You would look in vain for any controversial statements made by the queen during her lifetime. Sure, in the internet age, she, too, acquiesced to having a Twitter account, and a team of press people would post things on Instagram in her name. But they were all bland, uncontroversial—and, frankly, dull.

In an age when everyone has an opinion—when everyone in public life feels an urge to tell all and sundry about their grumbles, gripes, and grievances—she never did. That is exactly why she, and the monarchy, became a stabilizing factor in a time of upheaval.

Take this anecdote from 1995, when the Montreal broadcaster Pierre Brassard phoned Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace and convinced her that he was then-Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. The Canadian politician was concerned that the French-speaking province of Quebec would break away in a referendum in that year. And the imitator asked the queen to intervene. She did not. Nor did she deny the request. She just responded with studious dullness, and small talk. What would have been a scoop was nothing of the kind, because the queen said nothing of substance.

She had opinions. But they were tightly guarded. And they were only revealed when David Cameron (her 12th Prime Minister) broke with protocol. “She purred down the line,” Cameron reportedly said, describing the queen’s display of happiness when he informed her of the failure of a referendum to make Scotland independent in 2014.

Cameron got in big trouble for relaying that detail. Because the monarchy is based on the premise that the queen (or king) is a neutral arbiter, literally above the fray, sharing a choice anecdote from the weekly meeting between the British monarch and her PM was seen as a betrayal of confidence. In the aftermath, Cameron had to tuck his tail between his legs. “I have made my apologies and I think I will probably be making some more,” he told reporter Andrew Marr on BBC One.

In British constitutional theory, the role of the monarch is almost purely ceremonial. But not entirely. In 1867, the journalist Walter Bagehot wrote that the queen was part of the “ceremonial” part of the constitution, not the “functional.” The sovereign was no longer the ruler, but she maintained “the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn,” he wrote in the book The English Constitution.

The role of the monarch when Bagehot wrote was to be a unifying figure. The constitutional monarchy was devised in the Victorian age as a means to overcome class divisions. The queen was to personify the unity in a country that was deeply divided. This is still her role.

But, paradoxical though it may sound, the unelected monarch also has a democratic role to play. If she (or now he) knows how to perform the duties.

In the 1990s, Vernon Bogdanor, an Oxford academic (who was also my doctoral supervisor) controversially argued that “far from undermining democracy, the monarchy sustains and strengthens democratic institutions.”

Don’t get me wrong, the idea of a monarchy goes against every logical tenet of a meritocratic society. Having someone who is born to a position in society is profoundly undemocratic. And yet, one could make the argument that her ability to give politicians advice was uniquely unpolitical and disinterested, since she had a long view and never had to face voters.

When, on rare occasions, no party had a majority in the House of Commons, she could advise on who could form a government in a way that was not party political. Her reserve also gave the whole political sphere to elected officials; she, like the most understanding parent, would never criticize them in public, even if she might disagree in private.

By contrast, in countries with an elected head of state (Finland, Italy, or Germany, to name only a few) the president is almost inevitably a former politician. Only the most unopinionated presidents in European countries—notably ’90s Irish president Mary Robinson and the present Irish president Michael D. Higgins, a poet in his previous life—have managed to be accepted as neutral arbiters. More typically, there is a strong whiff of partisanship around Europe’s elected presidents, a sense that the advice they give to prime ministers or chancellors is tainted by past political allegiances.

This is not the case with a monarch.

And in this Queen Elizabeth was an unrivaled master, once again, because she was, yes, bland.

In 1975, the queen’s representative in Australia, Governor-General Sir John Kerr, dismissed the leftist Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. For years, Australians speculated that the monarch herself had deliberately sacked the reforming Labor leader. Yet, when the files were finally released in 2020, there was no smoking gun, no conspiracy, no evidence that she had known of the sacking ahead of time, much less approved it. No surprise: What the files did contain were various bland statements by the queen.

Queen Elizabeth’s talent for not saying anything, maintaining the sense that she was above the fray made her such a rallying point, a symbol of unity, for many in a divided society.

The big question for the British monarchy now—and for the countries that still have her as the head of state (including Canada, New Zealand, and Jamaica)—is if her successor is capable of displaying the same talent.

The queen’s oldest son —King Charles III as he is now known—has a reputation for his strong, sometimes compelling opinions on everything from architecture to the environment. “My old Aston Martin, which I’ve had for 51 years, runs on—can you believe this?—surplus English white wine and whey from the cheese process,” Charles once told the BBC without a hint of irony, thus putting an ocean of distance between himself and the common.

