I see how it can sound ridiculous if we take "symbolic" into any other context. But in this case the symbolic part is a really big deal, just as the pope has a symbolic role that affects a ton of people.
There is a big difference though. The power of the Pope has been restricted over a period of centuries. The power of the Emperor of Japan has only been restricted for about 70 years.
At this point, neither party can really "make decisions with consequence", especially the Pope. They can mutually make declarations, and people may or may not respond to them. In that regard, they are as equally weak as all of the various monarchies of Europe and Southeast Asia.
However, Japan is fairly unique in this set of players. They have a highly homogenized population and culture. The changes to their cultural leadership are only 70 years old.
When I visited there in 2010, I left with a feeling that I visited a sleeping country/culture that was literally missing some polarizing goal to reignite it. That doesn't necessarily mean warlike, but it does mean ambitious.
Don't be quick to think of Japan as some tamed tiger or lion. It definitely is not.
> When I visited there in 2010, I left with a feeling that I visited a sleeping country/culture that was literally missing some polarizing goal to reignite it.
Isn't this similar to the whole Western world? I mean, my impression of modern democracies I know is they're similar to headless chickens - running around without a point or a goal, but oh how fast they run.
EDIT: to be clear, I'm not criticizing democracy here per se, this is my observation about the Western societies. I understand it's not the role of a government to dictate a goal for people - it's to facilitate pursuing goals in a stable and orderly manner. But wouldn't it be nice if our societies had at least a little bit more of a sense of common purpose?
It is the western democracies' various unelected professional bureaucracy that keep those democracies working, however imperfect those organizations are.
Let not pretend that a democracy is a great way to choose people for office.
It's a terrible way, but I am not sure how one would do better.
Plato's Politicus has an interesting comparison of different political systems in 302b-303c, putting democracy as basically ineffective, saying a corrupt democracy is the least harmful among corrupt systems, and a good, working democracy is the worst among good, working systems.
In my interpretation of Western democracies, it is the job of the private sector to make life better for people (if a bit unevenly), whereas it is the job of the state to keep lives from getting worse.
Yes, though zealotry is perhaps the wrong word here - zealots were a Judean movement that rebelled against the Roman Empire and sought to expel it by force of arms; zealots are associated with violence.
Pope's influence has over the recent centuries come over non-violent conviction of followers.
I doubt it. The modern Catholic church is fundamentally different from what it was even a century ago. Ever since Pope John XXIII started Vatican II in 1962 and it reached its conclusion in 1965, the church has completely reformed almost every area of its existence including political influence, missionary work, it's relationship with other religions and governments, and even its core liturgy. Ever since then, there has been a huge gulf between most Catholics and the conservative branch of the Church, the extremists who would normally go to war but now have little power.
> The modern Catholic church is fundamentally different from what it was even a century ago
And can change very quickly again. The goal of religions is to achieve total control. The current strategy of the Catholic church is to show a low profile, since the sociological environment does not allow for a more pro-active role. The minute that the Church senses that they are back in control of the political discourse, or whenever the fundamentalist minority get vocal enough, zealotry will get back to the official agenda.
He's a CEO of an organization with more than 400 000 people in middle management (priests) alone (and they have to listen to his orders or lose their status or even be sued before a special court).
He can make state decisions (small state, but still).
Not comparable to strictly ceremonial function of Japan's emperor.
Things like state decisions are direct but limited.
But decisions like the Roman Catholic Church's policy on contraception has only devastated as many lives as it has because those people choose to believe in the symbol.
But, all power is, at its root, symbolic. Stalin only slaughtered as many as he did because people believed in the symbolic power of the state and in him as having some right to lead such an abstract entity with total authority.
Excellent point. I suppose I was speaking to power structures, specifically, rather than power in the sense of personal ability. In the end, however, if you want to have power on the scale of civilizations, some, if not most of that power must be symbolic in nature. There's no way to hold a knife to a nation's throat for the long haul without at least a little loyal help.
It's not that small if you think of all the property they own around the world. In San Francisco we have quite a few old churches that are basically shuttered.
I'd love to see these sold. Their blemishes on a city that could use them for things like housing for our homeless/low income issues.
Not a very good parallel. The pope has real power in a large organization with genuine real world influence. (Not nearly as much influence as it used to have, but still.)
Not a lot of it. Before the 6th century AD, things get very murky, and belong more to the discipline of archaeology than to history. Aside from some nutty right-wingers, the Japanese are not under any illusions about this.
It is very long. It gets a little bit murky in the 1300s because there were rival claimants to the throne, but they were all related to each other. It's very likely that the dynasty has been in the same family since the 6th century. Some historians think some of the early emperors might have been unrelated to their predecessors, but even those emperors reigned during or before the 6th century.
The throne was not always passed from father to son, but sometimes among close relatives, which means that an emperors lack of children was not a problem for the continuation of the dynasty. Furthermore, emperors have been figureheads for most of Japanese history, so there was no significant benefit to usurping the throne as there was in Europe. People who wanted to control the country wanted to be the emperor's advisers, and later the shogun.
Luckily, the state-worship of the emperor as a descendant of Amaterasu and Jimmu has been abolished after Hirohito declined being divine after WWII. Maybe now is a good time to take this one step further and to abolish the monarchy once and for all?
While doable, it's worth stopping to consider whether the Emperor is considered a part of the Japanese national identity.
Tradition and such can be very important for cultural identity, and should not be overlooked in any discussion about whether or not it should be abolished.
I propose a deal: Let the man rest in exchange for the abolishment of the constitutional monarchy. Symbolic or not, it's outmoded and incongruent with modern egalitarian society. The list of constitutional monarchies is rather embarrassingly long (37 countries).
The problem with replacing constitutional monarchs is that they know their place, but the heads of state who would replace them might not. After all, they are likely to be elected, and could therefore have a viable claim to legitimacy in the exercise of their prerogatives. The Japanese emperor has no political power, and really doesn't cost the country that much to keep around.
Remember that in parliamentary systems, the head of state and the head of government (the prime minister) are not the same person. In some countries, like Germany and Italy, the head of state is an elected president, usually an fairly elderly politician. The emperor of Japan would have to be replaced as head of state by someone holding some new office, who would do pretty much the same things the emperor does now, at a similar cost to the taxpayer. It wouldn't be the prime minister.
There is a similar aspect to the debate around House of Lords reform in the UK. A lot of people in the House of Commons don't want an elected House of Lords, because if it were elected, the Lords would have democratic legitimacy just as the Commons does, and could therefore make a reasonable case that it should have a lot more political power than it has now.
Plenty of nations have successfully abolished constitutional monarchy in the past couple of hundred years. The role and political power of the head of state (be it Prime Minister/Chancellor or President, or a combination — doesn't matter) should be well-defined in the constutition (which of course needs changing). I don't really see any loopholes here... I find that argument to be a red herring.
As you say, in some countries, the official (purely symbolic) head of state has no real power (pointless in other words). That's OK-ish. I'd rather not have a symbolic president. But the main point is to not make the position hereditary.
Germany's president, whilst largely ceremonial, actually has some (residual) power by the way, but it's a 5-year term. Not elected by the people, however, which is a shame. For example, Finland's president is.
On the other hand, consider the example of France. The fourth republic had a symbolic president, and the fifth republic has a very powerful president, because DeGaulle demanded executive power as a condition of assuming the presidency during the Algerian crisis of the late 1950s. That's why the fourth republic ended and the fifth republic began -- DeGaulle had a new constitution written.
The situation in Japan is pretty stable. Why mess with success? And if the emperor has no power, why does it matter if the position is hereditary?
As you yourself say, the situation in Japan is pretty stable. The events in France you mention was during wartime, in the lead-up to what could be called "colonial collapse". Hardly comparable.
It matters because a hereditary head of state position (actually, any governmental/establishmentarian position) is a terrible symbol in what should be an egalitarian society, no matter if you have political power or not. I don't know how to put this more succinctly.
It may be a terrible symbol, but it seems like people get over it, if they even care very much. Constitutional monarchies, such as the Nordic countries, are among the most egalitarian countries in the world. Japan is egalitarian, both in terms of how the Japanese view their society, and how the wealth is distributed -- they are very close to European countries in that respect, and far more egalitarian than the US.
Except stability can be used to breed stability. France being on the Fifth Republic makes it considerably easier to argue for a Sixth Republic, and with Marine Le Pen doing rather well in the polls that isn't necessarily a good idea. Traditions have their place in that they become ingrained within the populace and considerably harder to shift.
Not really: people can point at the stability of the Fifth Republic and compare it against the previous regimes, which were quite the opposite. That creates a lot of inertia against scrapping a system of Republican government that currently fundamentally still works.
> It matters because a hereditary head of state position (actually, any governmental/establishmentarian position) is a terrible symbol in what should be an egalitarian society, no matter if you have political power or not.
Why should society be egalitarian? Nature isn't.
Why shouldn't society recognise the heirs of great men specially?
I think that the ideal government has voices for the great mass of the people; for the magnates; and for a monarch. The U.K. system — until Tony Blair destroyed it — was good for exactly this, although the removal of the Lords' ability to block legislation, and the addition of life peers were recent mistakes.
> The fourth republic had a symbolic president, and the fifth republic has a very powerful president, because DeGaulle demanded executive power as a condition of assuming the presidency during the Algerian crisis of the late 1950s. That's why the fourth republic ended and the fifth republic began -- DeGaulle had a new constitution written.
