Absolute Monarchy in a Modern Setting

You mean like the USSR under Stalin?

Hey, the totalitarian Stalinist state is about the closest we've come to absolute monarchy in a modern-day setting. Well, then there's also North Korea, which is Stalinism dialed up so far that the knob broke off and the manufacturer was sent to the labor camps for sabotage, but that's not even minimally economically viable unless you've got at least one patron to mooch off of. Preferably two patrons that hate each other so you can play them off against each other, which is one reason North Korea did relatively well in the Cold War: it could play China and the USSR off against each other.

As was noted in Adam Ulam's The Bolsheviks, the big evolution in monarchy in the mid-19th century was that absolute monarchs could no longer take the loyalty of its citizenry for granted. Hence the development after the Decembrist Revolt of the secret police, which would take on the names of the Okhrana, the Cheka, the NKVD, the KGB, and most recently the FSB (and that's just in one country!). This is a bureaucracy dedicated to securing the "morals" of the citizens, which in this case meant "loyalty to the Czar". That's another book to recommend, as it examines Czarist Russia as well as the Revolution, and the czar's attempts at keeping absolute power in his own hands.

Makes you wonder, though. Would the N. Korean version of "absolute monarchy" work on a country the size and with the resources of the US? Or China & Russia combined?

Then, there's also the theocratic version of (semi) absolute monarchy that is Saudi Arabia. A prosperous country.

A government only can devote so many resources to oppressing its people before it just does nothing but siphon off resources that could go elsewhere. North Korea hit that tipping point a long time ago. Their "Oppression and Propaganda" budget far exceeds their "Food and Infrastructure" budget.

Of course, since North Korea is such a black box, we really don't know much about the actual goings-on in the halls of power. It is an absolute dictatorship, but it's probable that there are factions and people inside the State that compete for influence.

It's much how we learned after WW 2 that Nazi Germany wasn't the well-oiled fascist machine that it claimed to be, but was instead a bureaucratic tangle of agencies vying for power while the Fuhrer himself kicked back at his mansion or made speeches.

Or to put another example, the upper workings of the Peoples' Republic of China are largely hidden from public view. The higher policy decisions are made behind closed doors among the top few members of the Party.

Absolutist states don't like transparency. Even democracies don't have full transparency at a certain level. As Sir Arthur put it, "If they don't know what you're doing, they don't know what you're doing wrong."

edited 22nd Aug '14 3:06:47 PM by Lawyerdude

Only because Saudi Arabia is able to export raw resources like no other. Most countries don't have Saudi Arabia's sheer reserves of petroleum to be able to maintain that kind of distorted economy. Add to that the legitimacy the House of Saud gains by being the guardian of the Ka'baa, and you've got a state that's able to offer its citizenry a lot of economic upsides in return for not questioning their decisions. (Venezuela has the former but not the latter; mind you, its governance may be generously described as "batshit".)

Money quote from Birth of the Leviathan, by the way.

True, this doesn't quite factor in government-owned profitable enterprises. On the other hand, such enterprises need external supervision as much as privately-owned enterprises do in order to limit corruption and embezzlement. If the political power of an owner in those enterprises is such that he need not fear supervisory entities, you have a recipe for corruption and inefficiency. Worse, if he's got enough political power, the ruler may not be able to restrain him: an anti-corruption campaign can easily backfire if the ruler doesn't have the political clout needed to kick out the political heavyweights. Just as likely is that the campaign will be selectively targeted on his political opponents and rivals while leaving his allies untouched. (Hello, Xi Jinping's "Tigers and Flies" campaign.)

edited 22nd Aug '14 2:57:47 PM by sabresedge

So one issue would be the extent to which control of state-owned enterprises is given to one person vs. multiple people. Would the Crown appoint a single person to oversee something, or would it have a board of directors? Or in a corporation that is jointly owned between the Crown and private enterprise, there would be some Crown appointees and some private appointees.

In a single-person controlled enterprise, you have flexibility and the ability to get things done quickly. On the other hand, unless you have somebody watching over his shoulder, you create plenty of opportunity for corruption and embezzlement. With a group in control, you have people watching each other, but the risk of either collusion or institutional inertia.

Why only 'semi'?

Well, they don't control all the magacorps.

Do they lack the power to remove or seize control of all corporations in Saudi Arabia if they want to, though?

You can probably imagine the consequences if they pissed off the petroleum companies, or made Saudi Arabia such an unattractive working environment that no other companies want to work there. Venezuela did that, and it's currently the single worst economy in South America.

Foreign investment would start drying up if they tried, I think.

(Regardless of how absolute the government is, they need to have clear rules on what they can't and won't do with the national economy, or they'll die when the resulting anger boils over. My understanding is that that's why Romania is no longer a communist - or is that socialist? - wonderland.)

It definitely would. And now you know why nobody's willing to invest in Venezuela without extracting significant concessions from the government there beforehand.

Hey, just wanting to thank you all who have contributed to this thread. I've started writing a bit for myself, with the protagonist as a Naïve Newcomer into the ruthless system of the capital. It probably sucks flavor straws, but I appreciate the input. I'll continue to post questions I have as I go on. Again, thanks.

Reading this and remembering back to the politics of Star Wars, what about this idea:

A powerful nation is a monarchy with hereditary succession, but, in the event that the royal line comes to end (i.e. the last monarch had no heir) or that the current head of one proves unfit for the throne, that's when democracy kicks in, by which i mean it will left up to majority vote to decide who will be the next king and the first of a new royal line. It was a spur of the moment thought really.