Now, suddenly, having opinions is no longer his job. Is he up for aloofness?

In a constitutional monarchy, once the monarch has an opinion, the support for the institution falls away. When Spanish King Felipe VI made remarks about the region of Catalonia that indicated he was unsympathetic to the secessionist aspirations of some Catalans, it damaged the institution of the monarchy.

By contrast, the Danish Queen Margrethe II has studiously avoided having any opinion on Greenland and the Faroe Islands and their aspirations for greater sovereignty, emulating a blandness commensurate with her late English colleague. It is no wonder then that in Denmark, unlike Spain, the monarchy remains strong.

Charles must do his utmost to show that he is the king of all Britons. This is a difficult task—and an urgent one. The Scottish government is seeking a second independence referendum in 2023. And while Queen Elizabeth, who died at Balmoral, was highly popular in Scotland, only a minority of the Scottish people support the monarchy as an institution.

For a while, conventional wisdom had it that the English monarchy could be saved if the opinionated Charles were to abdicate in favor of Prince William. But William’s very publicized spat with his younger brother Harry and Harry’s wife Meghan—and how race was a part of that controversy—means that he, too, is not seen as neutral. (In contrast, the queen managed to avoid the publicity backlash that William faced, while still reportedly being involved in the unwelcoming of Meghan.)

Of course, it may be inhuman for any flesh-and-blood monarch to match the mien of the most successful and studiously bland monarch in modern history. But politicians may find it worthwhile to try to imitate her.

The late Queen Elizabeth’s lasting lesson is that, in divided and diverse societies, we still need institutions that appear to be uncontroversial and above the fray, and we still need the illusion of simple and steady leaders onto which we can project our own complicated feelings.

The post Queen Elizabeth II Knew the Virtues of Being Vanilla appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Please forgive me for the protocol breach of writing you in utero.

But after watching your parents—Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex—tell their Santa Barbara County neighbor Oprah Winfrey that you are expected this summer and will be biologically female, I’ve been thinking about what your arrival might mean for California.

We Californians, whether we realize it or not, need you. Because the next great start-up here must be our very own monarchy. And you would be the perfect person to serve as our very first queen.

Generally, I’m not a fan of monarchies, but many Californians are. In fact, alluring visions of monarchy are one of California’s most reliable economic exports. Burbank-based Disney is a factory of minting fictional princesses and princes far more animated and musical than any real-world royal. Your great-grandmother, the Queen of England, has no more loyal subject than the executives at Los Gatos-based Netflix, which distributes The Crown and gave your parents a production deal estimated at $100 million.

Unfortunately, Californians pay far more attention to these fictional monarchies, and other entertainments offered by our ruling technological and entertainment giants, than they do to the actual governance of our state and local communities. So, as I thought about your impending and historic birth, I began to wonder if introducing a queen might encourage Californians to follow government more closely, and even work to improve democracy here.

California suffers under America’s presidential system, which puts too much power in one chief executive. The core problem is that system forces that leader to combine two disparate roles: the head of state, who should represent and unify the whole country, and the head of government, who should handle the politics and policy. Other countries split these roles between a monarch and a prime minister, but the U.S. doesn’t, which means one autocratic California-hating president can effectively check or cancel the rights and democratic choices of 40 million Californians.

To protect our state against future Trumps, California is already asserting greater autonomy from the U.S. government in many policy areas; to reinforce that effort, we should also make the symbolic move of naming you as our monarch. You would be our unifying head of state, with only limited and ceremonial powers—like your great-grandmother in England—leaving the politics and government to our governor and legislature.

This would be more than just a powerful protest against excessive presidential and federal power, or a reminder to the rest of the U.S. that California has the size and wherewithal to pursue independence. A monarch might curb California’s own destructive tendencies, as well.

California governments focus obsessively on responses to immediate problems; a monarch, who serves for life and across many administrations, is a big-platform reminder of the long-term. California is dogged by our age’s excessive political partisanship; a monarch gives us a state leader who is non-partisan. California treats ballot initiatives like royal edicts that can’t be altered and end up ruling us for generations; perhaps the permanence of a royal family would give us the comfort to permit easier amendment of tax and spending measures like Prop 13 or Prop 98.