It's a bit more complicated than that, to be fair. A big part of de Gaulle's motivation for the semi-presiential system of the Fifth Republic was due to the instability of the parliamentary system of the Third and Fourth Republics. Whatever else you might say about de Gaulle, the Fifth Republic has been remarkably stable and orderly compared to the regimes that preceded it after the revolution.
Australia voted against the chance to replace its constitutional monarchy because of ambiguities and uncertainties about these questions. People know what they are getting with the existing systems and the constitutional monarchs have no real power. If you're changing that you have to be very careful.
Judging by the results of the last election, the Queen is probably more popular in Australia than any of the party leaders. But I suspect that Australia, and many other commonwealth countries, will vote to become republics after Prince Charles becomes king.
I thought Henry VIII did a thing to make divorce permissible for kings and prices? Is there an official place where the succession is listed and laws detailed?
Henry VIII was primarily concerned about himself and producing an heir. He did what he did solely to remove the obstacles that he faced to achieve this goal. All his actions dealt with his marriages on a case-by-case basis, and did not establish some sort of divorce legal precedent.
His first wife wasn't giving him male children and she was approaching the end of her childbearing years, so he searched for an excuse to annul his marriage (on the basis it wasn't a valid marriage in the first place). Divorce was out of the question.
When the church administration in Rome didn't support him, he found excuses to break away and found his own church. In fact, the only real difference in the Anglican church in the early years was that Henry was the head of the church instead of the Pope. Anyone who didn't support this view was removed from the church or executed. Later on, the Anglican church evolved in a different direction under more Protestant-minded leaders.
Only two of Henry's marriages were annulled. The very first annulment happened after he had been married for many years and was legally the most questionable. However, he was the law at that point, so he made it happen. The second annulment was more of a typical annulment, and happened when he had only been married for a very short time (a couple months) and was apparently quite uninterested in his new wife.
His second and fifth wives were executed for adultery. The charges were entirely fabricated for Anne Boleyn, but they were probably actually true for Catherine Howard.
The third wife died of natural causes and the sixth wife was still alive and married when Henry died.
So while it may look like Henry made divorce OK for English kings, he technically did not divorce anyone. He either found excuses to have the marriages annulled or they were ended by the deaths of his wives.
This is specifically untrue in regards to parallels to Edward VIII; there the issue was that Wallis Simpson was divorced with ex-husbands still living, which at the time, the Church of England did not allow. Charles remarried long after Diana had died, and so is not subject to this restriction.
I'm not intimately familiar with British law, and there may be other reasons why his divorce would make him ineligible, but it would not be for the same reasons that Edward was considered controversial.
Also, as regards Henry VIII and divorce, apparently he used the power of the newly created Church of England to annul his marriages, rather than actually get divorced.
Political figures with little real power are almost always more popular than those who do wield real power.
Even the same person can see a big difference depending on the popular perception of their power--see Hillary Clinton's favorability rating after she resigned as Secretary of State vs. now when she is running for President.
If Charles, as king, tries to stick his nose in things, he will be unpopular. But if he remains a distant figurehead, I bet he will still be more popular than the elected politicians in Australia.
Maybe I am cynical but are you sure they didn't vote against it because they like "traditions", pretty parades and hand-waving and think princes and princesses are quaint and fun and secretly in their hearts they wish they could be one?
I do live in a 1000-year-old constitutional monarchy after all and that's the pro arguments I tend to hear.
You do know the upper house in the UK is made not only of Hereditary peers but professionals or experts in their respective fields. They are of course nominated and appointed instead of being elected - but that sounds silly to have actual professionals & scientists in the decision making process of making laws.
Traditions and pretty parades make for exceptional soft power opportunities, something the UK punches far above its weight in. Getting a visit from the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge was probably the one force that could outshine a visit from President Obama. Getting a state visit from the Queen is part of major diplomatic wrangling, she doesn't just pick a country and go "that seems like a nice place to visit".
Edward VII played a large role in setting the conditions for the Entente Cordial, in large part by partying a lot in France - activities a politician could never get away with even today. That cultural and ambassadorial role set the scene for the end to a 1000 years of Anglo-French conflict. More recently the current Queen has played major roles in healing the divisions of conflict, most recently with her trip to the Republic of Ireland.
Elderly politicians are still divisive in their election, regardless of whether they're elected by the public or some body. Their actions have to be viewed through the prism of political cynicism and the potential for advancing the interests of their party. Whereas a 90 year old woman who still carries out a punishing schedule of public duties presents a far more inspiring example of duty and loyalty. If no-one voted for you then you are beholden to no-one.
Cynical you may be, but your case doesn't apply to Australia (I can understand your perspective though!).
The Australian constitutional referendum was cleverly constructed to keep the monarchy. TWO republican options were offered in order to split the republican side, and both were engineered for short-term aggrandizement of politicians rather than give the country a sound constitution. So a "first, do no harm" strategy ended up with the most votes.
I think a system like the Germans have is pretty reasonable (though more complicated than Australia needs with only a handful of states none with a huge amount of autonomy). Then again, Australia really only needs a head of state to appoint a PM and greet visiting potentates. Apart from that there isn't much need for a GG. Oh and to consume fancy bird feathers.
Like many I chose "The changes on offer are worse than no change at all."
The problem is, there are likely to be multiple competing proposals, and even if they aren't on the ballot at the same time, they create a lot of uncertainty. Many voters will choose to avoid that uncertainty by voting to keep the monarchy.
At this point, the monarchy is the default position, and I think it will stay that way until the monarch does something to piss off the majority of the Australian people.
Actually, only one option was offered at the referendum [1] (president selected by 2/3 majority of parliament). Various options were considered at an earlier constitutional convention, but only 1 was on the ballot.
Also, FWIW: My grandmother held on almost to 100 in the hopes of getting a letter from the Queen (telegrams were already gone by then). She saw no inconsistency in that desire and her otherwise rather socialist, republican sentiments.
> In some countries, like Germany and Italy, the head of state is an elected president, usually an fairly elderly politician.
In Italy the only people elected by the citizens are the members of the Parliament.
The head of the state is elected by the members of the parliament every 7 years.
The head of the government is chosen ("invested") by the head of the state after a round of consultations with representatives of the political parties after the parliamentary election (basically the president asks "guys, who would you like as your own leader?"). The appointment of the head of the government is then approved (or, often, refused) by a parliamentary vote.
It was customary (before Berlusconi's times) for the winning party to elect its own representative as the head of the higher chamber. At the same time the losing party would get to elect the head of the lower chamber. (Yes, "lame duck" by design.)
All this complicated dance of indirect elections (that the current parties would like to remove) has been put in place after the WW2 to avoid too much power being in the hands of these high-profile figures or of a single party. "You have not been elected. We, the parliament are those who reign here." The head of the state cannot even address the parliament or get physically near the discussion hall without a written request from the MPs.
> All this complicated dance of indirect elections (that the current parties would like to remove) has been put in place after the WW2 to avoid too much power being in the hands of these high-profile figures or of a single party.
All of this was put in place after World War II to centralize power in the hands of the Christian Democrats, and force non-communist parties to go into coalition with them. As all prime ministers for a half century after WWII were either Christian Democrats or from those parties in coalition with them, it worked fairly well. Of course even this had bumps in the road so you have the 1948 elections which the communist/socialist coalition won but which was fixed the other way, a strategy of tension by P2 and the far right being blamed on the far left as the left makes electoral and other advances in the 1970s, plus you have Gladio and secret NATO armies in the wings in case the communists are actually elected into power. Of course being Italian, you know all of this.
"All of this was put in place after World War II to centralize power in the hands of the Christian Democrats, and force non-communist parties to go into coalition with them."
And yet this system allowed liberal reforms, like divorce and abortion, to be carried our during a center-right party rule, and Italy to become (at the time) the 7th most advanced economy.
Even the clause in the constitution that declared Chatolicism as the country's official religion was amended during CD rule.
It is (was) an imperfect system and it created a lot of instability, since even a party with a low share of votes could throw down the coalition government at any moment, but at least it forced parties to go beyond ideologies and work out compromises. The lack of alternance in power also fostered corruption, which was the downfall of CD.
Still, it's hard to consider what came after as a marked improvement for the country.
In East Germany in 1949, you had a left coalition like in the 1948 Italian election. It gained 66% of the vote to the 34% of the opposition. In the 1947 Hungarian election, the communists got the most votes.
So how come we never hear that Eastern Europe became communist democratically? After all, they can point to election numbers as you do. Well, the Red Army occupied them some say. But the US armed forces occupied Italy - they still do. Well, the USSR, a foreign power meddled in the elections. The US and CIA admit how massively they meddled in Italy's 1948 (and subsequent) elections.
I can easily say that the non-communist and non-communist aligned parties in Eastern Europe "didn't even come close to winning" after World War II and the people of those countries democratically decided to become communist. After all, Hungary became communist after World War I without Russian intervention, a fact few in the West remember.
It's odd to see the US and CIA admitting after decades they interfered in and fixed the Italian 1948 elections, yet you still hold up the phony results, yet everyone can easily discount the elections in eastern Europe after World War II, where Russia simply did the same thing the US did.
