Surviving Semi-Constitutional Monarchies?

In the 19th century many monarchial states had monarchs that held considerable power while also being somewhat limited (to various degrees) by a constitution and coexisting with elected legislatures that had genuine political significance. IOTL surviving monarchies are either completely dominated by elected parliaments with the monarchs reduced to figureheads (such as the European monarchies), or, as is the case in the Gulf States and Bahrain, they are absolute monarchies with rubber-stamp legislatures (if any at all). Was such a development inevitable or could this system have survived to the present day.
 
Haile Selassie's Ethiopia was essentially semi-constitutional with the promulgation of the 1931 Constitution as it gave the Emperor all legislative and executive powers, leaving Parliament as an advisory body where the Upper Senate and Chamber of Deputies were turned against one another. If you keep the 1931 and/or 1955 Constitutions as well as have the Ethiopian Empire reform into something resembling Jordan or Lichtenstein under Amha Selassie, you could see Imperial Ethiopia survive into the modern day under Emperor Amha Selassie.
 
It's a little tricky: once you give the Legislature the power of the purse,the momentum of the war between "Court and Congress" swings to the later as they can leverage moments of financial need for more power. And once you enfrancise the financiers/industrualists, they start insisting the government be responsive to their needs if they want loans (which they always did). However, it's possible you could get a softer ceiling that keeps more power in the hands of appointed Ministers by an unbiased monarch if you have a society with highly atomized political influence (IE; strongly multi-party with distinct enough interests to prevent big-tent cohalitions from lasting) . In that case, I could see the Crown being able to leverage their position as a non-partisan power broker to entrench certain areas as under their perogative as to important to be subject to the constant shifting of partisan whims. Basically, turning the Beuracracy/"Deep State" into a bastion of Royal power.

A surviving OE under a modestly more liberal Abhul Hamid seems like a good choice here, or maybe a Meijji Japan that comes into power via slow evolution/co-opting of the Tokugawa state apperatus (Silent coup rather than Boshin Wars) instead of adopting the British model. This could create a template other "Eastern" rulers might adopt if successful, which could create a mutually supporting web of political theory strong enough to renforce itself against egalitarian challenges. A defense against the "Tyranny of the 50%+1, per say.
 
A surviving OE under a modestly more liberal Abhul Hamid seems like a good choice here, or maybe a Meijji Japan that comes into power via slow evolution/co-opting of the Tokugawa state apperatus (Silent coup rather than Boshin Wars) instead of adopting the British model. This could create a template other "Eastern" rulers might adopt if successful, which could create a mutually supporting web of political theory strong enough to renforce itself against egalitarian challenges. A defense against the "Tyranny of the 50%+1, per say.
This also adds to the bit about Ethiopia above!
 
I mean the Romans did have an absolute monarchy for 1500 years with a rubber stamp legislature. In Europe for this to happen is to have an earlier and more centralized government. The nobles were the ones in power that limited the king. The Romans were open to all and in the last days of the republic the state was a stratocracy until it was stabilized by Augustus into a hereditary monarchy. The Senate was stacked with his supporters and some troublesome nobles where he could keep an eye on them.
The European states need to have a monarch with popular support that raises an army that crushes the lords or gradually weakens the over time. This would have worked in Ancien regime France or Napoleonic France after his victory. So for Old France the Hundred Years War decimated the nobility after battles like Agincourt. What you need is the king to appoint representatives to serve in his stead. In Napoleonic France you have the Emperor as an absolute monarch even though a constitution exists on paper. Napoleon was a Rome fanboy so he would never empower it. He would probably create a new powerblock for his government around the military brass. Perhaps they would be given posts in the Assembly to serve as a rubber stamp. With Napoleon’s code of law there would be less class tension. The mains driving force behind parliaments limiting the power of the monarch was the nobles. This is what happened in England. If their is a royalist victory the king might liquidate Parliament and stack it with his own supporters. Have the king have a competent heir like Augustus has Tiberius and continue the trend until the office is meaningless. The Romans had this for 1500 years. If European states also better integrated subjects like the Romans did then they could butterfly away the liberal nationalists movements.
 
In the 19th century many monarchial states had monarchs that held considerable power while also being somewhat limited (to various degrees) by a constitution and coexisting with elected legislatures that had genuine political significance. IOTL surviving monarchies are either completely dominated by elected parliaments with the monarchs reduced to figureheads (such as the European monarchies), or, as is the case in the Gulf States and Bahrain, they are absolute monarchies with rubber-stamp legislatures (if any at all). Was such a development inevitable or could this system have survived to the present day.

I think you could plausibly call contemporary Morocco and Jordan something like this.

The challenge here is that most of these semi-constitutional monarchies in Europe (and Japan) fell as a result of war or revolution (or both); actual, real-life, "peaceful, gradual" transitions to democracy never really happened IRL. Maybe some of these European systems would have remained to the present day absent the world wars.

Surviving OE has been brought up, but IRL by 1911 the Ottoman monarch was even more of a figurehead than the British monarch. One possibility actually could be Austria-Hungary. I could see a system evolving that democratized more locally, but where a Kaiser-appointed cabinet remained supreme over the entire structure. Since the figure of the emperor played a key role in holding together the system and in maintaining the Dual Monarchy, maybe it's plausible that the AH emperor would have retained a relatively high level of influence.
 
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