A monarch, by handling the pomp and circumstance of California affairs, would give our governors more time to focus on doing actual stuff. Our last three governors wasted considerable energy tending to their regal public personas when they should have been governing: Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Austro-Californian king of the box office; Jerry Brown, the callow princeling-turned-monarch/sage; and Gavin Newsom, with royal looks and a perhaps politically fatal weakness for the food and drink of Versailles.

You might ask why the Queen of California has to be you. Fair question. We certainly have no shortage of royals here: Queen Latifah, King James of Laker Nation, and the most benevolent of pop rulers, Beyoncé. But they are transplants—from Newark, New Jersey; Akron, Ohio; and Houston, Texas, respectively. California leaders, of course, can come from anywhere. But I think it’s best that the queen of a new monarchy be born in the land she rules.

Unlike your big brother Archie, born back in the U.K., you’ll be a native. Your parents, while deeply flawed, are perfect for the roles of Queen Mum and Queen Dad. You’ll be the child of an interracial woman from Los Angeles who worked in Hollywood, and of a member of the royal family with which Californians are most familiar. The fact that they were considered bad seeds in that British regime, and decided to flee, only makes them better Californians. We are often our families’ departed bad seeds.

Your father’s foreign citizenship means that you, like half of all California children, will have at least one immigrant parent. I also like the idea of you finding a way around the child labor laws so you can start some royal work at a young age—California might invest more in its children if they had more power. You could make it your mission to bring kids together, thus answering author Joan Didion’s still-stinging criticism of her home state: “Not much about California, on its own preferred terms, has encouraged its children to see themselves as connected to one another.”  

A monarchy like yours would be new, but it’s not without precedent. California was ruled by Spanish monarchs back in the 18th century. Queen Victoria and her descendants moved and married abroad with such ferocity that they now head all of Europe’s royal families.

The only real downside of making you queen is that other states might jealously follow suit. Texas would surely want its own sultan.

Perhaps you don’t want all this, and you’ll lead a commoner’s life. Fine. But being the first queen of California could be a sweet gig. Your parents have already established a home base for you in magnificent Montecito. For a northern outpost, even you probably can’t afford the Bay Area—no one can—but you could take an apartment in Sacramento and then build a Balmoral-style retreat up in Modoc or Lassen County, where the locals share the Windsor family’s taste for hunting.

As for the name you take as queen, I have a suggestion. The name California comes from the story of Califia, a fictional queen ruling over an independent island of Black pagan women in Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo’s 16th-century epic, The Adventures of Esplandián. The poet probably took the name Califia from the Arabic khalifa, meaning religious state ruler. The queen’s island was called California.

So, let me be the first to say to you: God Save Queen Califia II! Your kingdom awaits.

The post An Open Letter to California’s Future Queen appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Liechtenstein’s constitution of 1921 first established the principle that is still valid today: namely that the authority of the state is anchored in the Prince and the People. The demand was based on the growing democracy movement in Liechtenstein. With the new constitution of 1921, the tradition of the monarchy was continued, and at the same time, the power of the people was strengthened. Therefore, in the future and up to the present time, a consensus between the reigning prince and the people on relevant issues was necessary. This division of power has contributed to the stability of the political system and balanced political decisions.

The people gained significant rights in 1921. The prince could no longer unilaterally appoint the government, and he lost his three appointments to the then 15-member parliament (it now has 25 members). All members of parliament would be elected. Prior to 1921, the prince relied on foreign civil servants to run Liechtenstein. The new constitution, on contrary, mandated that government ministers be Liechtenstein citizens who were proposed by parliament and then appointed by the reigning prince.

Liechtenstein’s new direct democratic instruments included the popular initiative, which allowed the people to amend the constitution or laws by collecting signatures and putting their ideas to a vote. Another tool was the referendum against constitutional, legislative and financial decisions of parliament. Parliament also gained the power, on its own initiative, to submit decisions to the vote of the people. The people could also decide to dissolve parliament and thus trigger new elections.

The people of Liechtenstein have used these tools frequently. More than 100 popular votes have been held at the national level in the past century. And there has never been a restriction of these democratic rights. On the contrary, new rights have been added and the hurdles for using the tools have gradually been lowered. In 1992, the direct democratic instruments were expanded to permit the holding of a referendum on international treaties. The people were then able to vote on whether Liechtenstein could join the European Economic Area (EEA).

Within the princely house, according to the family statute, succession is governed by the principle of male primogeniture, i.e. the eldest son of the reigning prince is the designated successor. Reigning Prince Hans-Adam II and the hereditary prince are among those who also use direct democracy. In 2003, they triggered a popular initiative to revise the constitution which met with clear approval at the ballot box. This already shows that the princely house and Prince Hans-Adam II cannot be committed to a purely passive role in politics.