The main difference is that the US backed governments mostly didn't end up being horribly repressive, requiring military intervention to keep in power, and eventually overthrown.
In any case, an argument that Eastern Europe's Communist governments were illegitimate cannot be countered by saying that Western Europe's governments were illegitimate, no matter how true that may be.
The US did not "fix" the elections. They did finance the DC campaign, just as the Soviet Union financed the FDP campaign.
In the preceding 1946 elections, the Communists got 19% and the Socialists got 20%, for a total of 39%.
In the 1948 elections, FDP (Communists + part of Socialists) got 31%, while the rest of the Socialists (including the man who was the leader of the Socialists in the previous elections) got 7%, for a total of 38%.
In the following 1953 elections, the Communists got 23%, the Socialists (who broke out of the failed FDP alliance) got 13%, for a total of 36%.
So we have 39% -> 38% -> 36%. You are arguing that the expected mid-point of that series would have been 51%, had it not been for the US fixing the elections. That is a Reptilian-level conspiracy theory.
As much as I share the overall reading of XX century Italian history you propose, it does not support a causal theory between the Constitution and what followed. The Italian Communist Party was one of three dominant forces shaping the Constitution (the other two being Socialists and Christian-Democrats); they were as interested in avoiding centralization as anyone else, in order to keep Fascist nostalgia at bay. Most Communists in the Assembly had been freedom fighters, some of them for decades, at huge personal cost; their priority was to avoid a new Mussolini ever appearing.
Once the Constitution was in place, overall political debate was indeed shaped by Cold War events and influences; but the document itself is arguably a pinnacle achievement of political theory, pushing representative democracy and collective responsibility to their limits.
It doesn't matter. These days head of states in parliamentary systems don't do their jobs
One of the best example for such a system is Bush lying and going to war in Iraq when the people didn't want it. The best example that it doesn't matter is Blair doing the same thing and Elisabeth 2 not doing anything about it.
Do you honestly believe that the Queen should have stepped in? That would have been totally undemocratic, and it would have undermined constitutional part of constitutional monarchy.
If Queen Elizabeth truly believes that her government is in error, it is her sworn duty to refuse Royal Assent to erroneous laws, and use all her reserve powers to correct it (when asked, 'Will you to your power cause Law and Justice, in Mercy, to be executed in all your judgments?' at her coronation, she answered, 'I will').
Yes, it would provoke a constitutional crisis (which is British political speech for 'we want to change the rules, now that someone is playing by them'), and it would very well lead to the end of the Windsors, and probably the monarchy. But it would be her duty. That's the thing about duty: you have to do it, even when you don't want to, and even when it may cost you everything.
I don't think she should have stepped in in the instance of the war, but she definitely ought to step in if she believes her government is unjust or unmerciful.
Nothing wrong with a constitutional monarchy. You get all the benefits from democratically chosen representatives without the downside of the 4-year moodswings. The monarch will always choose what is best for the country instead of what is best for the currently ruling party. It looks at long-term vision instead of just the 4-year term. It takes care of continuity instead of the "this will not be my problem in 6 months" effect you currently see with Obama.
The monarchy didn't help with Brexit. I suppose it could help broker coalition governments in a parlimentary systems... though Thailand certainly shows how overly broad lese majeste laws and and strong military can have the opposite effect at least with regards to national unity.
I live in a constitutional monarchy. But my Queen and her family don't even live in my country, and she is rather more attached to the one she does live in.
I'm sure she chooses what is "best for the country", but it's not always clear which country that may mean.
The reason these nominal monarchies remain has nothing to do with the monarchs' unwillingness to let go, and everything to do with the useful diversion of royal celebrity. Oh, some of the european royals have said good things about the environment and peace and the need for civil society, and the japanese emperor notably rebuked the right wing for its jingoistic understanding of "patriotism" a few years back, but let's be clear that it's their usefulness to the establishment that preserves them, not their own clever designs on power.
I agree. The "deal" I speak of here is purely symbolic.
However, I'm sure if you asked all the royalty across the world, I am certain that almost every single one of them wants to remain royalty and find the very institution quaint and traditional and wholesome. Do you think Akihito does not want his son to succeed him?
If the monarch him-/herself suggests that maybe it's time we rethought the whole thing, I'm hopeful that would get people talking about it a bit more. Maybe that could end up being the true power held by the office?
He indicated in his address that an elderly emperor can sometimes leave the society itself dangerously paralysed (an oblique reference to the pre-war period) and that the emperor "must always be with the people". It's actually a pretty powerful, if careful, statement from someone with no legal influence on the country. We can agree that he wants his son to succeed him (though "want" hardly comes into it) but I think the timing of this abdication has more to do with securing a path forward for the Japanese people. That's something the current political system has failed to do.
Are you operating from the premise that a non-monarchy is strictly and uniformly superior? Or that figurehead monarchs are bad? With the former I beg to differ, having lived in the Middle East for a significant portion of my life. With the latter, well, maybe, it's a marginal cost to keep many traditionalists and culturally conservative members of a very proud people sated.
Strangely (to me) people sing the praises of democracy and disparage their existing democratically elected government with the same breath. And most citizens of countries led by monarchs have far less to complain about governance (and not, as many keyboard pundits may guess, because of something crass like they'd get executed for voicing dissent).
I'm not going to claim either system is superior to the other, but I think it's a stretch to call the existence of monarchies "embarrassing"
The idea that monarchies are The Worst is meme that has permeated Western culture. Because of a long history of fighting against them.
I don't think they are the worst, but they definitely have problems. They tend to be very conservative. They tend to heavily favor the upper class. They tend to be more likely to start and maintain terrible wars. And the system encourages civil wars. And the lack of selection means there is no guarantee the monarch is competent, more than just any random person.
Is this true? Lots of Europe decided to keep their monarchies, as does Australia, NZ and Canada. This leaves out the US which is not solely the definition of 'Western Culture'
Also they don't tend to favour the upper class there's broad support across ideologies and social class that support them. In fact, the republican movements tend to come from upper classes, well true in New Zealand and Australia anyway (not sure of the other monarchies)
They keep them in symbolic roles only. They have no real power. And even then there are movements to abolish them for consuming public tax dollars. Not every country had a violent or sudden change to democracy. But supporters of democracy still won in the West. Despite massive resistance at first.
I mean that the monarchs themselves favor the upper class. They are, after all, members of it, and exposed mainly to their issues and their side of things. Europe has a terrible history of a ridiculously unequal and unfair aristocracy.
Regarding 'no real power', This is often said but its not true. There have been occasions the monarchy have used their power but it goes largely unreported. One such occasion is 1975 in Australia where the government was thrown out using the monarch's power. The monarch hardly uses this power but it does if things go awry.
Also the 'consuming public tax dollars' argument is incorrect. The monarchy of the UK pays net tax-in through a deal the government did with monarchy 300 years ago (in short the UK government earns a tidy profit (about £300m/y) from the management of their estate in exchange for a small stipend each year, consistently renewed every period). The monarchs of other countries also have their estates that pay for them in a similar way (don't count Spain though)
Perhaps the monarchs favour the upper class though this has changed largely for the positive over the past hundred years. I would hardly say that today it is an unfair aristocracy, though.
On the democracy argument, there have been multiple referendums to put in place a republic but they don't go through.
To add to this, Canada in 2008 went through a "parliamentary dispute" that Canada's Governor General played a large part in the resolution of. While the Governor General is pretty much chosen by Canadian ministers in a democratic fashion, on paper the officer is appointed by the Queen and ideally represents her in Canada.
So I do agree that the monarchy has some influence on the Commonwealth, more than just having "the right to be consulted, to encourage and to warn".
I'm familiar that some monarchs technically still have some ability to influence government. But they use it very rarely, because they know if they overuse it, it will be taken away. You mention Australia, but Australia did try to leave the commonwealth in 1999, perhaps in response to that. The only reason they didn't is because the vote was split on exactly what system of government to replace it with.
I've heard the argument that royalty is a net gain in taxes. My point was that they aren't universally popular and there are movements to remove them. Anyway the fact they own lots of land is silly, since it was inherited from centuries ago, when it was originally taken by force. There is nothing stopping the government from cutting them off and continuing to use their land.
The 1999 vote wasn't to leave the Commonwealth, it was an explicit referendum on whether Australia should become a republic (and it would remain part of the commonwealth). Australia is a 'Commonwealth' in itself. Australia's movement away as a reaction of the monarch's use of power in 1975 was the 1984 Australia act where the references to the UK were removed from the constitution (Queen of the UK -> Queen of Australia).
It's hard to argue using the popularity argument. In Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand the monarch is near universally popular.
The argument for a sovereign head of state is a complex one, the Queen isn't considered as an ordinary family inheriting a lot, its a family which is essentially the head of state and the 'inheritance' goes towards running the country and the benefit of all.
I would understand the disdain from an American perspective, but there's a lot more to it than what is conveyed - the constitutional monarchy system of today isn't like the one 300 years ago, its a wonderful system - to many better than the US system of government, admittedly myself included (I'm an American Politics major if you think there's any bias).
Keep in mind the monarch is there by choice - through democratic vote. As for Australia the 1999 referendum wasn't the first one of its sort either.
> Strangely (to me) people sing the praises of democracy and disparage their existing democratically elected government with the same breath.
