Constitutional monarchy, also known as limited monarchy, parliamentary monarchy or democratic monarchy, is a form of monarchy in which the monarch exercises their authority in accordance with a constitution and is not alone in making decisions. Constitutional monarchies differ from absolute monarchies (in which a monarch is the only decision-maker) in that they are bound to exercise powers and authorities within limits prescribed by an established legal framework. The monarch is frequently perceived as a visible symbol of national unity.
The powers of constitutional monarchs vary. In some countries, the monarch has virtually no executive or policy-making power and is primarily a hereditary symbolic head of state (who may be an emperor, king or queen, prince or grand duke), while in other countries, the monarch has meaningful formal powers (such as veto power, appointment power, and power to dissolve parliament).
In countries such as Liechtenstein, Monaco, Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Thailand and Bhutan, the constitution grants substantial discretionary powers to the sovereign, while in United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms, the Netherlands, Spain, Luxembourg, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Lesotho, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Japan, the monarch retains significantly less, if any, personal discretion in the exercise of their authority. While many constitutional monarchies are democratic, some are not.
The Commonwealth realms share the same person as a ceremonial hereditary monarchy under the Westminster system of constitutional governance. Two constitutional monarchies – Malaysia and Cambodia – are elective monarchies, in which the ruler is periodically selected by a small electoral college.
Some use the term semi-constitutional monarchy to identify constitutional monarchies where the monarch retains substantial powers, on a par with a president in a presidential or semi-presidential system. Numerous liberal democracies restrain monarchic power in practice rather than written law, e.g., the constitution of the United Kingdom, which affords the monarch substantial, if limited, legislative and executive powers.
History
The oldest constitutional monarchy dating back to ancient times was that of the Hittites. They were an ancient Anatolian people that lived during the Bronze Age whose king had to share his authority with an assembly, called the Panku, which was the equivalent to a modern-day deliberative assembly or a legislature. Members of the Panku came from scattered noble families who worked as representatives of their subjects in an adjutant or subaltern federal-type landscape.
According to Herodotus, Demonax created a constitutional monarchy for King Battus III the Lame, of Cyrene, when Cyrenaica had become an unstable state, in about 548 BC.
Constitutional and absolute monarchy
England, Scotland and the United Kingdom
In the Kingdom of England, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 furthered the constitutional monarchy, restricted by laws such as the Bill of Rights 1689 and the Act of Settlement 1701, although the first form of constitution was enacted with Magna Carta of 1215. At the same time, in Scotland, the Convention of Estates enacted the Claim of Right Act 1689, which placed similar limits on the Scottish monarchy.
Queen Anne was the last monarch to veto an Act of Parliament when, on 11 March 1708, she blocked the Scottish Militia Bill. However Hanoverian monarchs continued to selectively dictate government policies. For instance King George III constantly blocked Catholic Emancipation, eventually precipitating the resignation of William Pitt the Younger as prime minister in 1801. The sovereign's influence on the choice of prime minister gradually declined over this period. The Fox-North Coalition came to power on 2 April 1783, in spite of the King's resistance. It was the first time that George III had been allowed no role in determining who should hold government office.
King William IV was the last monarch to dismiss a prime minister, when in 1834 he removed Lord Melbourne as a result of Melbourne's choice of Lord John Russell as Leader of the House of Commons. Queen Victoria was the last monarch to exercise real personal power, but this diminished over the course of her reign. In 1839, she became the last sovereign to keep a prime minister in power against the will of Parliament when the Bedchamber crisis resulted in the retention of Lord Melbourne's administration. By the end of her reign, however, she could do nothing to block the unacceptable (to her) premierships of William Gladstone, although she still exercised power in appointments to the Cabinet. For example, in 1886 she vetoed Gladstone's choice of Hugh Childers as War Secretary in favor of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman.
Today, the role of the British monarch is by convention effectively ceremonial. The British Parliament and the Government – chiefly in the office of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom – exercise their powers under "royal (or Crown) prerogative": on behalf of the monarch and through powers still formally possessed by the monarch.
No person may accept significant public office without swearing an oath of allegiance to the King. With few exceptions, the monarch is bound by constitutional convention to act on the advice of the government.
