AHC Democratic Divine Right

I challenge all of you to make a liberal democracy that bases its political legitimacy around the theory of divine right.

EDIT without any religious organization having any role in government.
 
Modern constitutional monarchies such as the United Kingdom are democratic and have the concept of divine right.

So, OTL.
 
My understanding is that this is how the papacy operates: the cardinals are guided by the holy spirit into voting for the 'right' option. So you'd need some kind of Christian polity that needs to determine a leader and imbue them with legitimacy, but is doing so prior to the rise of humanistic ideas. So I suppose you'd need some kind of isolated colony (I want to say a Catholic one, since in my understanding the holy spirit isn't particularly played up in any major Protestant lines) that suffers a succession crisis, and does so often enough to establish this as a precedent. Human ideas that supply the 'liberal' side of the equation are introduced later but the pageantry and constitutional understanding of the 'president' of this colony being appointed by divine right are sufficiently established as to resist a change in language.

I have no idea where a polity like this could form, or the historic forces needed to make it happen. Maybe continued Moorish hegemony over Iberia drives Catholic settlers to America a few centuries early but they then become cut off, but are recognised as a 'Prestor John' kind of case when the continent is rediscovered so they are accepted into the wider Christian/Western cultural sphere rather than plundered? It's an ASB scenario but I'm not sure what else could fulfil those requirements.
 
A democratic theocracy would work for this prompt. Basically a normal democracy but where public opinion states that the electoral victor won because "god wanted them to". Seems like modern Iran would be the closest to this.

It's actually difficult because the very premise of divine right means that there is no reason to separate church and state as they are inherently linked.
 
Does this describe Israel? Israel is a Jewish state based on the notion that God gave the Jewish people a home in the Levant. So the legitimacy of the state of Israel and its right to exist are based on divine right while it simultaneously functions as a liberal democracy.
 

Philip

Donor
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the goal, isn't this the sentiment expressed in the US Declaration of Independence? That man is endowed by his creator with certain rights and that legitimate government arises only from their consent?
 
I believe that's a big part of certain Islamic political theories. The state and its authority is grounded in divine religious law but a part of that law includes consultation between the rulers and the community. OTL the Islamic Republic of Iran fuses together elements of democratic government with clerical/theocratic oversight and support for democracy, grounded in Islamic modernist philosophy and theology, is a long-standing plank of the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology.
 
The German Peasants' Revolt of 1525 is more-or-less successful in estabilishing a republic in Bavaria (perhaps due to Luther deciding to support the peasants instead of the nobles), and Protestantism ends up with a democratic bent.
 
Isn't that the English Commonwealth? Though not a theocracy, many of its leaders were deeply religious. Alternatively, the Puritan colonies in New England, or even the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania.
 
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With divine right monarchies, the idea is that God expresses his will of who is to rule by them being born into the ruling dynasty; with democracy, you just need to have it reframed as God expressing his will through moving the people to elect a particular magistrate.
 
A literal interpretation of "Vox populi, vox dei"?

The Argentine constitution invocates God as the "source of all reason and justice". Maybe an ATL constitution (not necessarily the Argentine one) goes further and holds God as the source of all just laws.

Of course this can be exploited by fundamentalist groups. Maybe it would work better in reforming European monarchies, or an ATL where socialism and leftism is more open to religious ideals.
 
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the goal, isn't this the sentiment expressed in the US Declaration of Independence? That man is endowed by his creator with certain rights and that legitimate government arises only from their consent?
The declaration of independence has no legal effect on the U.S. constitution or it's laws. The U.S. is very secular in it's constitution.
 
Manifest Destiny was basically this. Speeches by 19th century American presidents occasionally reflected a combination of democracy and divine right.
 
I challenge all of you to make a liberal democracy that bases its political legitimacy around the theory of divine right.

EDIT without any religious organization having any role in government.
Modern Iran does not really fit the "liberal" bit, but does otherwise fit the bill to some extent, depending how you regard the role of the "clergy" (well, "academia" would be a better word) in its government. There is an Islamic Republican understanding of politics that could easily lead that way, based upon the concept that the Muslim community as a whole cannot err, and thus a democracy would always follow the divinely guided path. The idea is very old and deeply rooted in Islam, but never got large scale institutional implementation before Modernity* and has been only imperfectly applied in most recent times. Iran doesn't exactly count in this regard as the inerrant community is a Sunni idea, while Iranian Shi'i Islamic republicanism is based on the vacancy of the Imam's office; the "divine right" there falls on the scholars who are caretakers for the absent Imam and (theoretically) have no divine right by themselves. There is a large opposition movement in Morocco that wants exactly that (a religiously inspired democracy based on the divine right of the community, as opposed to the king) but, while they have a significant following, they are nowhere near power or any likelyhood of getting it. However, I think that Islam may offer a more fertile ground for democratic divine right than Christianity.
* Khariji groups in North Africa and Ismailis in the Gulf created small "republics" on this basis in the Middle Ages, some of these relatively long-lived. It was pretty marginal, doctrinally and geographically, and the largest and stablest of these things always leaned toward re-establishing a sort of dynasticism albeit limited. Also, by no means they were liberal democracies, of course. The governing community was strictly sectarian and never truly egalitarian within, with a few notables being paramount.
 
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Does this describe Israel? Israel is a Jewish state based on the notion that God gave the Jewish people a home in the Levant. So the legitimacy of the state of Israel and its right to exist are based on divine right while it simultaneously functions as a liberal democracy.
Well, historical Zionism was very secular in its nature at the start. The "divine right" thing exists in Israeli public discourse but it would be exaggerated to say it is basis on which the country exists. At the very least, not the only one. The main impetus for Zionism was never (until very recent times) the idea that God gave Palestine to the Jewish people, but rather that Jews were being either assimilated (at best) or persecuted and exterminated in the Diaspora, therefore needing a "safe haven". The religious aspect of the Covenant was present but not prominent, and in general the early Zionist leadership (Ben Gurion, Herzl, Weizmann, Meir, even Jabotinsky) did care little for that.
Also, many people challenge the "liberal" bit about modern Israel (partly exactly because of the prominence of these religious elements). A "theodemocratic" Israel is certainly a possibility in the right circumstances, but it would be quite different from OL's Israel.
 
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