Among other things, this constitutional revision of 2003 introduced new direct democratic procedures. Thus, the people can express their distrust of the reigning prince in a referendum, although it is then up to the male members of the princely house entitled to vote to decide whether any measures should be taken against the reigning prince. In extreme cases, he can be deposed. The people also have the right under the constitution to take an initiative to abolish the monarchy. If this were ever approved by a majority at the ballot box, parliament would be charged with drawing up a republican draft constitution. In the end, the people would decide whether the existing constitution should continue to be valid, or if the Republican constitution should be adopted, or an additional draft constitution submitted by the reigning prince.

However, as long as the existing constitution is in force, the reigning prince retains far-reaching powers, including the right to dismiss the Government. In everyday political life, the prince maintains the right to veto legal and financial decisions; laws and treaties cannot achieve full force without his consent. The strong position of the monarchy enjoys great support among the population, as it is seen as an important pillar of Liechtenstein’s success and stability.

This therefore requires communication, and the development of consensus, between the people or the elected representatives and the reigning prince. It is rare for the prince to refuse to sanction an act of the parliament or the voters. The only time the prince overruled the people after a referendum vote came in 1961, when they approved a hunting law the prince opposed. However, the prince can often get what he wants merely by threatening the veto. A refusal to sanction was announced in a referendum on the liberalization of abortion in 2011 and in a popular initiative to limit the prince’s veto right in 2012. Both proposals failed at the ballot box, however, and the veto was unnecessary.

The Liechtenstein political system has managed to combine, creatively, the contradictory elements of representative democracy, direct democracy, and monarchy. The veto power of the prince and the people—together with control mechanism based on the rule of law and the binding nature of treaties (such as the European Convention on Human Rights)—ensures broadly supported and balanced decisions. The Liechtenstein system has produced very high levels of acceptance of political decisions and a high degree of satisfaction with the political system itself, as numerous surveys show.

As a result, the monarchy itself, as only one part of the government, is generally held in high esteem. The country’s enormous economic upswing since the 1940s has helped reinforce the good feeling. In Liechtenstein, the widespread view is that anchoring state power both in the reigning prince and in the people is not to the disadvantage of either side, but rather to their mutual advantage.

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Under the lèse majesté laws anyone can be charged with the crime of disrespecting the king, queen, or any heir to the throne. The current monarchy-backed military junta has used these laws to protect members of the King’s families, including, absurdly, their pets. Late last year, a young man was arrested after he posted a meme that mocked the king’s dog on a satirical Facebook page. Because of his joke, he now faces up to 37 years in prison.

These prosecutions indicate a problem far older than social media: Thailand’s constitution is designed to protect the king above everything else, including justice. Today, the first chapter of the constitution reads, “The King shall be enthroned in a position of revered worship and shall not be violated. No person shall expose the King to any sort of accusation or action.”

Because of this, the whole kingdom of Thailand is wary of honest conversation about the monarchy—and about the army generals who have frequently attempted to manipulate our country’s democratic system (nominally in place since a 1932 coup overturning the absolute monarchy of King Bhumibol’s uncle). This is quite a chilling effect, as the royals’ first coup to overthrow the constitutional government and regain power was attempted after democracy failed in 1933. The last, to date, occurred in 2014. Each time the king regains power, none of the coups’ leaders are ever brought before a court of justice.

To understand Thailand’s cycle of “coup, uprising, crackdown, election, coup” is to understand the relationship King Bhumibol—the world’s longest reigning monarch, having come to power in 1946—has with coups. By my count, approximately 10 coups have been staged for the king between 1947 and 2014. Each time, the palace’s Privy Council and other powerful actors have been able to generate enough military power to retain control for themselves and the civil servants that constitute this country’s elite.

This preoccupation with meddling in election results and quashing uprisings has left the majority of Thais with a subpar quality of life.

Young King Bhumibol.

I was born in 1966 in a rice-growing village 100 kilometers from Bangkok, Thailand’s capital. Because of its location, births were overseen by a midwife, rather than a medical doctor. As a youth, I was among the approximately 37 percent of Thai people suffering from thalassemia, a genetic blood disorder that degrades the carrier’s blood cells and can lead to anemia. I often think about how lucky I am to have survived my childhood sickness under the spotty care of the veteran medics and nurse’s assistants whom we called “doctors.”

