7 ms·

When kings and princes grow old

43 points by bootload 16y ago

gwern 16y ago
> Yet the king is now thought to be 86. Er... Interesting.
lionhearted 16y ago
That's the biggest problem for classical monarchy - you want succession that's crystal clear to avoid fighting, but you also want at least a competent monarch. Those two goals are often at odds with each other - very clear succession rules with primogeniture (first born son takes over) often means you get a weaker monarch - someone like Puyi, the last Qing Dynasty Emperor, or Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the last Tokugawa Shogun. Sometimes you wind up with a monarch who is mentally ill, that happened notably a few times in Roman history. That's the biggest flaw with monarchy - succession is hard to get right. Historically speaking, competent and well-run monarchies outperform republics in almost all metrics except maybe military, but republics are insulated from having a long terrible reign of government by having a bad monarch. In a republic, usually you can get rid of a poor ruler within 10 years. The most effective monarchy succession plan is probably having the current ruler groom his successor and retire or alternate - that happened during the height of Rome with emperors choosing and grooming their successor before retiring, and it happened in Heian Japan with two branches of the Emperor's family alternating duties as emperor and jointly choosing the order of alternating a number of years in advance. Unfortunately, this system seems to be unstable - eventually someone can't resist the temptation to put their own child in power, even if they're not fit to govern. Then you get the despotic monarch again, and all the problems that entails. It's a hard problem to solve.
- hooande 16y ago
  Not to challenge you, but what do you mean when you say " Historically speaking, competent and well-run monarchies outperform republics in almost all metrics except maybe military"? The United States seems to have done pretty well as a republic in terms of average quality of life and gross domestic product. While it hasn't controlled as much land as the largest Roman Empire, I'd think that it has done more per capita than any form of nation in history.
  - nopinsight 16y ago
    This got me thinking about Singapore, which has recently overtook the US on the basis of GDP (PPP) per capita. Singapore's system is officially democratic, but in fact quite authoritarian with competent rulers. The direction of the country has been in control by the Lee family for decades, but they put a lot of smart 'commoners' to some of the highest posts in the country. And given the track record, few can argue against the ability of the Lee family in the areas of economic and overall material development. The city-state also has little corruption and its citizens receive some of the best education in the world. Does the example imply that such a "meritocratic monarchy" is the most rapid way to develop a country economically?
    - wazoox 16y ago
      If we consider the way South Korea went from profound under-development to first-world in 50 years under a somewhat autocratic republic with heavy economic dirigisme, yes, probably.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    > The United States seems to have done pretty well as a republic in terms of average quality of life and gross domestic product. While it hasn't controlled as much land as the largest Roman Empire, I'd think that it has done more per capita than any form of nation in history. I think you are overlooking Switzerland.
    - waterlesscloud 16y ago
      "You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." - Orson Welles in The Third Man
      - jacquesm 16y ago
        That's a humoristic but completely wrong view of Switzerland and the Swiss.
- Ardit20 16y ago
  On balance then, what would you suggest is better, an absolute monarchy, a representative democracy, or perhaps a mixture of the two?
- maw 16y ago
  The most effective monarchy succession plan is probably having the current ruler groom his successor and retire or alternate - that happened during the height of Rome with emperors choosing and grooming their successor before retiring True, and worth noting that the run of good emperors stopped once they stopped adopting heirs.
- sequence7 16y ago
  Really, the biggest flaw with a monarchy is the difficulty of succession? Not that the whole concept is based on subjugation of the populace and nepotism? A benevolent dictatorship seems a great idea if you're the dictator I would have thought that most people here would have realised that you won't be, and even if you were you shouldn't be. Yes it is a hard problem to solve but the first step is to abolish or disempower the monarch not to try and plan a more effective succession strategy.
jacquesm 16y ago
I'm surprised that in this day and age there are still 'better' people, it's not like we don't know that this is a fiction. In the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, England and a whole pile of other countries the royal families are pretty well entrenched. There is a whole media circus around them and there are still special laws on the books giving the royal people rights that ordinary people do not have. The most heard argument against abolishing these institutions is that 'you need a head of state' and 'a president costs money too'. I'm not really sure what either has to do with creating and maintaining a special class of people, and I can't imagine a presidency to be as costly and as messy as what we have today. Besides that, 'our' royal family isn't even Dutch, but hardly anybody seems to care, as long as the fairy tale is allowed to continue it's all good.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  Well yes and no. They have special rights (you often can't criminally prosecute them, for example) and special duties (the Danish royals must be Christians, cannot vote or say anything in political debates, etc) but on the other hand, we got our democracy without war or a revolution, so a lot of lives where saved by keeping the royals. But yeah, getting rid of them might be useful. (All of this is from a Danish perspective).
- masklinn 16y ago
  > In the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, England and a whole pile of other countries the royal families are pretty well entrenched. But in most of those places royalty is at best the nominal chief executive, with few if any factual power.
  - Ardit20 16y ago
    Technically however they have ALL the power.
    - arethuza 16y ago
      No they don't - the last king of England to claim anything like absolute power had his head cut off after a civil war. Certainly all European monarchies are constitutional: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_monarchy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_monarchy

43 points by bootload 16y ago

gwern 16y ago

> Yet the king is now thought to be 86. Er... Interesting.

