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Hi Blog. As I am inundated with classes this fall (it’s my busiest semester ever), I decided to write about what was on my mind with the passing of a historical figure. Should monarchies still be allowed to exist when millennia have showed that there are much better forms of government out there? Enjoy. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.
(PS: This is the 3000th post on the Debito.org Blog since it started more than 15 years ago. This doesn’t of course include the posts made on Debito.org proper before this blog was started, since 1995. Long may we run.)
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Visible Minorities: Queen Elizabeth, Monarchies, and Progressivism
Shingetsu News Agency, Sept 19, 2022, by DEBITO ARUDOU in COLUMN
https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2022/09/19/visible-minorities-queen-elizabeth-monarchies-and-progressivism/
SNA (Tokyo) — On the death of Queen Elizabeth II, let’s talk about monarchies. Why do they still exist, and should they still be allowed to exist?
Monarchies are as old as civilization. Kings and hereditary power were once the norm worldwide, as they were the means to control land and offer protection for farming peasants, exchanging food supply for protection from invaders—when the system worked as promised.
But it often didn’t. “Good” kings were relatively rare and their legacies unsustainable. Sooner or later, the people got unlucky under some ruler whose only claim to power was divine right, suffering under a king or queen who had gotten a God Complex, or was being manipulated by an unscrupulous elite.
Either way, their regimes cared naught about the welfare of most people in their kingdom, forcing them to pay treasure to corrupt systems, sending them to die in meaningless wars, and leaving them dirt poor at the best of times or starving in the worst.
That’s the reason why today very few absolute monarchies remain in the world. You simply can’t trust kings and queens to look out for any interests but their own. It took a couple of millennia, but people eventually realized that a monarch, or any leader unaccountable for their actions, had to be reined in.
Most countries acknowledge that the best of all flawed systems is a government where people can choose their leaders. That’s why even one-party autocratic states have elections. Replacing leaders bloodlessly on a regular basis, under a franchise that expands suffrage to as many people as possible, on average produces a better minimum standard of living for all.
So why do so many stable advanced democracies, such as the United Kingdom, retain their monarchies?
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14 comments on “Debito.org post #3000: SNA Visible Minorities 38: Visible Minorities: “Queen Elizabeth, Monarchies, and Progressivism” (Sept 19, 2022), on whether royals should still be allowed to exist”
Excellent, balanced, thought-provoking; thank you.
Steven Fry reflected on monarchies in an interview … :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7FbQSp5caA
(1’30”)
… with a naughty twinkle in his eye, much as I suspect Debito had when he wrote this.
Part of me still inclines, however, to the Bolshevik solution: a bullet to the back of the head for each of them, their bodies dumped in an unmarked, abandoned mine shaft, their wealth confiscated and nationalized, their loot returned to the people it was stolen from.
People usually don’t consider monarchies in an academic way, as an abstract tool of diplomacy or governance;
they react to how the people involved play their roles.
“We” used to have QEII as head of state, now we have her cranky son? Bummer!
Ms. Maxwell is doing time, Prince Andrew is doing fine …
And we’re all just suckers for pomp and circumstance.
Well no, we really aren’t. It just depends on the person. I dislike most ceremonies and where reasonable avoid attending or watching them.
So why do so many stable advanced democracies, such as the United Kingdom, retain their monarchies?
Short answer; division of power, and popularity.
But this is a website about Japan so lets talk about or around the taboo subject of the Japanese Emperor system. Surely it is linked inexorably by association to a certain relatively recent mass genocide in its name?
More to the point, the LDP gerontocracy inheriting their seats in rotten boroughs, i.e. following the old fashioned UK system of a parliamentary demoracy.
I ll say this for Japan, at least the upper house is elected and not full of lords appointed by said monarch at the behest of the Prime Minister. Similarly, Japan has the Single Transferable Vote so some second placed parties are represented; this was incredulously rejected by the Uk populace in a recent referendum much to my horror. Apparently they were holding out for Proportional Representation. Well, they could be holding out for a few more decades!
@Bogfly, I take your humourous point but
-Bolshevik solution
= more like a panicked arbitrary decision by a faction within a faction as the white army were advancing
-a bullet to the back of the head for each of them, their bodies dumped in an unmarked, abandoned mine shaft, their wealth confiscated and nationalized, their loot returned to the people it was stolen from.
I doubt “the people” ever saw anything of that loot, directly or indirectly. Unless you count the Moscow underground train system. Looks like it was decorated with said loot.
Hardly a solution to aspire to. And especially these days, we need to finally eliminate violence and oppression from Russia- the last brutal outlier- and the European continent as a whole.