There's nothing strange about that. The point of democracy is not to make governments great, it's to be able to throw them out when they suck. There's not contradiction in thinking that your government sucks and in being happy about your ability to throw them out.
> And most citizens of countries led by monarchs have far less to complain about governance (and not, as many keyboard pundits may guess, because of something crass like they'd get executed for voicing dissent).
There are plenty of terrible monarchs. And some good ones as well. Monarchy's problem isn't that it makes the ruler bad. It is that if the ruler is bad, there's not much you can do about it.
> Are you operating from the premise that a non-monarchy is strictly and uniformly superior?
I do, from a moral point of view, before even going into the than a practical one (even though there are practical reasons as well). I believe that all people should be equal before the law, and that this is the point of the law: replace the arbitrary with the fair and predictable. All people. Not "all except this one family". Both the duties and the rights that royal families have make them unequal, mostly in ways that are favorable to them, but not only.
To take an example from the news item we are talking about, it is absurd that a person may denied from the right to quit his job, even if that job is being the Emperor. It certainly is a fancy job, but a job to which you are compelled by birth and may not leave does not match my conception of a free society, no matter how good the job is. And it certainly goes the other way as well, as royalty comes with its fair share of privileges that are not accessible to others.
is it the monarchy thats outdated though? or the idea of having a head of state?
Id say it's the head of state -- one person shouldnt have that much power, and the list is even longer! constitutional monarchs do pretty well though, in that they avoid using any of that power to the largest extent that they can.
Ordinary people do seem to like their royalty. The endless fascination that the people of Japan have with their Emperor, the British have with their royal family, among other examples, shows that people do find it comforting to see a familiar face at the helm of the nation. Sort of like a representative of the national will.
And "modern egalitarian society"? Please. The only reason democracy works in the US is that the media brainwashes people into acquiescing to elite opinion. There was not (and will never be) any egalitarian civilization on earth.
There are advantages to a constitutional monarchy. While it is a bit of a taboo to discuss on an large US audience forum, it is quite wonderful to see the advantages of one whilst living in a country.
One is the ability to have someone who sees reason or is liked by both sides where there is an opposition party in power.
It sort of makes the PM/officials of government ordinary blokes who would use the trains or a bicycle to get around just like anyone else would. Having someone higher up has an impact of some sort. Most European monarchs have their officials of government go around not in such an isolated way.
There are others such from the ability to influence issues such as poaching to the ability to remove the commercialisation of certain areas (disallowing adverts or free bidding) to the tokens given out to encourage people to be more selfless (chivalry or the 'sir'). Even the ability to remove a government that isn't working, however rarely its done.
I agree it is archaic, there are some really good advantages, my favourite is that elements of a country cannot be sold out for money. While HN is very American-centric, I would advise seeing both points of view on the subject.
There are reasons the constitutional monarchy remains despite numerous (and multiple in the same countries) referendums throughout the world to change that. There is an element of choice in this.
The emperor was forbidden to perform any political activities by constitution.
Simply stating his wish to abdicate is considered a political activities, so the emperor cannot even say that.
This time, he implies he wish to abdicate by saying "When the emperor dies, Japanese economy will face a serious shock, which I want to prevent it", which implies in the time of his death(I don't know the polite way of saying die in English, in Japanese, we have a special polite word for the emperor's death), he dies not as the emperor so the emperor's death doesn't happen(This is just observation. the emperor can't directly say that obviously because the constitution prohibit his political activities.)
It is us, the Japanese, who can change the constitution. To change the Japanese constitution, it requires the national vote.
Also, it is my understanding that the emperor is not, by definition from the constitution, a Japanese person.
The Constitution defines:
The emperor has no political power, his basic human rights is restricted, has no freedom of job choice etc.
Japanese people has political power, basic human rights, freedom of job choices, freedom from being enslaved etc.
Well it's not that stating his wish to abdicate is political, but he can't legally abdicate. He's Emperor until his death unless the law is changed to allow it.
And asking for a change in the law, well THAT is clearly political.
> Let the man rest in exchange for the abolishment of the constitutional monarchy.
He's an important piece in the political equation of Japan, even as a symbolic emperor. Any changes in his role will involve delicate negotiations between the parties and they are not in a good position now to do that.
I was in strict opposition to a concept of Monarchy, but not anymore.
In many countries constitutional monarchs are replaced by de-facto for-life Despots (think Putin and his partner Erdogan), for whom nobody could explain who they are (parents, relatives, children?), where we got them from and what happens when they expire. At least for a Monarch we knew all that with high amount of detail.
Who have no legitimacy whatsoever other than a bit of popular support, a lot of police state support and constant twisting of the law.
Nobility used to be public, now instead of having no nobility we have private nobility behind tall walls.
An egalitarian society sounds interesting; someone should try it.
I can respect the honesty of a monarchy. We have a fake egalitarian society where most of our leaders must either be Bush, Clinton, Roosevelt, Kennedy, or be closely related by marriage. Not to mention the behind the scenes families that control and pay for it all. Its disrespectful to the concept of democracy to view Hillaries coronation party as anything other than a hereditary monarchy ceremony. If it were not for Trump (and thank God for Trump), Jeb's coronation party would have been held the week prior. In that way I can respect a monarchy much more than a fake, false democracy. Someone in the English queen's family will rule after her; thank you for at least being honest about it.
The big thing you're missing is how the separation of powers in the US prevents what you describe as a "monarchy" from ruling as a monarchy. Besides in your own comment you admit that Trump goes against this idea. We don't have even close to a monarchial society.
I agree with most of what you wrote, but you're falling for the same tired hopechange if you think Trump isn't just the another skin on the same old corruption.
The entire job of candidates is to channel people's discontent into support by sounding revolutionary. Once they're in office, their job becomes supporting the status quo and implementing the long-term designs of the people, as you said, who control and pay for it all.
This iteration, the red team is frustrated and united (having been straight opposition for the past eight years), while the blue team is divided and unenthused (having seen eight years of disappointment under their own banner). So the red team sees a savior, some blue team defects to third parties or (rationally) stays home, and the cycle repeats.
At least my peers will go back to latent libertarianism.
I find it bizarre that Japan is having an contentious debate about if it's appropriate for a woman to ascend to a completely powerless role while the US just nominated its first (viable) female candidate for president.
edit: Wow, apparently this is an offensive comment. I'm having a hard time twisting my brain to see how, but my point was simply that the it seems odd that there would be contention over a powerless role for a woman in any part of the world when (arguably) the most powerful political position that exists today has a female candidate. One would think that if the latter is true the former could not be.
edit 2: Oh, I think I get it. Posters are assuming I'm American and am boasting about how progressive my country is. Huh. Nope, that wasn't what I was doing. (Though I am American, and not voting for either mainstream candidate.)
The argument generally goes that the president is beholden to enact the policies and direction that are set by the groups that funded his campaign and rise to power.
I'm not saying it's necessarily true, but it's definitely something many people believe to be true.
I find it bizarre that the United States only just nominated its first (viable) female candidate for President while Sri Lanka named its first female Prime Minister almost 60 years ago.
I don't find it so bizarre. The emergence of women to major political roles is a thing of the past 1-2 generations in almost all of the world (with the exception of some monarchs).
(I guess it would be almost safe to count Benazir Bhutto, Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1988-90 and 93-96, as a monarch...)
Women have made up 50% of the population of Homo Sapiens for the entire age of our species. Literally for hundreds of thousands to millions of years. And it is literally in our lifetimes (give or take maybe 30 years) that the first woman is made the elected leader of a country?
I wrote my reply with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, but when you get right down to it, it is phenomenally unlikely that we live at such a moment of change.
Is it so insanely improbable that, on the whole, men strive toward power and women don't? That there is some slim evidence that there is a gender difference, and women are happy not to be the number one dog everyone is looking to for guidance?
This seems to be the exact same argument as "women only get 70c on the dollar compared to men." Well, right, because men pick challenging jobs with hard hours that kill you, and women pick easier jobs with easier hours that don't kill you.
Being the President of the USA isn't a cakewalk, and those not driven by passion and a thirst for power won't end up there, which should be just fine, but for some reason... isn't.
Don't bitch about greytext. It will always result in greytext and is against the site guidelines.
You're also incorrect about the reasons for pay gap, and also incorrect it's due to different jobs. The pay gap occurs at people doing the same job with the same skills. The reason has to do with things like taking leave from work (gaps in employment) and being less likely to negotiate salary as aggressively.
Well, if you are conditioning on "elected" you have to consider that democracies are a relatively uncommon thing in history. If you further condition on democracies that the voting body isn't made up of land owning men it becomes even less surprising.
And of course if you remove the "elected" condition the whole phenomenon is quite unsurprising since power was often taken by force and men tend to use force to acquire power more than women.
It's just a few generations ago, my grandmother's lifetime, that women started to have any say whatsoever in who is the elected leader of the country, much less getting elected themselves.
This whole thing is a result of imperial household laws passed in the late 19th century, to imitate similar laws in Europe. Before then, many emperors retired before they died, and there were several woman emperors.
> while the US just nominated its first (viable) female candidate for president.
And as someone who isn't from the US, I find it incredibly bizarre that you haven't had a female leader yet.
The UK has had 2 female Prime Ministers (1979-1990, 2016-), Canada has had 1 (1993), and Germany (2005-) to name a few.
