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Wet weather, dry eyes and hats know no homework in the modern world. In the end, the coronation of King Charles III was about as British an event as any that had ever happened in England.
Now, every aspect of the ceremony, the clothing, the participants, and the personal drama has been dissected and analyzed in detail. But the bigger question underlying the whole shebang isn’t too surprising: What is the point of the British monarchy?
We all know the usual explanations: tradition, pride, tourism revenue, sensational celebrity news to support the tabloid industry. (And the usual answer: Tradition and pride are bought at the price of blood and pain, especially in the colonies; tourists come to palaces instead of people; and the celebrity-royalty industrial complex is cruel to many who participate, especially those who have no choice whether to be born. )
But I think the more interesting answer has to do with the role the monarchy played in helping Britain solve an important dilemma at the heart of the modern state: how to design a political system strong enough to incentivize everyone to participate. it is, but not so strong that it becomes tyrannical and gives people the push to overthrow it.
This is a hard balance to achieve! And history is full of examples of what happens when you tip too far in one direction or another.
In a famous newspaper, theorist Mancur Olson, who studied how the state was formed, wrote that there is a fundamental problem at the heart of dictatorship and unconstrained monarchy when the leader does not expect to continue power indefinitely, or pass it to his descendants.
Leaders then have an excuse to drain resources from the country as quickly as possible, even to the detriment of productivity and stability – to get in and out when they get good. (For a modern example of what that looks like, look up “kleptocracy.”)
That’s bad for the country, which has been left with a cycle of political instability and an escalating economic crisis. For most of history, the imperfect solution was to create hereditary power, as rulers expected to pass the kingdom down to their sons. want to stay healthy. But that has some obvious downsides, most glaringly that the king’s job often does not go to the most qualified or skilled candidate around. And poor leaders, of course, can create their own problems.
Democracy solves this problem by turning politics into a repetitive game. Because there are regular elections, everyone expects a team that wins some of the time and loses some of the time. But that gives participants a reason to preserve and play by the rules: If you know you might lose, you want to know that you will get another chance to win after that.
As Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt write in “How Democracy Dies,” one of the key elements to democratic longevity is self-control. In a healthy system, politicians do not exercise power in a way that violates the spirit of the law or the norms of the political system, even if it is technically and legally possible, because they know that there is an interest in maintaining the ability of the system.
But often, parties are polarized and the restrictions are broken. The party began to treat each round of this kind of game as an all-or-nothing effort, playing political hardball to maintain its opponent’s power. In the United States, for example, when the Republican Party refused to fill a vacant Supreme Court seat until after the 2016 election, it was a legitimate power. But this is a stark departure from American political norms.
After too much of that kind of adversarial, unrestrained exercise of power, parties and politicians began to lose interest in continuing the game. Democracies are fragile, and often collapse into quasi-authoritarian or even dictatorial regimes.
In Chile, Levitsky and Ziblatt write, democratic cooperation declined during the Cold War, and norms of restraint crumbled under tension. Eventually, a faction of politicians on the right abandoned democracy, overthrew the government in a coup, and installed a dictatorship that lasted 17 years.
It is easy to forget, but the role of the British monarchy today is a reaction to the same problem. In the 17th century, King Charles I’s attempt to play hardball politics with an uncooperative Parliament led to a revolution (and eventual execution).
After the restoration of the Stuart kings and then the Glorious Revolution that put William and Mary on the throne in 1689, no political faction was strong enough to hold power on its own, and no one wanted to give the restored monarchy enough power to rule the country. enemy.
So the best option for all factions, Olson wrote, “is to agree to an all-inclusive increase in Parliament and take insurance against the power of others through an independent judiciary and a Bill of Rights.”
Over time, the king became almost a vestigial organ: there to observe and advise on political decisions, but never participate. But the fact remains already the king, even the one who is very thick and weakened, means that there is no need to create a new head of state, like the president. This meant that Britain avoided the dangers of presidentialism, which many political scientists now consider an unstable form of democracy.
And the unusual role of the British queen also creates a different obstacle for those who want to play political hardball.
Last year, for example, when Boris Johnson tried to save his party’s attempt to oust him as prime minister, he strongly hinted that he might try to call a general election to win a new general mandate. The move would be a significant breach of British political norms, which allow parties to form new governments after ousting their own leaders.
But to carry out the plan, Johnson needed the queen to call an election. And while custom may prevent him from refusing a direct request from the prime minister, there are other ways to exercise restraint. According to a new book, his advisers knew that if Johnson had tried to get a new election, he would not have been able to answer the phone that day.
And friendship begets friendship. Johnson doesn’t appear to even be trying. However, the next day, he announced his resignation.
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