the British traditions and serves as a focal point for the loyalties of British citizens.

Most contemporary monarchies have remained important institutions in their societies precisely because a succession of kings and queens have reconcile themselves to declining political significance. As in war, one may have to surrender in order to survive.

This contrasts vividly with the histories of monarchical institutions in France during the 18th and 19th centuries, in Russia during the first decades of the 20th century, and in Egypt and Iran in the mind-20th century. In these and the other countries that have eliminated their monarchies, royal authority proved unable or unwilling to alter its political functions along with political and social changes.

Typically, the monarch clung tenaciously to power and failed to encourage the development of parliamentary autonomy and exercise of executive authority by political leaders are not accountable to the throne. The king's reward for his intransigence was the loss of his life and the lives of his family and loyal supporters.

The faith of the Russian tsar also illustrates the point. Forced by the revolution of 1905 to convene a parliament or Duma, Tsar Nicholas II nevertheless manipulated its representation to get the results he wanted, censored the speeches of its delegates and refused the advice of his government ministers. The tsar's insistence on ruling according to the outdated notion of the "divine right of the Kings", which made him "accountable only to God" was especially intolerable in the context of his mismanagement of Russia's military participation in the First World War.

In fact, we might hypothesize that the more a monarch resists any reduction in his authority, the more likely that he is to be replaced or overthrown by a revolutionary regime that employs widespread violence to root out the vestiges of monarchical and aristocratic domination. This hypothesis helps to explain events as widely separated as those in England in 1640, in France in 1789 and 1848, in Russia in 1917, Egypt in 1952 and Iran after 1979.

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