Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Queen has more power over British law than we thought

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 599 posts

Re: The Queen has more power over British law than we thought

#71

Post by Retric »

sudosysgen wrote: post #47
retrac wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The Queen was not elected. She's not a dictator. The de facto head of state in Canada is the Governor General who represents the Queen. The office is, in practice, appointed by the Prime Minister. Also not a tyrannical dictator. (Except with her personal staff, for the last one.) Nonpartisan in the sense that the Queen is nonpartisan. So of course, partisan. Still, nonpartisan like not publicly wading into polit…

Monarchs are just as bad if not worse than dictators. There are also non-tyrannical dictators. The issue with dictators is an issue of incentives, not an issue of immediate result. Unelected officials should never have significant power. This led to a harmful coup d'etat in Australia. It's not a ceremonial office, and simply the fact that the emergency button exists makes it possible for perversions to continue and c…

The difference between a Monarchy and a Dictatorship is a question of tradition and the concentration of power not the line of succession. North Korea for example moved from father to son as a Dictatorship, give it 5 generations and you could call it a Monarchy.

However, even if it’s generally accepted that the child or close relative of the current leader should become the new leader there will eventually be back and forth over time between the royal family and other members of government. In theory they might have absolute authority, but in both practice and tradition there will be many informal limits.

Re: The Queen has more power over British law than we thought

#72

Post by jcranmer »

motohagiography wrote: post #19

How does one even become a monarch? They weren't always hereditary, and it would be interesting to see what they were based on. Seems like you need some kind of divine recognition, as otherwise you're just a dictator.

Not all monarchies are hereditary. The Holy See is, while technically theocratic and thus not a monarchy, an example of what elective monarchy would look like. Perhaps the weirdest example is Andorra, which makes Emmanuel Macron (the President of France) an elected, er, diarch (he's only Co-Prince) by the virtue of being elected by people who have no ties to the country.

To answer the question of how hereditary monarchies get started: in the modern era (post-Napoleonic Wars, generally), new monarchies carved out of existing states either elevated important local elites (the Sharif of Mecca's sons got kingdoms in Iraq and Transjordan out of WWI, with the Sharif himself proclaiming a kingdom in Hejaz), or they shopped around important royal families in Europe to import a monarch (e.g., a lot of German princes found themselves kings of newly-created Balkan states in the 19th century). The right of conquest to attain a royal title is pretty well-accepted, although conquest usually comes from someone who already has a heritable noble title anyways (cf. the Dukes of Normandy becoming Kings of England).

The older noble lineages in Europe (and elsewhere, but I really don't know much about the history of nobility outside of Europe) appear to largely arise from a Germanic system of elected chiefdoms where one family gradually gains enough power to force the elections to choose them, eventually (though not always, cf. the Holy Roman Empire) dispensing with the pretense of election. Given the paucity of written sources, we obviously have very little record of how these influential families actually came to gain their influence, and the sources that we do have tend to be edited to suggest divine providence as the originator of their rule.

Re: The Queen has more power over British law than we thought

#73

Post by lacker »

etrevino wrote: post #13

I used to work as a scholar of Britain (specifically executions in Early Modern England, but you pick up a lot along the way) and I've tried to explain to a lot of people the amount of influence and control that the monarch actually holds. I'm not sure that this is such a bad thing. The Queen can't create legislation, she can restrain it. She is purely a moderating influence in this sense. She could, in theory, name…

The Queen can't create legislation, she can restrain it. She is purely a moderating influence in this sense.

This isn't really guaranteed to be a "moderating" influence except in the most technical sense. The current queen does not seem very eager to grab more power, but one could easily imagine a more devious and power-hungry monarch parlaying the ability to interfere with some laws into greater political power.

Imagine a Trump-type figure in England. Popular on social media, eager to bend the laws, and calling on the support of a loud minority willing to sacrifice the principles of democracy. Now imagine that figure is also the King of England, with the current powers given to the monarch. Why would you want such a hereditary system?

Britain should scrap the monarchy entirely while they have the chance.

Re: The Queen has more power over British law than we thought

#74

Post by jnwatson »

The most obvious difference between the American and British legislative systems is the presence of a foundational document like the Constitution.

The British system is strictly about convention and precedent, whereas Americans have a little more explicit guidance from the Constitution.

I think what we've learned as Americans in the last few years is that it isn't enough to have a foundational document. Convention and precedent indeed play a large role in the function of how the well government works. Congress is now terminally defective, largely because of the loss of the norms and violations of precedent, starting roughly in the mid 90's.

Perhaps the idea that convention and precedent is the only thing holding the British system together makes it stronger.