That's the biggest problem for classical monarchy - you want succession that's crystal clear to avoid fighting, but you also want at least a competent monarch. Those two goals are often at odds with each other - very clear succession rules with primogeniture (first born son takes over) often means you get a weaker monarch - someone like Puyi, the last Qing Dynasty Emperor, or Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the last Tokugawa Shogun. Sometimes you wind up with a monarch who is mentally ill, that happened notably a few times in Roman history. That's the biggest flaw with monarchy - succession is hard to get right. Historically speaking, competent and well-run monarchies outperform republics in almost all metrics except maybe military, but republics are insulated from having a long terrible reign of government by having a bad monarch. In a republic, usually you can get rid of a poor ruler within 10 years. The most effective monarchy succession plan is probably having the current ruler groom his successor and retire or alternate - that happened during the height of Rome with emperors choosing and grooming their successor before retiring, and it happened in Heian Japan with two branches of the Emperor's family alternating duties as emperor and jointly choosing the order of alternating a number of years in advance. Unfortunately, this system seems to be unstable - eventually someone can't resist the temptation to put their own child in power, even if they're not fit to govern. Then you get the despotic monarch again, and all the problems that entails. It's a hard problem to solve.

hooande 16y ago
Not to challenge you, but what do you mean when you say " Historically speaking, competent and well-run monarchies outperform republics in almost all metrics except maybe military"? The United States seems to have done pretty well as a republic in terms of average quality of life and gross domestic product. While it hasn't controlled as much land as the largest Roman Empire, I'd think that it has done more per capita than any form of nation in history.
- nopinsight 16y ago
  This got me thinking about Singapore, which has recently overtook the US on the basis of GDP (PPP) per capita. Singapore's system is officially democratic, but in fact quite authoritarian with competent rulers. The direction of the country has been in control by the Lee family for decades, but they put a lot of smart 'commoners' to some of the highest posts in the country. And given the track record, few can argue against the ability of the Lee family in the areas of economic and overall material development. The city-state also has little corruption and its citizens receive some of the best education in the world. Does the example imply that such a "meritocratic monarchy" is the most rapid way to develop a country economically?
  - wazoox 16y ago
    If we consider the way South Korea went from profound under-development to first-world in 50 years under a somewhat autocratic republic with heavy economic dirigisme, yes, probably.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  > The United States seems to have done pretty well as a republic in terms of average quality of life and gross domestic product. While it hasn't controlled as much land as the largest Roman Empire, I'd think that it has done more per capita than any form of nation in history. I think you are overlooking Switzerland.
  - waterlesscloud 16y ago
    "You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." - Orson Welles in The Third Man
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      That's a humoristic but completely wrong view of Switzerland and the Swiss.
Ardit20 16y ago
On balance then, what would you suggest is better, an absolute monarchy, a representative democracy, or perhaps a mixture of the two?
maw 16y ago
The most effective monarchy succession plan is probably having the current ruler groom his successor and retire or alternate - that happened during the height of Rome with emperors choosing and grooming their successor before retiring True, and worth noting that the run of good emperors stopped once they stopped adopting heirs.
sequence7 16y ago
Really, the biggest flaw with a monarchy is the difficulty of succession? Not that the whole concept is based on subjugation of the populace and nepotism? A benevolent dictatorship seems a great idea if you're the dictator I would have thought that most people here would have realised that you won't be, and even if you were you shouldn't be. Yes it is a hard problem to solve but the first step is to abolish or disempower the monarch not to try and plan a more effective succession strategy.

jacquesm 16y ago

I'm surprised that in this day and age there are still 'better' people, it's not like we don't know that this is a fiction. In the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, England and a whole pile of other countries the royal families are pretty well entrenched. There is a whole media circus around them and there are still special laws on the books giving the royal people rights that ordinary people do not have. The most heard argument against abolishing these institutions is that 'you need a head of state' and 'a president costs money too'. I'm not really sure what either has to do with creating and maintaining a special class of people, and I can't imagine a presidency to be as costly and as messy as what we have today. Besides that, 'our' royal family isn't even Dutch, but hardly anybody seems to care, as long as the fairy tale is allowed to continue it's all good.

tomjen3 16y ago
Well yes and no. They have special rights (you often can't criminally prosecute them, for example) and special duties (the Danish royals must be Christians, cannot vote or say anything in political debates, etc) but on the other hand, we got our democracy without war or a revolution, so a lot of lives where saved by keeping the royals. But yeah, getting rid of them might be useful. (All of this is from a Danish perspective).
masklinn 16y ago
> In the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, England and a whole pile of other countries the royal families are pretty well entrenched. But in most of those places royalty is at best the nominal chief executive, with few if any factual power.
- Ardit20 16y ago
  Technically however they have ALL the power.
  - arethuza 16y ago
    No they don't - the last king of England to claim anything like absolute power had his head cut off after a civil war. Certainly all European monarchies are constitutional: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_monarchy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_monarchy