Continental Europe Poland developed the first constitution for a monarchy in continental Europe, with the Constitution of 3 May 1791; it was the second single-document constitution in the world just after the first republican Constitution of the United States. Constitutional monarchy also occurred briefly in the early years of the French Revolution, but much more widely afterwards. Napoleon Bonaparte is considered the first monarch proclaiming himself as an embodiment of the nation, rather than as a divinely appointed ruler; this interpretation of monarchy is germane to continental constitutional monarchies. German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, in his work Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820), gave the concept a philosophical justification that concurred with evolving contemporary political theory and the Protestant Christian view of natural law. Hegel's forecast of a constitutional monarch with very limited powers whose function is to embody the national character and provide constitutional continuity in times of emergency was reflected in the development of constitutional monarchies in Europe and Japan.
Executive monarchy versus ceremonial monarchy There exist at least two different types of constitutional monarchies in the modern world – executive and ceremonial.Ginsburg, Tom and Rodriguez, Daniel B. and Weingast, Barry R., The Functions of Constitutional Monarchy: Why Kings and Queens Survive in a World of Republics (21 May 2023). Northwestern Public Law Research Paper No. 23-29, U of Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 831, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4454620 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4454620
In executive monarchies (also called semi-constitutional monarchies), the monarch wields significant (though not absolute) power, though it is often limited to opting and dismissing ministers or other government officials. The monarchy under this system of government is a powerful political (and social) institution. Semi-monarchy is a distinct regime type characterized by a collegial executive, a hereditary monarch with substantive powers who appoints the cabinet, dual cabinet accountability to both the monarch and the legislature, and the monarch's authority to dissolve the assembly.
By contrast, in ceremonial monarchies (also called crowned republics), the monarch holds little to no actual power or direct political influence.
For instance, when Hereditary Prince Alois of Liechtenstein threatened to veto a possible approval of a referendum to legalize abortion in 2011, it came as a surprise because the prince had not vetoed any law for over 30 years (in the end, this was moot, as the proposal was not approved).
Modern constitutional monarchy As originally conceived, a constitutional monarch was head of the executive branch and quite a powerful figure even though their power was limited by the constitution and the elected parliament. Some of the framers of the U.S. Constitution may have envisioned the president as an elected constitutional monarch, as the term was then understood, following Montesquieu's account of the separation of powers.
The present-day concept of a constitutional monarchy developed primarily in the United Kingdom, where a democratically elected parliament and the executive government formed from the ranks of the majority party, led by a prime minister, exercise true power while the monarch remains as a largely vestigial and constrained position (in the Commonwealth nations, the monarch is bound to take the advice of his or her government ministers, and has very limited 'reserve powers').
Nations of the Commonwealth and European democracies are where much of the working out of the contours and limits of constitutional monarchs' powers has been done, primarily over the last century. In the course of France's July Monarchy, Louis-Philippe I was styled "King of the French" rather than "King of France". Following the unification of Germany, Otto von Bismarck rejected the British model. In the constitutional monarchy established under the Constitution of the German Empire which Bismarck inspired, the Kaiser retained considerable actual executive power, while the Imperial Chancellor needed no parliamentary vote of confidence and ruled solely by the imperial mandate. However, this model of constitutional monarchy was discredited and abolished following Germany's defeat in the First World War. Later, Fascist Italy could also be considered a constitutional monarchy, in that there was a king as the titular head of state while actual power was held by Benito Mussolini under a constitution. This eventually discredited the Italian monarchy and led to its abolition in 1946. After the Second World War, surviving European monarchies almost invariably adopted some variant of the constitutional monarchy model originally developed in Britain.
A parliamentary democracy may be a constitutional monarchy or a republic, differing only in terms of titles and rules of succession rather than in substantial exercise of power. In both cases, the titular head of statemonarch or presidentserves the traditional role of embodying and representing the nation, while the government is carried on by a cabinet enjoying the support - or at least the toleration - of a majority of Members of Parliament.
However, three important factors distinguish monarchies such as the United Kingdom from systems where greater power might otherwise rest with Parliament. These are: The royal prerogative, under which the monarch may exercise power under certain very limited circumstances Sovereign immunity, under which the monarch may do no wrong under the law because the responsible government is instead deemed accountable The immunity of the monarch from some taxation or restrictions on property use
Other privileges may be nominal or ceremonial (e.g., where the executive, judiciary, police or armed forces act on the authority of or owe allegiance to the Crown).