The main royal candidat for Estonian monarchist party was not Carl-Philip of Sweden, but Prince Edward, the youngest son of Elizabeth II.
Former SSRs going monarchist?
- Thread starter Coqui
- Start date
Crazy Boris
Banned
A dictator is a uniquely republican phenomenon, since it’s tied up in the political machines inherent to republican government (the word comes from the politics of the Roman Republic, after all). A republic aligns with the concept of the aristocracy of orators in that it thrives off of conflict and dogma, the manipulative game of left and right played by parties and media to stir up popular support to prop itself up. It’s not reliant on its own merits, a republic survives on forcing people to like it, by psychologically conditioning them to be part of it, and morally grandstanding to pressure support and place the burden of politics on everyone, using “us vs them” rhetoric, overly simplistic worldviews, and strategic misinformation to justify that burden and bring support to itself. There’s no inherent merit in a republic, it’s just playing with psychology and the overly idealist assumption that the popular opinion will be the best or right opinion, which is questionable on the surface but made even more shaky when popular opinion is being intentionally manipulated through dishonest means to try and force a party into power. Popularity does not equal merit. There are hereditary dictatorships, DPRK, the Duvaliers, etc., but they derive their legitimacy from the party, they’re tied into petty politics just as much as a regular dictator or an elected official.
A monarchy on the other hand is simply fate, no parties, no ideologies, no elections, rigged or real. At its core, it’s divorced from most politics and is almost akin to a family business, except the business in this case is a country. Some might argue that having an heir trained specifically for the job without any interference from populist whims or party politics is more meritocratic than an elected official, since you don’t get the job by telling easily swayed yokels what they want to hear and toying with their emotions to make yourself look good and the other guy look bad in some glorified popularity contest, you get it by sheer coincidence and you’re drilled to have a sense of duty to fulfill the obligations that fate has placed on you. A monarch is a monarch whether he wants to be or not, George VI broke down in tears when he found out he was king, it was a job he never wanted and he wasn’t prepared for, but he did his best and is undoubtedly one of the most respected and revered British sovereigns in recent history. Douglas Adams once said that the people who want to rule are the least suited to do so, not unlike Plato’s idea of a reluctant philosopher king. If you ascend a throne, you didn’t get there because you’re a power-hungry egotist like most politicians, you’re there because fate has burdened you with a duty to lead.
A dictator is built on ambition, not fate. A monarch is built on fate, not ambition.
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But can such a fine line be drawn between fate and ambition? After all, a man's fate is often informed by his ambitions, and the fate of an entire dynasty may rest upon the ambitions of its founder.
Modern British monarchs certainly rule by fate, yet nobody will argue that William the Conqueror (or hell, even William and Mary) didn't desire the Crown. Likewise, were it not for the accidents of history, Napoleon, who was certainly a man of ambition, could have easily given rise to a Fourth Race of Kings selected to rule by fate.
Over time a monarchy will establish its legitimacy through fate, but every great dynasty must begin with someone driven by ambition. And who's to say that the great man's ambition was not itself fated to take place?
Crazy Boris
Banned
fair point, but with a few exceptions like Napoleon, those dynasty-founding kings and queens didn't establish themselves by the modern-style political machinations, but through some other thing, be it conquest or being selected by a witan or khural etc.
America (Loyalists were a minority in the American Revolution - granted that it was not really an overthrowing in the classic sense of the word, but it was still a rejection of monarchism), Mexico, Italy and Greece and many others beg to differ. You can add post-Second Empire France as well.
Monarchism is and has been a fringe for a long time in all major non-monarchical states. Generally, most of these countries have been republican for too long that they have lost the monarchical tradition and people no longer remember the monarchy - and this is perhaps the main reason why none of the former Warsaw Pact states and SSRs became monarchies IOTL.
