Abstract
I argue that monarchies, in any possible form (absolute or constitutional), should be abolished once and for all. This is because of the deeply immoral presuppositions such a system of government upholds (implicitly or explicitly). Call this ‘the moral argument against monarchy’. I identify three basic moral principles that monarchy by definition breaches: ‘the basic moral equality principle’, ‘the basic dignity principle’ and ‘the basic moral desert principle’. Finally, I examine and reply to three objections, including the common objection that constitutional monarchy should not be abolished because it is pragmatically useful.
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Notes
Monarchy is to be carefully distinguished from autocracy. Nominal democracies can be largely autocratic, as nowadays it is the case with Putin’s Russia, **’s China and Erdogan’s Turkey, and nominal constitutional monarchies, such as the UK, Spain, Norway and Denmark, can be fully democratic. For how democracies can die and slip into autocracy or dictatorship, see Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018).
As of today, 43 sovereign states have a monarch, including 15 Commonwealth states. See Wikipedia entry on ‘monarchy’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy.
Αccording to von Daniels (2018), political power can be defined as access to executive authority and, therefore, symbolic power is real political power.
I should clarify that although I argue that monarchy as an institution should be abolished, I do not mean to imply that all monarchies (absolute or constitutional) are equally morally unjustified. The oppressive, absolute Saudi monarchy is morally repugnant in a way that makes European constitutional monarchies appear almost angelic. Still, insofar as monarchies are all to some extent based on immoral presuppositions, we have good practical reason to abolish them; or so I briefly argue here. Thanks to an anonymous referee who raised this important point of clarification.
Saudi Arabia has no constitution, no parties and no elections. Since 1992, the Basic Law of Saudi Arabia has been adopted by royal decree. The Basic Law states that the king must comply to Sharia and the Quran. Thereby, as I understand it, Saudi Arabia is a version of theocratic absolute monarchy.
This is a broadly Parfitian (2011) point, in the sense that all major moral theories seem to be ‘climbing the same moral mountain from different sides’, if I may use Parfit’s own metaphor.
See Williamson (2018) for a defense of the abductive methodology in philosophy.
See Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, (X. ix, pp. 22–23).
It is a good question what the exact meaning of ‘the West’ is. An anonymous referee suggests that the West comprises of the countries of the Organization for the Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). But although most member countries of the OECD definitely belong to the West, not all of them clearly are (e.g. Turkey) and being ‘Western’ cannot just be a matter of membership of an organization. It is, I think, primarily, a matter of culture, values and ethos. In any case, I cannot delve into this difficult matter here.
As Kymlicka (1990, pp. 3–5) points out, ‘every plausible political theory has the same ultimate value, which is equality…the idea of treating people “as equals”…[it] is found in Nozick’s libertarianism and in Marx’s communism’. The notion of equality at play here is what is sometimes called formal equality, and not substantive equality. Compare Nagel (1991, p. 131): ‘Moral equality, the equal primary importance of everyone’s life, does not mean that people are equal in any other respect’, e.g. socio-economic conditions. For an introductory discussion of the history and philosophy of democracy, see Crick (1991).
Pro tanto equality does not imply that we cannot institute some normatively principled inequality for the purposes of reparational justice, as it happens with affirmative action—this is why it is only pro tanto equality. See Sandel (2009) for some discussion of affirmative action.
We should note that we assume here what Darwall (2006) has called ‘recognition moral worth’ and not ‘appraisal moral worth’. Obviously, we are neither morally nor intellectually equal in terms of the latter—unfortunately, most of us are neither a mother Theresa nor an Aristotle.
This is one of the basic reasons why democracies die. See Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018) for discussion.
As Augustine has famously said, lex iniusta, non est lex (an unjust law is not a law). For instance, the Nazi Nuremberg laws of 1935 were not really law because they were unjust, antisemitic and racist laws.
See Clapham (2015) for some discussion of human rights.