> I find it bizarre that Japan is having an contentious debate about if it's appropriate for a woman to ascend to a completely powerless role
Considering your country is just getting to the point where it's socially acceptable for a woman to run for the position of President, maybe you will consider that your country also looks comical from an outside perspective, instead of just taking a negative tone toward Japan for not already having gender equality in their monarchy.
Add to that that the current U.S. Senate has only 20 women members (i.e., 20 percent), which is the highest proportion in the history of the Senate. In the House of Representatives the proportion of women members is below 20 percent (19.4, to be exact), and that, too, is the highest proportion ever.
> That may be roughly the same as the relative percentage of women that are interested in going into politics.
I'm not sure why US culture having a much stronger effect of socializing men and women into different roles vis-à-vis government than every other developed nation and many developing nations would be a positive explanation for that statistic.
> The UK has had 2 female Prime Ministers (1979-1990, 2016-), Canada has had 1 (1993), and Germany (2005-) to name a few.
> your country also looks comical from an outside perspective,
That difference is not statistically significant. If both the US and other_country have the same probability of electing a female leader, the results could easily be exactly the same. 1 female leader or 0 over 30 years, that's purely chance.
Especially given that there are many other countries to chose from to cherrypick positive results. To do it properly you need to average all countries as a comparison.
Lastly some countries don't elect leaders directly, but indirectly through votes by elected representatives. Which could maybe produce different outcomes than if the general population voted.
In fairness, Canada's female PM wasn't democratically elected, was only in power for 2.5 months, and came to power after the current PM stepped down due to unpopularity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Mulroney#Retirement
This has parallels to the current UK situation.
I understand the response to perceived American ethnocentrism, but I wouldn't minimize the significance of Hillary/Trump.
> In fairness, Canada's female PM wasn't democratically elected
Like US Presidents, Canadian PMs are elected by others who are directly elected; unlike US Presidents and many Canadian PMs, Kim Campbell was not chosen immediately after the election of the body by whom she was chosen. Characterizing this as not being "democratically elected" but the usual election of US Presidents being one that is "democratically elected", however, requires a non-obvious interpretation of what "democratic" means when applied to an election.
Elizabeth II is 90 years old. I think she looks remarkably vital for a person so old and presumably not without pressures in her official role, even if largely invisible to the outside world.
My take - the emperor is well educated and knows what's coming. Continuous tensions with China, printing money for some 35 years now (correct me if I'm wrong), a demography that's unsustainable, a treasury and stock market controlled by the central bank, ...
1920s/30s all over again with first a collapse of the yen and later on a war to distract the blame from the failed monetary policy and funnel the anger into some nationalist ideology.
I certainly can't blame him for not wanting to take part in that.
I think I have a better explanation: he's 82 years old. If he's not in exceptionally good shape, the job of a formal head of state may be too much even in smooth times.
Japan has been printing money and economy has tanked for 35 years, but still life is good for the Japanese.
Haven't read much about Japan. But I'm quite sure that China is looking for someone to make a war with and they still have some grudges with Japan. If Japan on the other side is also heading in the direction of war there may really something happen. That's worrysome.
Nobody wants war in Asia. The question is how and at what rate the United States withdraws from its ultimately unsustainable position as pacific hegemon. China would like it to happen sooner. Most of the rest of Asia would like it to happen later, and to share more equitably in a post-american security coalition. To make that possible, Japan and South Korea may need to show more strategic solidarity in the short term.
If you only look at the public evidence you are right. If you get to drunken politics discussions with Chinese men at 3am at night, then it looks a little different.
One interesting factoid that the new york times did not mention is that while it was common for emperors to resign before the meiji restoration, a lot of those resignations probably were not voluntary.
The Japanese emperors are the longest reigning royal dynasty in the world, having reigned for the entire known history of the nation. But perhaps heir secret is that they did not have much power most of the time.
During the time of the shoguns and even before that it was common to force an emperor to resign before he reaches adulthood so as to ensure that there was a child emperor on the throne at all times. A child emperor of course is unlikely to use his position to seize power.
The Meiji restoration was a revolution whose stated goal was to restore the power to the emperor. Perhaps it was in view of that goal and the history of forced resignatons that they made a law that did not even give the emperor the option to resign. However, I am not certain whether the present emperor for life law dates back to the meiji restoration.
Or perhaps they put the law in after WW2 to ensure that foreign governments do not mess with the emperors.
The modern imperial household law was introduced in the late 19th century, in order to emulate similar laws in Europe. It was amended after WWII, but law regarding abdication/resignation was left unchanged.
Your little factoid is an example of the definition of factoid you're describing. But there are other definitions of factoid and I suspect the most common one is along the lines "small tidbit of information".
> The term was coined originally in 1973 as a neologism by American writer Norman Mailer to mean a "piece of information that becomes accepted as a fact even though it’s not actually true, or an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print." Since its creation in 1973 the term has evolved from its original meaning, in common usage, and has assumed other meanings, particularly being used to describe a brief or trivial item of news or information. So it is a factoid that "factoid" means something that is true.
Perhaps we should disambiguate the two: factoid, brief fact. Infactoid, brief seemingly true fact that is not due to repeated use.
It's not literally as bad as the figuritive misuse of literally, where literally has come to mean figuratively and literally... This one I fight all day long.
Well it is just a fairly recently invented word, sure, but it is rather telling that it was apparently CNN that jumped on the word and used it to mean 'trivial fact'
Well, it was a reporter inside CNN, just a person like us, who through repeatedly hearing factoid assumed that it meant what it sounds like.
Ironically, maybe this was the intention of the way this word was derived. It seems like it should mean a brief/small fact, but in fact it means an untrue fact, therefore serving as a perfectly recursive example of itself.
> Well, it was a reporter inside CNN, just a person like us, who through repeatedly hearing factoid assumed that it meant what it sounds like.
"Factoid" does mean what it sounds like (that is, it is a simple application of the common suffix "-oid" to the root "fact", both in their usual senses.)
The use CNN latched on to is not what it sounds like.
> Perhaps we should disambiguate the two: factoid, brief fact.
But the "-oid" suffix doesn't mean "small", it means "like or resembling". So "factoid" being something that is not, but superficially resembles, a fact makes sense. A "factoid" being a "brief fact" does not.
"Factlet" would be a sensible word for a brief fact.
The convention is for UNIX processes to return 0 on success and a non-zero value (often 1) on failure. This means that the UNIX shell "if" statement tests to see if the return value of the program it runs is zero. Therefore, the UNIX "true" command is int main() {return 0;} and the "false" command is int main() {return 1;} -- despite the C convention being the exact opposite.
-oid is a suffix indicating falseness, e.g. an android is a false man, and asteroid is a false star — and a factoid is a false fact. 'Factlet' would be the right word for a tiny fact.
> One interesting factoid that the new york times did not mention is that while it was common for emperors to resign before the meiji restoration
It's right there in the article, you might have missed it (or it was added after you read it): “Historically, it was extremely common for emperors to abdicate,” said Takeshi Hara, an authority on the imperial family at the Open University of Japan. More than half of Japan’s monarchs have vacated the throne, often for quiet retirement at Buddhist monasteries. Only in the 19th century, when Japan’s leaders created the cult of emperor worship, did quitting become impossible.
Selectively quoting an accurate sentence so you can pretend it's inaccurate is not a good way to do things. Take a look at the "while" in the portion you've quoted.
> Selectively quoting an accurate sentence so you can pretend it's inaccurate is not a good way to do things.
That wasn't my intention,and I apologize to parent (hristov). I misread/parsed parent's comment wrong: my eyes somehow skipped over the 'while' which left the sentence structure valid but with the opposite meaning: "One interesting factoid that the new york times did not mention is that it was common for emperors to resign before the meiji restoration, a lot of those resignations probably were not voluntary."
The reason I removed the rest of the sentence was because it seemed tangential to the primary subject. I can no longer edit my original comment so this one will serve as my addendum.
They should let him step down. They should have changed that law ages ago. Japans politicians should be ashamed they did not. Whether or not Japan wants to be a constitutional monarchy or not is of course their matter. But if you consider what is happening right now in Turkey and Russia, the argument against constitutional monarchy seems really thin.
The buzz in Japan is not so much about the resignation itself but about the timing: exactly when Abe is strong enough to modify the constitution. It is said that the Emperor is trying to slow the constitutional change by first pressing a change that would allow him to resign.
First reported in banner headlines by the Japanese news media in July, Akihito, who has been treated for cancer and heart problems, wants to pass the title to his son Crown Prince Naruhito, 56.
192 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 200 ms ] threadAt this point, neither party can really "make decisions with consequence", especially the Pope. They can mutually make declarations, and people may or may not respond to them. In that regard, they are as equally weak as all of the various monarchies of Europe and Southeast Asia.
However, Japan is fairly unique in this set of players. They have a highly homogenized population and culture. The changes to their cultural leadership are only 70 years old.
When I visited there in 2010, I left with a feeling that I visited a sleeping country/culture that was literally missing some polarizing goal to reignite it. That doesn't necessarily mean warlike, but it does mean ambitious.
Don't be quick to think of Japan as some tamed tiger or lion. It definitely is not.
Isn't this similar to the whole Western world? I mean, my impression of modern democracies I know is they're similar to headless chickens - running around without a point or a goal, but oh how fast they run.