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Crazy Boris
Banned
Greece was under the control of a military junta that wanted king Constantine gone, a referendum doesn't give you much of a choice when a man with a gun is breathing down your neck. With Italy, I've heard the referendum may have been rigged, but I haven't seen enough evidence to say for certain. Iceland is the only other one that can be attributed to popular cause, but given the country was occupied by the US at the time, I can't help but be a little suspicious.
And those examples don't detract from the rest, I said almost so we still have Brazil, both Mexican Empires, the Second Haitian Empire, Barbados (where republican politicans admitted they wouldn't hold a referendum because they knew it would fail), Guyana, Portugal, Spain's two republican experiments, France's Ancien Regime, the English civil war, Germany, Austria, Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Montenegro, Albania (where a failed restoration referendum was admitted to be rigged), Turkey, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Burundi, South Africa, Mauritius, Iran, Afghanistan (where a restoration was very much wanted, but vetoed by the US occupation administration), Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal, China, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia's absolute disaster of a republican period, the other former commonwealth realms, and that's not even touching on cases like Sarawak, Sikkim, and Hawaii where the country itself no longer exists.
Now as for your second point, polls in Georgia show an increase no matter how you slice it, with 2003 saying 45% yes and 30% no to a restoration, and polls in 2013 at 79% at most and 56.8% at lowest in favor of restoration. A 2017 survey in Russia saw support at 37%, a 2015 poll in Serbia gave restoration a 49% approval, up from 39% in 2013. In Romania, 21% in 2016, 37% in 2018. And if it was so fringe, then why have, as previously mentioned, Montenegro and Burundi already taken steps to restoration? Why are protesters in Iran rallying around the crown prince and why are Libyans carrying around portraits of Idris I? These people know republicanism has failed, the rose colored glasses that politicians promote by putting the ideas of democracy on a pedestal as this unquestionable supreme virtue are falling off and they're looking for something better, something that won't force politics into every aspect of their life, something that won't be more concerned with ideological purity than simple pragmatism, something that will foster unity instead of division. They're realizing that political power is not a blessing for all to enjoy, it's a soul-crushing burden that is best left to those who are equipped and trained to handle it. Republicanism is totally incompatible with these simple needs for peace and happiness, it thrives off the collapse of social harmony because it makes it easier for the political class to abuse tensions, it's a vicious cycle of manipulation.
People are slowly but surely finally realizing what people like Hobbes, Plato, and Kuehnelt-Leddihn knew all along and have been saying for millennia. This idealistic notion of total political egalitarianism as the perfect state, a nice thought though it may be, is ultimately unrealistic and doomed to destroy itself by fetishization of unnecessary conflict, extensive politicization creating resentment and division, and what I can only call ideological brinksmanship pushing polarization and extremism that can only end in either tyrannical dictatorship or political collapse. It's no surprise more and more people are turning to the only real alternative. The death of republicanism is inevitable because it's a system that slowly destroys itself, whether that takes a few years like Afghanistan or hundreds like the USA. A country cannot survive with it's only leaders being these egotists who's only real skills are in speaking well enough to trick people into liking them and telling them anything other than them is the root of all evil. Sooner or later that's gonna break.
EDIT: only just now realizing I probably shouldn't give a monarchist filibuster in a simple what-if thread. I got carried away and defensive. gonna leave everything here since I may as well, I'm not gonna pretend I didn't say it to try and save face, but I promise I won't go on any more tangents in this thread and keep any future replies to the subject of hypothetical post-soviet monarchies. Apologies for the digression, everyone.
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What about napoleon?
It is usually fairly popular for the first 30 years after abolition.
Monarchs are simply warlords who managed to have their rule legitimised through tyrannical means. All your philosophical arguments will never eliminate the fact that these tyrants rule through no merit other than blood.
Also, you give a pleasant example of a king who refuses to serve but throughout history most monarchs were very eager to rule, even murdering their own kin. Truely philosophical masterminds! Adding to that a lot of monarchs who were hesitant to rule simple delegated rule to competent men and wasted the resources of their people.