This inferior health care was the norm for more than half of Thailand until the 1990s. If someone in the family needed serious medical attention, it meant selling anything you could to pay the medical bills and/or appealing to civil servants, who often seemed to only respond to bribes of food, gifts, or cash. (For this reason, the most secure life you can have in Thailand is to be a civil servant.)

Thus the less-secure classes cherished free universal health care when they experienced it for the first time in 2002, after it was implemented by Thaksin Shinawatra’s newly elected Thai Rak Thai party. When this happened, the whole country realized that bribing or personally knowing a civil servant was no longer the only option for getting reliable access to healthcare.

I like to think that the plan was implemented as a result of the mobilization of rural people who spurred the Thai Rak Thai party to power. However, the party dissolved after the monarchy regained control via yet another coup in 2006. This coup led to Shinawatra’s exile and many of his supporters being banned from practicing politics for years.

But dissatisfaction with the monarchy’s status quo, mainly among rural and lower-class Thais, remained, and led to massive demonstrations in 2010. Protestors from the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (commonly known as “Red Shirts”) took to the Bangkok streets in April and May of that year, and were met by tens of thousands of Royal Thai Armed Forces who opened fire on crowds, killing 100 people and leaving close to 2,000 injured. Shocked rural and urban Thais might not have supported Shinawatra’s political party—I myself do not support it—but the massacre alerted them to the brutality and selfishness displayed by the elite establishment and its protected class of civil servants.

The crackdown in May 2010 was yet another catalyst for many political activists to install democratic principles in Thailand. I answered my calling a few years before this, when I self-published an essay titled “Why I Don’t Love the King” and decided to live in exile outside Thailand. Today, I’m in Finland, but continue write on the “unspeakable” (under lèse-majesté) issues still affecting Thailand.

For instance, much of the national tax revenue is being funneled towards the nation’s elite. The budget allocation to the palaces has increased greatly since King Bhumibol came to power in 1946. And since the 2006 coup, the purpose of the national budget has been to support the development of the capital city of Bangkok and to look after the two million civil servants, military, and police, all in the name of protecting and honoring the King. This has worked out well for King Bhumibol; for almost a decade Forbes has ranked him as the world’s richest monarch, with a net worth of $30 billion.

Meanwhile, rural politicians fight amongst themselves over budget scraps, which they use to secure their families’ fortunes. The members of parliament in my hometown province, Suphanburi, have been passing positions between networks of family members for as long as I can remember.

2010 New Years Card for the Thai people, given by His Majesty the King of Thailand, King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

Growing up, we would hear things like “by the time the commission fees have been divided up, the money remaining for the construction of roads will only be around 20 percent.” On top of that, the prices for building materials such as brick, stone, and cement are greatly inflated, to the point where one of the Crown Property Bureau’s largest sources of income is from cement sales. As a result, Thailand’s road projects often take forever.

These issues have not spurred Thailand’s remaining political parties to action. No political party explicitly opposed the coups that occurred in 2006 and 2014, and they never felt the need to mobilize so that they could tell the military to go home. Party leaders resisted action so that they could protect their own families and businesses.

And so the current Thai junta survives, even though junta members have done nothing to endear themselves to the public, choosing instead to strengthen their ties to the monarchy. In March 2015, under the orders of Prayuth Chan-o-cha, a retired army general who leads Thailand’s National Council for Peace and Order, Article 44 was added to Thailand’s interim constitution, granting the junta unlimited legal power whenever the King feels threatened.

In return, the Privy Council, the body that advises the King, as well as other palace insiders, pushed out propaganda arguing that Thailand is not ready for democracy and is better off under the protection of 1,400 generals and 400,000 soldiers.

King Bhumibol seems to fear that he cannot keep the hearts of all Thai people submissive, and that they will one day rise up to eliminate the monarchy once and for all. And yet, because of his increasing reliance on lèse-majesté, many people outside of Thailand believe the king is universally beloved, and have no idea that there might be a different reality than the anachronistic story pushed by the palace. Indeed, the harsh lèse-majesté sentences have helped encourage that fantasy within the country as well.

There is a saying among the critical voices in Thailand that Thai people are living under a coconut shell, believing that Thailand is the most fantastic nation in the world, that Thai people are the sweetest human beings, and that the Thai king is the king of all kings. But outside of the coconut shell, the view is much darker.

 
*An earlier version misstated the year of the 2010 demonstrations.

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