71–80 of 193 posts
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.
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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.
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. Durin…
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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.
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. "Good for tourism" is another one.
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.
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> 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…
> 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 mini…
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.
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).
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.
“I am concerned that it will become more and more difficult for me to fulfill my duties as a symbolic emperor” This sounds like the opening or the punchline for a Dilbert strip!
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.
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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 variou…
> 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 her…
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.
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…
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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.
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. "Good for tourism" is another 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."