EDIT: to be clear, I'm not criticizing democracy here per se, this is my observation about the Western societies. I understand it's not the role of a government to dictate a goal for people - it's to facilitate pursuing goals in a stable and orderly manner. But wouldn't it be nice if our societies had at least a little bit more of a sense of common purpose?
Let not pretend that a democracy is a great way to choose people for office.
It's a terrible way, but I am not sure how one would do better.
See the text, starting from: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plat.+Stat.+302...
Well, he doesn't have any, the power comes through his symbolic position.
Pope's influence has over the recent centuries come over non-violent conviction of followers.
Daesh has lots of zealotry, Catholics less so.
historically you'd be right, by definition you are wrong, zealotry is fanaticism
violence may have played a role in the past but times change
Religions are totalitarian, since they are the holders of the One Truth.
And can change very quickly again. The goal of religions is to achieve total control. The current strategy of the Catholic church is to show a low profile, since the sociological environment does not allow for a more pro-active role. The minute that the Church senses that they are back in control of the political discourse, or whenever the fundamentalist minority get vocal enough, zealotry will get back to the official agenda.
(Yes, I know they also have actual handguns hidden somewhere.)
He can make state decisions (small state, but still).
Not comparable to strictly ceremonial function of Japan's emperor.
But decisions like the Roman Catholic Church's policy on contraception has only devastated as many lives as it has because those people choose to believe in the symbol.
The soldier aiming a gun at you or healthcare professional denying you access to contraception on the say-so of one of the above does have real power.
I'd love to see these sold. Their blemishes on a city that could use them for things like housing for our homeless/low income issues.
The throne was not always passed from father to son, but sometimes among close relatives, which means that an emperors lack of children was not a problem for the continuation of the dynasty. Furthermore, emperors have been figureheads for most of Japanese history, so there was no significant benefit to usurping the throne as there was in Europe. People who wanted to control the country wanted to be the emperor's advisers, and later the shogun.
Luckily, the state-worship of the emperor as a descendant of Amaterasu and Jimmu has been abolished after Hirohito declined being divine after WWII. Maybe now is a good time to take this one step further and to abolish the monarchy once and for all?
Tradition and such can be very important for cultural identity, and should not be overlooked in any discussion about whether or not it should be abolished.
Remember that in parliamentary systems, the head of state and the head of government (the prime minister) are not the same person. In some countries, like Germany and Italy, the head of state is an elected president, usually an fairly elderly politician. The emperor of Japan would have to be replaced as head of state by someone holding some new office, who would do pretty much the same things the emperor does now, at a similar cost to the taxpayer. It wouldn't be the prime minister.
There is a similar aspect to the debate around House of Lords reform in the UK. A lot of people in the House of Commons don't want an elected House of Lords, because if it were elected, the Lords would have democratic legitimacy just as the Commons does, and could therefore make a reasonable case that it should have a lot more political power than it has now.
So, beware of unintended consequences.
As you say, in some countries, the official (purely symbolic) head of state has no real power (pointless in other words). That's OK-ish. I'd rather not have a symbolic president. But the main point is to not make the position hereditary.
Germany's president, whilst largely ceremonial, actually has some (residual) power by the way, but it's a 5-year term. Not elected by the people, however, which is a shame. For example, Finland's president is.
The situation in Japan is pretty stable. Why mess with success? And if the emperor has no power, why does it matter if the position is hereditary?
It matters because a hereditary head of state position (actually, any governmental/establishmentarian position) is a terrible symbol in what should be an egalitarian society, no matter if you have political power or not. I don't know how to put this more succinctly.
Why should society be egalitarian? Nature isn't.
Why shouldn't society recognise the heirs of great men specially?
I think that the ideal government has voices for the great mass of the people; for the magnates; and for a monarch. The U.K. system — until Tony Blair destroyed it — was good for exactly this, although the removal of the Lords' ability to block legislation, and the addition of life peers were recent mistakes.
It's a bit more complicated than that, to be fair. A big part of de Gaulle's motivation for the semi-presiential system of the Fifth Republic was due to the instability of the parliamentary system of the Third and Fourth Republics. Whatever else you might say about de Gaulle, the Fifth Republic has been remarkably stable and orderly compared to the regimes that preceded it after the revolution.
His first wife wasn't giving him male children and she was approaching the end of her childbearing years, so he searched for an excuse to annul his marriage (on the basis it wasn't a valid marriage in the first place). Divorce was out of the question.
When the church administration in Rome didn't support him, he found excuses to break away and found his own church. In fact, the only real difference in the Anglican church in the early years was that Henry was the head of the church instead of the Pope. Anyone who didn't support this view was removed from the church or executed. Later on, the Anglican church evolved in a different direction under more Protestant-minded leaders.
Only two of Henry's marriages were annulled. The very first annulment happened after he had been married for many years and was legally the most questionable. However, he was the law at that point, so he made it happen. The second annulment was more of a typical annulment, and happened when he had only been married for a very short time (a couple months) and was apparently quite uninterested in his new wife.
His second and fifth wives were executed for adultery. The charges were entirely fabricated for Anne Boleyn, but they were probably actually true for Catherine Howard.
The third wife died of natural causes and the sixth wife was still alive and married when Henry died.
So while it may look like Henry made divorce OK for English kings, he technically did not divorce anyone. He either found excuses to have the marriages annulled or they were ended by the deaths of his wives.
I'm not intimately familiar with British law, and there may be other reasons why his divorce would make him ineligible, but it would not be for the same reasons that Edward was considered controversial.
Also, as regards Henry VIII and divorce, apparently he used the power of the newly created Church of England to annul his marriages, rather than actually get divorced.
Even the same person can see a big difference depending on the popular perception of their power--see Hillary Clinton's favorability rating after she resigned as Secretary of State vs. now when she is running for President.
If Charles, as king, tries to stick his nose in things, he will be unpopular. But if he remains a distant figurehead, I bet he will still be more popular than the elected politicians in Australia.
I do live in a 1000-year-old constitutional monarchy after all and that's the pro arguments I tend to hear.
"Good for tourism" is another one.
Nobody goes to Australia to see the Queen.
Frankly, I think we could do worse then to add some hereditary peers to our republican government.
Edward VII played a large role in setting the conditions for the Entente Cordial, in large part by partying a lot in France - activities a politician could never get away with even today. That cultural and ambassadorial role set the scene for the end to a 1000 years of Anglo-French conflict. More recently the current Queen has played major roles in healing the divisions of conflict, most recently with her trip to the Republic of Ireland.
Elderly politicians are still divisive in their election, regardless of whether they're elected by the public or some body. Their actions have to be viewed through the prism of political cynicism and the potential for advancing the interests of their party. Whereas a 90 year old woman who still carries out a punishing schedule of public duties presents a far more inspiring example of duty and loyalty. If no-one voted for you then you are beholden to no-one.
The Australian constitutional referendum was cleverly constructed to keep the monarchy. TWO republican options were offered in order to split the republican side, and both were engineered for short-term aggrandizement of politicians rather than give the country a sound constitution. So a "first, do no harm" strategy ended up with the most votes.
I think a system like the Germans have is pretty reasonable (though more complicated than Australia needs with only a handful of states none with a huge amount of autonomy). Then again, Australia really only needs a head of state to appoint a PM and greet visiting potentates. Apart from that there isn't much need for a GG. Oh and to consume fancy bird feathers.
Like many I chose "The changes on offer are worse than no change at all."
At this point, the monarchy is the default position, and I think it will stay that way until the monarch does something to piss off the majority of the Australian people.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_republic_referendum...
And generally, one sees that it's been a mistake.
A constitutional monarch can be a good defense against certain types of democratic failure.
In Italy the only people elected by the citizens are the members of the Parliament.
The head of the state is elected by the members of the parliament every 7 years.
The head of the government is chosen ("invested") by the head of the state after a round of consultations with representatives of the political parties after the parliamentary election (basically the president asks "guys, who would you like as your own leader?"). The appointment of the head of the government is then approved (or, often, refused) by a parliamentary vote.
It was customary (before Berlusconi's times) for the winning party to elect its own representative as the head of the higher chamber. At the same time the losing party would get to elect the head of the lower chamber. (Yes, "lame duck" by design.)
All this complicated dance of indirect elections (that the current parties would like to remove) has been put in place after the WW2 to avoid too much power being in the hands of these high-profile figures or of a single party. "You have not been elected. We, the parliament are those who reign here." The head of the state cannot even address the parliament or get physically near the discussion hall without a written request from the MPs.
All of this was put in place after World War II to centralize power in the hands of the Christian Democrats, and force non-communist parties to go into coalition with them. As all prime ministers for a half century after WWII were either Christian Democrats or from those parties in coalition with them, it worked fairly well. Of course even this had bumps in the road so you have the 1948 elections which the communist/socialist coalition won but which was fixed the other way, a strategy of tension by P2 and the far right being blamed on the far left as the left makes electoral and other advances in the 1970s, plus you have Gladio and secret NATO armies in the wings in case the communists are actually elected into power. Of course being Italian, you know all of this.
And yet this system allowed liberal reforms, like divorce and abortion, to be carried our during a center-right party rule, and Italy to become (at the time) the 7th most advanced economy.
Even the clause in the constitution that declared Chatolicism as the country's official religion was amended during CD rule.