As Hankins (2010) makes clear, the modern idea of ‘exclusive republicanism’, namely, the idea of a republic entirely free of monarchical rule goes back, at first, to the discursive practice of the concept of ‘respublica’ in the Italian humanist Renaissance of fifteenth century and became prominent only in late eighteenth-century republicanism. Especially important for the establishment of the exclusive non-monarchical understanding of the concept of ‘respublica’ is the work of the Florentine humanist Leonardo Bruni (1370–1444). According to Hankins (2010), there are no inklings of exclusive republicanism in premodern Roman or medieval texts. Thanks to an anonymous referee that brought to my attention the fascinating history of the concept of ‘respublica’ and how it relates to the rise of modern exclusivist republicanism.
See Plato’s Meno (94 A-E) for discussion.
See Wierenga (1989) for some discussion of the Anselmian, classical theist conception of the nature of God.
Siedentop (2015) has argued that the rise of the modern individual with her rights and liberties is to some extent the outcome of the gradual prevalence of Christianity’s moral values in the West. Waldron (2002) has argued that Locke’s views on moral equality were influenced by his Christian beliefs.
Compare Locke (1689[1960] p. 142, Ch.1, § 2): ‘His system [i.e. Filmer’s monarchy] lies in a little compass, ‘tis no more but this, That all Government is absolute monarchy. And the Ground he builds on, is this, That no Man is Born free’. And Rousseau (1762[2003], p. 2006 Book II, Ch.4): ‘… the social compact sets up among the citizens an equality of such a kind, that they all bind themselves to observe the same conditions and should therefore all enjoy the same rights’.
At the time, basic moral equality and other rights were understood to apply only to white free men and, therefore, the thesis still had a lot to be desired. But as Singer (1981) has argued, what Sidgwick called ‘the circle of morality’ has been gradually expanding to include non-whites, non-men, slaves, non-human animals and even inanimate nature.
Indeed, it clearly conflicts with Rawls’s (1971, p. 53) first principle of justice, which reads as follows: ‘First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others’. It conflicts because it restricts the ‘scheme of equal basic liberties’, e.g. ‘commoners’ cannot be part of the core royal family (although they could, in principle, be part of the extended family by marriage) and occupy royal office. Of course, Rawls (1971) was a critic of moral intuitionism, which is the moral framework assumed here, and I although I disagree with his ‘argument from original position’ that purports to justify the first principle of justice, I think the principle does constitute a moral truth. I have to waive my points of disagreement with Rawls (1971) here.
Of course, Martin Luther King was referring only to the normatively irrelevant variable of skin color, but his point is easily generalizable to other irrelevant variables. I accessed the famous speech from The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History here: https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/king.dreamspeech.excerpts.pdf.
As Strawson (1992, p. 136) indicates, moral desert is closely tied to moral responsibility.
For some recent discussion of the perennial ‘why be moral?’ question, see XXX.
I have gleaned the Orwell quote from the Internet. There are various sources of this quote on the Internet. Here is one: https://bengould.wordpress.com/2017/08/11/george-orwell-on-constitutional-monarchy/
In 1936, the pro-Nazi Edward VIII abdicated in order to be in position to marry a divorced woman, something unacceptable at the time. I am not aware of the British political climate at the time, but one may wonder how it could have impacted British foreign policy if he had stayed in office.
Prince Harry (2023) seems to be a recent example of abdication, as he describes in his book Spare. Prince Harry also seems to make explicit the cost of not being first born in a royal family (in the aristocratic adage of ‘a heir and a spare’). You come second in attention, love and care because what really matters is the continuity of the royal house. Hence, royalty reproduces a traditional hierarchical family structure that leads to treating the non-first born as something of a spare. Japanese royalty is even worse, as it privileges male offspring over female for succession to office. This is another immoral feature of the institution of royalty.
Another moral reason for the abolition of monarchy derives from the point of view of reparations justice. Monarchy is an institution that, arguably, took hold as a form of government via oppression, extortion, intrigue, murder and exploitation. Presumably, it often happened that monarchy was established by brute force, without the voluntary consent of the people, or the subjects. If this is the case, then abolishing monarchy would be one way to make amends to all those that have been historically wronged by monarchy. Another way to make amends would be to invest the public endowment granted by the state to royals to social welfare in support of the underprivileged and people in need, especially in ex-colonies that were subject to economic extraction.
Acknowledgements XXX.
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Kyriacou, C. The Moral Argument Against Monarchy (Absolute or Constitutional). Res Publica 30, 171–182 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-023-09627-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-023-09627-x