AHC: Parliaments for All!

Growing up, I took a dim view on the idea that the United States was such a bastion of democracy that we pretty much invented the thing after the rest of the world ignored it for 2000 years after the end of the Classical Era.

I have since taught myself to know better. But one of the things that has always fascinated/confused me is that, while democracy was not a real issue, representation in government was almost universal in Europe (sort of). It seems to me that almost every country in Europe had its own parliament/estates/states/whatever you want to call it consisting of representatives of the crown, the clergy, the nobility, and the burghers divided into one to four chambers. However outside out what became the Netherlands and what became Great Britain, these groups seemed to be little more than minor annoyances to any reasonably motivated king.

I think asking for more countries in Europe to reach the state where they all have a powerful and native congregation of the estates of the realm, is there any way to:

  • Limit or prevent absolutism AND
  • Create nation states in Europe (as opposed to collections of balkanized states based around free cities and feudal polities) AND
  • Have a large(r) number of European states where the parliament/estates/states-general has at least a functional share* of power?

*-By functional share I mean the king must consult them from time to time or risk losing his head. As an example, the relation between Charles I and Parliament where he feels he doesn't need them and they disagree with a fine enough point that the king can do little without them.
 

Thande

Donor
Well it's worth bearing in mind that the absolutism of the 18th century European monarchs was not a starting point which parliaments tempered, rather the reverse. Parliaments (or estates of the realm might be a more neutral term) in this era were primarily a forum in which nobility from all across the country were represented, and this often made it very hard to get anything done because every region('s nobility) wanted its own privileges and pound of flesh (compare pork barrel spending in the US today). Making it very hard to raise taxes on nobles because a coalition of them in the estates could band together to block it, so the unrepresented or less represented peasantry tended to get the sharp end of the stick whenever the king needed to get more income for the treasury. Absolutism was not 'I have the divine right muahahaha and this is the way things have always been', it was 'our experience of rule with the consent of the estates is that it leads to corruption and mealy-mouthed compromise with vested interests, so therefore only if one man holds all the power can he rule fairly and wisely for the benefit of all'. Obviously it didn't work out that way, but that was the theory. Divine right was invoked as a justification, but it wasn't the real reason behind absolutism--sort of like how if you want to pass a law in the US today you might argue that the founding fathers would want it, but that's just a justification for an idea you separately had, you're not pursuing that law BECAUSE you had some revelation in a dream that George Washington was a huge fan of ethanol subsidies.
 
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