It is (was) an imperfect system and it created a lot of instability, since even a party with a low share of votes could throw down the coalition government at any moment, but at least it forced parties to go beyond ideologies and work out compromises. The lack of alternance in power also fostered corruption, which was the downfall of CD.
Still, it's hard to consider what came after as a marked improvement for the country.
The left-wing coalition (which was actually missing a piece of the socialists) didn't even get close to winning. It got 31% of the vote.
So how come we never hear that Eastern Europe became communist democratically? After all, they can point to election numbers as you do. Well, the Red Army occupied them some say. But the US armed forces occupied Italy - they still do. Well, the USSR, a foreign power meddled in the elections. The US and CIA admit how massively they meddled in Italy's 1948 (and subsequent) elections.
I can easily say that the non-communist and non-communist aligned parties in Eastern Europe "didn't even come close to winning" after World War II and the people of those countries democratically decided to become communist. After all, Hungary became communist after World War I without Russian intervention, a fact few in the West remember.
It's odd to see the US and CIA admitting after decades they interfered in and fixed the Italian 1948 elections, yet you still hold up the phony results, yet everyone can easily discount the elections in eastern Europe after World War II, where Russia simply did the same thing the US did.
In any case, an argument that Eastern Europe's Communist governments were illegitimate cannot be countered by saying that Western Europe's governments were illegitimate, no matter how true that may be.
In the preceding 1946 elections, the Communists got 19% and the Socialists got 20%, for a total of 39%.
In the 1948 elections, FDP (Communists + part of Socialists) got 31%, while the rest of the Socialists (including the man who was the leader of the Socialists in the previous elections) got 7%, for a total of 38%.
In the following 1953 elections, the Communists got 23%, the Socialists (who broke out of the failed FDP alliance) got 13%, for a total of 36%.
So we have 39% -> 38% -> 36%. You are arguing that the expected mid-point of that series would have been 51%, had it not been for the US fixing the elections. That is a Reptilian-level conspiracy theory.
Once the Constitution was in place, overall political debate was indeed shaped by Cold War events and influences; but the document itself is arguably a pinnacle achievement of political theory, pushing representative democracy and collective responsibility to their limits.
One of the best example for such a system is Bush lying and going to war in Iraq when the people didn't want it. The best example that it doesn't matter is Blair doing the same thing and Elisabeth 2 not doing anything about it.
Sweden is kind-of in the middle. They have their constitution written, but in four documents.
Otherwise, what is the point of having a head of state?
Yes, it would provoke a constitutional crisis (which is British political speech for 'we want to change the rules, now that someone is playing by them'), and it would very well lead to the end of the Windsors, and probably the monarchy. But it would be her duty. That's the thing about duty: you have to do it, even when you don't want to, and even when it may cost you everything.
I don't think she should have stepped in in the instance of the war, but she definitely ought to step in if she believes her government is unjust or unmerciful.
The monarchy didn't help with Brexit. I suppose it could help broker coalition governments in a parlimentary systems... though Thailand certainly shows how overly broad lese majeste laws and and strong military can have the opposite effect at least with regards to national unity.
I'm sure she chooses what is "best for the country", but it's not always clear which country that may mean.
AKA the will of the people. It amazes me that after all the evil we have seen come out of authoritarian rule we still get people bashing democracy.
However, I'm sure if you asked all the royalty across the world, I am certain that almost every single one of them wants to remain royalty and find the very institution quaint and traditional and wholesome. Do you think Akihito does not want his son to succeed him?
If the monarch him-/herself suggests that maybe it's time we rethought the whole thing, I'm hopeful that would get people talking about it a bit more. Maybe that could end up being the true power held by the office?
Empirically, constitutional monarchies probably do better than the more moded and congruent systems.
Strangely (to me) people sing the praises of democracy and disparage their existing democratically elected government with the same breath. And most citizens of countries led by monarchs have far less to complain about governance (and not, as many keyboard pundits may guess, because of something crass like they'd get executed for voicing dissent).
I'm not going to claim either system is superior to the other, but I think it's a stretch to call the existence of monarchies "embarrassing"
I don't think they are the worst, but they definitely have problems. They tend to be very conservative. They tend to heavily favor the upper class. They tend to be more likely to start and maintain terrible wars. And the system encourages civil wars. And the lack of selection means there is no guarantee the monarch is competent, more than just any random person.
Also they don't tend to favour the upper class there's broad support across ideologies and social class that support them. In fact, the republican movements tend to come from upper classes, well true in New Zealand and Australia anyway (not sure of the other monarchies)
I mean that the monarchs themselves favor the upper class. They are, after all, members of it, and exposed mainly to their issues and their side of things. Europe has a terrible history of a ridiculously unequal and unfair aristocracy.
Also the 'consuming public tax dollars' argument is incorrect. The monarchy of the UK pays net tax-in through a deal the government did with monarchy 300 years ago (in short the UK government earns a tidy profit (about £300m/y) from the management of their estate in exchange for a small stipend each year, consistently renewed every period). The monarchs of other countries also have their estates that pay for them in a similar way (don't count Spain though)
Perhaps the monarchs favour the upper class though this has changed largely for the positive over the past hundred years. I would hardly say that today it is an unfair aristocracy, though.
On the democracy argument, there have been multiple referendums to put in place a republic but they don't go through.
So I do agree that the monarchy has some influence on the Commonwealth, more than just having "the right to be consulted, to encourage and to warn".
I've heard the argument that royalty is a net gain in taxes. My point was that they aren't universally popular and there are movements to remove them. Anyway the fact they own lots of land is silly, since it was inherited from centuries ago, when it was originally taken by force. There is nothing stopping the government from cutting them off and continuing to use their land.
It's hard to argue using the popularity argument. In Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand the monarch is near universally popular.
The argument for a sovereign head of state is a complex one, the Queen isn't considered as an ordinary family inheriting a lot, its a family which is essentially the head of state and the 'inheritance' goes towards running the country and the benefit of all.
I would understand the disdain from an American perspective, but there's a lot more to it than what is conveyed - the constitutional monarchy system of today isn't like the one 300 years ago, its a wonderful system - to many better than the US system of government, admittedly myself included (I'm an American Politics major if you think there's any bias).
Keep in mind the monarch is there by choice - through democratic vote. As for Australia the 1999 referendum wasn't the first one of its sort either.
There's nothing strange about that. The point of democracy is not to make governments great, it's to be able to throw them out when they suck. There's not contradiction in thinking that your government sucks and in being happy about your ability to throw them out.
> And most citizens of countries led by monarchs have far less to complain about governance (and not, as many keyboard pundits may guess, because of something crass like they'd get executed for voicing dissent).
There are plenty of terrible monarchs. And some good ones as well. Monarchy's problem isn't that it makes the ruler bad. It is that if the ruler is bad, there's not much you can do about it.
I do, from a moral point of view, before even going into the than a practical one (even though there are practical reasons as well). I believe that all people should be equal before the law, and that this is the point of the law: replace the arbitrary with the fair and predictable. All people. Not "all except this one family". Both the duties and the rights that royal families have make them unequal, mostly in ways that are favorable to them, but not only.
To take an example from the news item we are talking about, it is absurd that a person may denied from the right to quit his job, even if that job is being the Emperor. It certainly is a fancy job, but a job to which you are compelled by birth and may not leave does not match my conception of a free society, no matter how good the job is. And it certainly goes the other way as well, as royalty comes with its fair share of privileges that are not accessible to others.
Id say it's the head of state -- one person shouldnt have that much power, and the list is even longer! constitutional monarchs do pretty well though, in that they avoid using any of that power to the largest extent that they can.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuL6T5Dc2LI
And "modern egalitarian society"? Please. The only reason democracy works in the US is that the media brainwashes people into acquiescing to elite opinion. There was not (and will never be) any egalitarian civilization on earth.
What about Switzerland?
One is the ability to have someone who sees reason or is liked by both sides where there is an opposition party in power.
It sort of makes the PM/officials of government ordinary blokes who would use the trains or a bicycle to get around just like anyone else would. Having someone higher up has an impact of some sort. Most European monarchs have their officials of government go around not in such an isolated way.
There are others such from the ability to influence issues such as poaching to the ability to remove the commercialisation of certain areas (disallowing adverts or free bidding) to the tokens given out to encourage people to be more selfless (chivalry or the 'sir'). Even the ability to remove a government that isn't working, however rarely its done.
I agree it is archaic, there are some really good advantages, my favourite is that elements of a country cannot be sold out for money. While HN is very American-centric, I would advise seeing both points of view on the subject.
There are reasons the constitutional monarchy remains despite numerous (and multiple in the same countries) referendums throughout the world to change that. There is an element of choice in this.
This time, he implies he wish to abdicate by saying "When the emperor dies, Japanese economy will face a serious shock, which I want to prevent it", which implies in the time of his death(I don't know the polite way of saying die in English, in Japanese, we have a special polite word for the emperor's death), he dies not as the emperor so the emperor's death doesn't happen(This is just observation. the emperor can't directly say that obviously because the constitution prohibit his political activities.)
It is us, the Japanese, who can change the constitution. To change the Japanese constitution, it requires the national vote.
Also, it is my understanding that the emperor is not, by definition from the constitution, a Japanese person.
The Constitution defines:
The emperor has no political power, his basic human rights is restricted, has no freedom of job choice etc.
Japanese people has political power, basic human rights, freedom of job choices, freedom from being enslaved etc.