Niyazov died aged 66, so who knows what else he potentially had planned for his barmy rule. Have a feeling even if he had thought about declaring himself a monarch it wouldn't ultimately have been enough, not impossible to imagine an ATL where he goes full Gaius Caligula and declares himself a god.
Georgia's the other possibility, and this time with a prior dynasty. It's interesting various polling over the years has seen an increase in monarchist sentiment there and in various other former Warsaw Pact countries. This could do with further analysis as to the various aspects going on behind that. Some would think such sentiment consigned to history, but evidently it isn't. Still, this is alternate history and as various events throughout history have illustrated, sometimes the most odd things can occur.
Sargon
Georgia's the other possibility, and this time with a prior dynasty. It's interesting various polling over the years has seen an increase in monarchist sentiment there and in various other former Warsaw Pact countries. This could do with further analysis as to the various aspects going on behind that. Some would think such sentiment consigned to history, but evidently it isn't. Still, this is alternate history and as various events throughout history have illustrated, sometimes the most odd things can occur.
Sargon
isn’t that the nature of all power though? For all that people love to talk about “divine right” or “the will of the people,” all authority ultimately comes from the long end of a rifle, the only difference is how that authority’s justified. At that point it’s just a matter of which system is most able to govern effectively.
Well, I'd say Aliyev would be another good candidate to go monarchist, if only because he did have his son inherit the Presidency IOTL, though the regime "pulling a Napoleon" would probably have to wait until Aliyev Jr decides to make de jure what is de facto.
That’s an extreme simplification of power. Yes controlling the military goes a long way but in the end the people truly control power, if the vast majority of become hostile to the government the government seized to function.
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There's a lot here to consider. For starters, that still doesn't go against my claim that force and control of arms is what truly leads to power, as in cases where the people rise up in revolution they are only able to do so because they are the ones in possession of force, thereby allowing the revolutionaries to impose their collective will on the rest of the population.
Additionally, I would argue that nowadays the notion that the people truly control power isn't even true on account of technological development. There's a specific reason why liberalism emerged when it did, as this was the same time when the people gained access to many of the same sorts of weapons as those who traditionally wielded power, namely firearms. Prior to the advent of firearms, peasants were completely at the whim of the feudal rulers, as a peasant rebellion could easily be crushed by a single knight who dedicated his entire life to combat. Firearms became a great equalizer as the people at large were able to fight those in power with the same weapons, which is what led to the success of the American and French Revolutions. There's a reason why the right to bear arms is second only to the freedom of speech in the U.S. Constitution, as it's this right that allowed for the existence of a democratic republic.
So democracy requires equal access to force among all (or at least most) citizens. Yet when one looks at the arms possessed by governments today - tanks, helicopters, drones, nuclear weapons - it is clear that there's once more a major disparity between the people and the state, as the former are unable to possess the weaponry used by the latter, and said weaponry far outpaces the weaponry that is available to the people. You can of course see examples of less organized bands of people defeating modern militaries, but these seem to be the exception rather than the rule and typically occur within the context of imperialism, where several other factors are also at play. Were a revolution to rise up on the home soil of a country with a modern military, it isn't likely that the people would be able to succeed, and these odds will only worsen as military technology continues to advance.
For the record, I don't say any of this to make value judgments on democracy and autocracy. I don't believe that the tyranny of one powerful dictator is any better than the tyranny of mob rule. What I am saying is that different forms of government come and go with changes in human society and that these different forms came about under certain circumstances. Therefore, my main moral argument would be that democracy and autocracy are merely means to an end, and I judge states based on the ends they accomplish rather than the means used to get there (assuming those means aren't in and of themselves completely abhorrent, of course).
You make a very interesting and sound argument. However, I will argue that in most conflicts where the people have immensely turned against the government that the army will side with the people.
On another I disagree with your notion that democracy is a means to an end. This is mostly based on my morals but to me democracy is an end into itself. Of course there’s many variances of democracy but for me a democracy should provide easy lanes to power for any citizen, allowing those of talent to reach positions of power while respecting the demands of the community they represent