Okay. First off, majority vote usually doesn't pair well with monarchic settings prior to the Industrial Revolution. The majority are peasants who would be lucky to own their own acre of land for subsistence farming—or serfs, who didn't count as people except when it proves advantageous for their owner. They are politically powerless. "Majority vote" would mean "majority among those people who actually count"—nobles, in most cases, probably some of the townsmen and traders depending on the society.

After that, it really depends on how much power the king has. You never answered this question in either the other thread or in this one, even though it's the vital determinant. Are we talking about an absolutist like Frederick the Great or the Russian Czars? Or are we talking about a heavily-restrained constitutional monarch like the Hanovers of Britain or the elected kings of Poland-Lithuania? Or something in between, like, say, the Kaisers of the German Empire? That will determine just how things will play out. One historical analogy, for instance, would be the Act of Settlement of 1701, when Parliament decided to change royal dynasties because their current king failed to produce an heir, and the next ones down the line of succession were unsuitable because of their religion. In actual political terms, the changeover didn't affect Britain all that much: the kings and queens were well on their way to being window-dressing anyway, but that was because political power in Britain increasingly lay with Parliament instead of with the royal house.

Okay, how about this: a different form of constitutional monarchy-

For the most part, the monarch does basically run the nation; he/she makes important decisions for the country (e.g. what to build and where to build it, the institution of a tax, what the army does during war times), has all of the perks of being royalty and is able to pass the crown down to a member of the younger generation.

But he/she does still require the approval of a senate of some kind when it comes to more drastic decisions (e.g. declaring war in the first place, increasing a tax and putting someone to death).

This way, the royal family does still remain in power, but the people will have a say in at least a few matters. It also means that the monarch won't be able to raise the taxes just to fill their pockets or kill someone or invade a country based on personal preferences. What do you think?

That sounds a lot like Wilhelmine Germany, or the Kingdom of France (or Second Empire), or any other polity where the legislature is kept around as a rubber stamp. Sure they can complain and annoy, but ultimate authority lies with the king.

It's also not a constitutional monarchy in practice, although it may well be one on paper. If the senate/parliament/sejm/diet/duma isn't powerful enough to set the agenda and to constrain the king, it's going to have a devil of a time meddling in matters of succession.

One thing more: this sounds more like a transitional stage than a long-standing state of affairs. Polities evolve over time, and the configuration you're describing is one that, historically, absolutist rulers took up only reluctantly, hoping to have the assembly as something to appease the rising tide of liberalism instead of seriously empowering it to rule (which would take away from their own powers and prerogatives). Sooner or later, something's going to have to give.

i had an idea for a system:

High-Monarch > Monarch > Candidate > Nobles who've formed political factions

the high monarch has ultimate authority but generally leaves the job of ruling to a monarch they decided on from multiple candidates (usually related to high monarch) taught by the rival political factions. the high monarch generally only rules in the down times between monarchs, but can intervene if they feel a current monarch isnt doing an adequate job; the new monarch is decided in a court debate where the various factions try to persuade the high monarch that their candidate is better suited; that their politics are whats currently needed.

in the case in which im using this system, the high monarch (empress in this case) is immortal; having been the ruler since the nations inception (a long time), she's viewed as an enlightened and wise judge, and as such is largely trusted as an authority over the current ruler. she herself avoids ruling all the time as a way of avoiding stagnancy (and secretly to herself, admits she also doesnt always have the skills for whats required).

i doubt its a very stable system though.

I just don't know what else to do. Like i said a few times, i'm writing a fanfiction where the main character is the absolute monarch of a powerful country within a world where magic and advanced technology exist side by side. And while i personally think that this character is a progressive thinker, i really do not want to see his country's monarchy abolished after him, maybe after a few more generations in the future, but not yet.

But no matter where i try to discuss this, every keeps saying that all monarchies come to an end and that the country's better off that way.

Well, yes. You're asking for a successful reform-from-above transition from authoritarianism to democracy (or at least milder authoritarianism), and those are extremely difficult to pull off without everything coming off the rails. Multiple Russian czars, from Catherine the Great to Mikhail Gorbachev, have tried it, only to discover that reform and liberalization in an authoritarian edifice is like a crack in a dam: it keeps wanting to spread beyond what was intended.

Remember de Tocqueville's observation: the most dangerous time for an autocracy is not during the worst of the repression. It is when the repression eases, because that's when the people will demand more and more liberties. There are many instances of king-reformers in world history. The trouble is, each reforming step inevitably threatens their own power base, and the power base of the nobility, because far-reaching reform doesn't just mean affecting their own power, but the entire sociopolitical structure of the country.

What about a theoretical stratocracy? How could that work from top to bottom? Military chiefs in legislative executive and judiciary positions? Specific branches for different parts of the government?

The three-branches-of-government division the US uses was pretty much designed from the ground up to restrict the power of any one branch. This wouldn't really exist in a system where the executive (the king) completely overpowers both the legislative (the near-powerless senate) and the judiciary (who would be appointed either by royal decree or by action of the senate).

It might be an innovation the king would be tempted to introduce, but that would mean pulling off the transition successfully, and that's very difficult to do.

Also, you'll notice that the system leaves out any political role for the actual military. This is fully intentional; you do not give actual political power to the men with the guns. That's the soonest way to find the military taking over and establishing a military dictatorship.

Well I meant more as a starting point, lmao not from monarchy to stratocracy

Is it still an absolute monarchy if it's in this scenario:

When electing a party in Parliament, the winning party can only be determined by the reigning monarch, who should be the last to vote, and whatever party he or she votes, wins the majority of seats, even if said party didn't have more votes than the others.