In Osaka I saw the expression, "emperor Hirohito succumbed". I found the euphemism quite entertaining at the time.
But to the author of the parent comment, it would probably be best to say 'pass away'
And asking for a change in the law, well THAT is clearly political.
He's an important piece in the political equation of Japan, even as a symbolic emperor. Any changes in his role will involve delicate negotiations between the parties and they are not in a good position now to do that.
In many countries constitutional monarchs are replaced by de-facto for-life Despots (think Putin and his partner Erdogan), for whom nobody could explain who they are (parents, relatives, children?), where we got them from and what happens when they expire. At least for a Monarch we knew all that with high amount of detail.
Who have no legitimacy whatsoever other than a bit of popular support, a lot of police state support and constant twisting of the law.
Nobility used to be public, now instead of having no nobility we have private nobility behind tall walls.
Right now we don't even know if he has wife or any children and what's they're up to, and also what happens next.
Him calling himself an Emperor is laughable, but having an Emperor with heritage and all the stuff instead of him now looks like an option.
I can respect the honesty of a monarchy. We have a fake egalitarian society where most of our leaders must either be Bush, Clinton, Roosevelt, Kennedy, or be closely related by marriage. Not to mention the behind the scenes families that control and pay for it all. Its disrespectful to the concept of democracy to view Hillaries coronation party as anything other than a hereditary monarchy ceremony. If it were not for Trump (and thank God for Trump), Jeb's coronation party would have been held the week prior. In that way I can respect a monarchy much more than a fake, false democracy. Someone in the English queen's family will rule after her; thank you for at least being honest about it.
The entire job of candidates is to channel people's discontent into support by sounding revolutionary. Once they're in office, their job becomes supporting the status quo and implementing the long-term designs of the people, as you said, who control and pay for it all.
This iteration, the red team is frustrated and united (having been straight opposition for the past eight years), while the blue team is divided and unenthused (having seen eight years of disappointment under their own banner). So the red team sees a savior, some blue team defects to third parties or (rationally) stays home, and the cycle repeats.
At least my peers will go back to latent libertarianism.
edit: Wow, apparently this is an offensive comment. I'm having a hard time twisting my brain to see how, but my point was simply that the it seems odd that there would be contention over a powerless role for a woman in any part of the world when (arguably) the most powerful political position that exists today has a female candidate. One would think that if the latter is true the former could not be.
edit 2: Oh, I think I get it. Posters are assuming I'm American and am boasting about how progressive my country is. Huh. Nope, that wasn't what I was doing. (Though I am American, and not voting for either mainstream candidate.)
I'm not saying it's necessarily true, but it's definitely something many people believe to be true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirimavo_Bandaranaike
Or the UK almost 40 years ago.
Or Germany 11 years ago.
:)
(I guess it would be almost safe to count Benazir Bhutto, Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1988-90 and 93-96, as a monarch...)
Women have made up 50% of the population of Homo Sapiens for the entire age of our species. Literally for hundreds of thousands to millions of years. And it is literally in our lifetimes (give or take maybe 30 years) that the first woman is made the elected leader of a country?
I wrote my reply with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, but when you get right down to it, it is phenomenally unlikely that we live at such a moment of change.
Is it so insanely improbable that, on the whole, men strive toward power and women don't? That there is some slim evidence that there is a gender difference, and women are happy not to be the number one dog everyone is looking to for guidance?
This seems to be the exact same argument as "women only get 70c on the dollar compared to men." Well, right, because men pick challenging jobs with hard hours that kill you, and women pick easier jobs with easier hours that don't kill you.
Being the President of the USA isn't a cakewalk, and those not driven by passion and a thirst for power won't end up there, which should be just fine, but for some reason... isn't.
You're also incorrect about the reasons for pay gap, and also incorrect it's due to different jobs. The pay gap occurs at people doing the same job with the same skills. The reason has to do with things like taking leave from work (gaps in employment) and being less likely to negotiate salary as aggressively.
And of course if you remove the "elected" condition the whole phenomenon is quite unsurprising since power was often taken by force and men tend to use force to acquire power more than women.
And as someone who isn't from the US, I find it incredibly bizarre that you haven't had a female leader yet.
The UK has had 2 female Prime Ministers (1979-1990, 2016-), Canada has had 1 (1993), and Germany (2005-) to name a few.
> I find it bizarre that Japan is having an contentious debate about if it's appropriate for a woman to ascend to a completely powerless role
Considering your country is just getting to the point where it's socially acceptable for a woman to run for the position of President, maybe you will consider that your country also looks comical from an outside perspective, instead of just taking a negative tone toward Japan for not already having gender equality in their monarchy.
Why? For that matter, we don't have a 'leader'; we have a President.
Unless you think "At least the U.S. is doing better than Kyrgyzstan" is the appropriate response. In that case there's really no convincing you.
Its low by international standards.
> That may be roughly the same as the relative percentage of women that are interested in going into politics.
I'm not sure why US culture having a much stronger effect of socializing men and women into different roles vis-à-vis government than every other developed nation and many developing nations would be a positive explanation for that statistic.
> your country also looks comical from an outside perspective,
That difference is not statistically significant. If both the US and other_country have the same probability of electing a female leader, the results could easily be exactly the same. 1 female leader or 0 over 30 years, that's purely chance.
Especially given that there are many other countries to chose from to cherrypick positive results. To do it properly you need to average all countries as a comparison.
Lastly some countries don't elect leaders directly, but indirectly through votes by elected representatives. Which could maybe produce different outcomes than if the general population voted.
This has parallels to the current UK situation.
I understand the response to perceived American ethnocentrism, but I wouldn't minimize the significance of Hillary/Trump.
Like US Presidents, Canadian PMs are elected by others who are directly elected; unlike US Presidents and many Canadian PMs, Kim Campbell was not chosen immediately after the election of the body by whom she was chosen. Characterizing this as not being "democratically elected" but the usual election of US Presidents being one that is "democratically elected", however, requires a non-obvious interpretation of what "democratic" means when applied to an election.
1920s/30s all over again with first a collapse of the yen and later on a war to distract the blame from the failed monetary policy and funnel the anger into some nationalist ideology.
I certainly can't blame him for not wanting to take part in that.
Japan has been printing money and economy has tanked for 35 years, but still life is good for the Japanese.
The Japanese emperors are the longest reigning royal dynasty in the world, having reigned for the entire known history of the nation. But perhaps heir secret is that they did not have much power most of the time.
During the time of the shoguns and even before that it was common to force an emperor to resign before he reaches adulthood so as to ensure that there was a child emperor on the throne at all times. A child emperor of course is unlikely to use his position to seize power.
The Meiji restoration was a revolution whose stated goal was to restore the power to the emperor. Perhaps it was in view of that goal and the history of forced resignatons that they made a law that did not even give the emperor the option to resign. However, I am not certain whether the present emperor for life law dates back to the meiji restoration.
Or perhaps they put the law in after WW2 to ensure that foreign governments do not mess with the emperors.
According to Wikipedia [1]:
> The term was coined originally in 1973 as a neologism by American writer Norman Mailer to mean a "piece of information that becomes accepted as a fact even though it’s not actually true, or an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print." Since its creation in 1973 the term has evolved from its original meaning, in common usage, and has assumed other meanings, particularly being used to describe a brief or trivial item of news or information. So it is a factoid that "factoid" means something that is true.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factoid
It's not literally as bad as the figuritive misuse of literally, where literally has come to mean figuratively and literally... This one I fight all day long.
Ironically, maybe this was the intention of the way this word was derived. It seems like it should mean a brief/small fact, but in fact it means an untrue fact, therefore serving as a perfectly recursive example of itself.
"Factoid" does mean what it sounds like (that is, it is a simple application of the common suffix "-oid" to the root "fact", both in their usual senses.)
The use CNN latched on to is not what it sounds like.
But the "-oid" suffix doesn't mean "small", it means "like or resembling". So "factoid" being something that is not, but superficially resembles, a fact makes sense. A "factoid" being a "brief fact" does not.
"Factlet" would be a sensible word for a brief fact.
This is a little clever: it's true by whichever definition you choose, and the preceding text does not clearly prefer one or the other.
Like http://bash.org/?10958 -- it's funny when you know C, but it's funnier when you also know UNIX.
It's right there in the article, you might have missed it (or it was added after you read it): “Historically, it was extremely common for emperors to abdicate,” said Takeshi Hara, an authority on the imperial family at the Open University of Japan. More than half of Japan’s monarchs have vacated the throne, often for quiet retirement at Buddhist monasteries. Only in the 19th century, when Japan’s leaders created the cult of emperor worship, did quitting become impossible.
That wasn't my intention,and I apologize to parent (hristov). I misread/parsed parent's comment wrong: my eyes somehow skipped over the 'while' which left the sentence structure valid but with the opposite meaning: "One interesting factoid that the new york times did not mention is that it was common for emperors to resign before the meiji restoration, a lot of those resignations probably were not voluntary."
The reason I removed the rest of the sentence was because it seemed tangential to the primary subject. I can no longer edit my original comment so this one will serve as my addendum.
http://www.usnews.com/news/entertainment/articles/2016-08-06...
> The quiet discussion reportedly started about five years ago, around the time he had health problems
This is before Abe became PM. From this, I think the people who don't want to change the constitution is using the Emperor politically.