Ah, emperors.
The nationalists are prepared to die, and moreover, kill in the name of the emperor.
Woe betide anyone who says anything that could possibly be twisted into a criticism of the emperor.
Also, if the emperor states that the imperial line probably came from the Korean peninsula, ignore the emperor.
Well i spoke to a British man a few years back who said the monarchy made him feel British. Americans have Disneyland and the British have Buckingham palace, as a place for tourists. You need a monarchy to feel British? I could not understand.
@Brooke
“Americans have Disneyland and the British have Buckingham palace”
Yes the British royals provide exactly the same value as a theme park. The whole of UK is a glum theme park that most people don’t want to go to.
Conversely, the other side of the argument is monarchies deny power (and a lot of respect they crave) to wannabe dictators, and there are plenty of self styled “erai hito” who wanted to do things like ditch the western style constitution of Japan, implement even more racist discrimination Sono Ayako style apartheid etc.
So as a monarchy, Japan is inherently conservative, but that actually stops right wing radicals from actually anything too nasty or beyond the pale and there are plenty of them admiring the Nazis (looking at you, Taro Ass-Ho- it cuts both ways. We just get the same old, same old micro aggressions but ones who go too far like Makoto Sakurai are seen as the noisy extremists they are. I would say the only “rude” one who got away with it was Ishihara.
Think Weimar Germany with Hindenburg and Von Papen, but instead not letting an upstart like Hitler make things even worse.
I have always found it amusing that even Koizumi had trouble just trying to privatize the post office. Wow, what a revolution!
So a monarchy, unlike in the Weimar Republic, makes it nigh impossible for an Abe or a Sakurai or some other right wing upstart to accumulate even more power. It is frustrating nothing changes, it feels like it is frozen in time, but given the mindset of a lot of the politicians popularly elected, it could be worse with a presidential system.
@Baud,
Yes, this is interesting- both Japan and the UK have a monarchy whose primary goal is self preservation, and as a function of that it (inadvertently?) acts as a brake on the worst impulses of wannabe ‘back to the good old days’ extreme right ideologue fantasists fantasies of being the top dog.
“the Duce ruled the country on behalf of the King, who always remained the source of executive power. If the Grand Council, which was the trait d’union between Fascism and the state, passed a vote of no confidence on the dictator, the King would have been entitled to remove him and nominate his successor.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Fascist_regime_in_Italy#Two_parallel_plots
I think this is a good reason to keep a monarchy in Japan. Deny full executive power to the racist right wingers that keep getting elected. Oh boo hoo its not democratic but when did the ‘erai hito” or indeed not a few on the right in Japan care about that?
The inherent conservatism prevents any change at all. Including radical change from the Right.
I was never really a Royalist, but the last 12 years have swayed me into being one.
The past 12 years of UK Govt. are case-in-point as to why we need a monarchy.
Can’t answer for Japan, though.
@ Mat, Like the UK the Japanese monarchy denies and frustrates upstarts like Abe or even heaven forbid, a Sakurai type extremist from taking power like Hitler taking power from Hindenburg and Von Papen. Meanwhile it was the Italian king that gave the bad news to Mussolini that he was fired.
Its not completely democratic but lets face it, we can’t have a largely unrepentant, still xenophobic Japan scrapping the imposed constitution and re arming even more.
I was just reading today about the “contracts” filipina hostresses are made to sign and the penalties they are subject to, leading to debt, not to mention the fake marriages that bring them here, and how they are not allowed to go out, etc. It is basically human trafficking. And never mind the internship/trainee abuses. So all that exploitation of neighboring Asian countries is still there, under the surface.
I know there are those who think modern Japan is magically transformed from its genocidal, imperialist past.
Errr, think again. Can’t take the chance.
So, which is it, Japan? Revanchism that confirms the perennial mistrust of the continent you are unavoidably a part of, or genuine societal reform and a more inclusive, tolerant society as part of the G7?
Cant have it both ways, though you have been trying to!
The Japanese empirial line bears little resemblance to the UK royal family (the current branch of which are technically not legally the correct branch because one of their forebears was illegitimate).
The Japanese royal family function as a living reminder of the continued sacred line of Male Japanese DNA back to divinity. Hence it has a kind of religious function which the UK doesn’t really have.
@TJJ, I disagree.
UK monarch is head of the Church of England, which makes the prospect of a divorced princess (and mother of future king) converting to Islam/marrying a Muslim, and giving the king a Muslim half-sibling, a massive shock to the ‘conservative/traditional’ establishment UK.
Luckily for them it never came to pass, isn’t it?
After all, look how the UK establishment treated Megan Markle.