Re: The Queen has more power over British law than we thought

#75

Post by jcranmer »

headcanon wrote: post #56
motohagiography wrote: post #19

How does one even become a monarch? They weren't always hereditary, and it would be interesting to see what they were based on. Seems like you need some kind of divine recognition, as otherwise you're just a dictator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_monarchs Pretty fascinating history overall. In England's case, the earliest monarch we'd recognize as "King of England" was Alfred the Great, who was king of what was called Wessex at the time. Wessex was the last holdout of "native" English as opposed to being ruled by Vikings and their descendants. Wessex eventually re-conquered the island a few hundred years later and…

> As to how earlier kings gained their position, at least in England I'd say it was some combination of local warlords that were semi-legitimized during Roman rule, then later their descendents consolidated power after the Romans left, either through marriage, trade, or violence.

That definitely didn't happen. The locals in Roman Britain would be the Bretons, a Celtic-speaking people. The withdrawal of Roman power from Britain was followed with the Anglo-Saxon migrations of people from what is now the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark, which (actually rather rapidly) displaced the Celtic speakers with Germanic speakers. The Anglo-Saxon petty kingdoms arose after the migration, although they were subsequently occupied by the Great Dane Army that settled in the Danelaw region of England. It was the Mercian (one of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms) failure to deal with the Vikings and Alfred the Great's success that led the Wessex king, and not the then-dominant Mercian king, to actually unify all of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms into a single Kingdom of England.

The origination of these Anglo-Saxon kingdoms is extremely unclear, happening during the Great Migration and in an area where the written record rather abruptly dies out. Virtually the entire list of sources for this period is Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the Peoples of Britain and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle commissioned by Alfred the Great.

Re: The Queen has more power over British law than we thought

#77

Post by graeme »

roelschroeven wrote: post #64
retrac wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is very true. The Crown plays a useful and vital role in the Westminster system. (I'm in Canada.) It can't just be tossed without something to replace it. But I'm not sure the monarchy offers anything not provided by a nonpartisan and mostly ceremonial presidency, similar to Ireland or Germany.

> It can't just be tossed without something to replace it. Why not? I admit I'm more familiar with the Belgian situation than the British Crown, but to me it always seems not very difficult to replace the monarch with almost nothing. I don't see why we need any kind of president, even though that's what people always talk when there's talk of doing away with the monarchy. The real leader of the country is the prime m…

The Belgian situation seems fairly dysfunctional. Is the monarch completely absent from politics? This happened in 2007-11: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007–2011_Belgian_political_cr...

In Brazil in the 19th century liberal democrats thought a monarch was unnecessary, after 67 years of successful politics under a king. Upon abolition the country devolved into a long succession of military coups and dictatorial governments.

There have obviously been successful countries without monarchy, but it is very risky to say that a figurehead does nothing. Reserve powers are a pretty real restraint.

Re: The Queen has more power over British law than we thought

#78

Post by alasdair_ »

motohagiography wrote: post #19

How does one even become a monarch? They weren't always hereditary, and it would be interesting to see what they were based on. Seems like you need some kind of divine recognition, as otherwise you're just a dictator.

>How does one even become a monarch?

Just call yourself one, and have enough people agree with you.

Re: The Queen has more power over British law than we thought

#79

Post by seneca »

jnwatson wrote: post #74

The most obvious difference between the American and British legislative systems is the presence of a foundational document like the Constitution. The British system is strictly about convention and precedent, whereas Americans have a little more explicit guidance from the Constitution. I think what we've learned as Americans in the last few years is that it isn't enough to have a foundational document. Convention an…

> Perhaps the idea that convention and precedent is the only thing holding the British system together makes it stronger.

This echos the Roman senate during the late Republican period quite strongly. They, like the British, depended on precedent (their "Mos Maiorum"). Like us Americans, once the social norms were violated things quickly devolved.

Re: The Queen has more power over British law than we thought

#80

Post by mattmanser »

Veen wrote: post #69
mattmanser wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, not true. What you're referring to is known as primogeniture succession, but there were also elective monarchies and tanistry, and probably more that I don't know about. Sometimes succession was limited to the immediate family, sometimes a 'bloodline', sometimes any eligible nobles. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_succession For example that article mentions the Kingdom of Italy was briefly had thi…

> Actually, not true. Actually, it is true but not exhaustive. Nor was it intended to be. I was addressing the context of monarchy in the UK, as the rest of the comment makes clear.

The GP was asking in general, so your straightforward answer is explicitly wrong and must be read in that context, whether the UK's one happen to evolve into one is a bit irrelevant. Then again, even in 'recent' history, William of Orange was invited to take the English crown without primogeniture.
Post reply on HN