How Monarchical Legacies Promote Democracy

• In Event: The Deep History of States

Abstract

• Monarchies are not democracies, of course. Rather, they are a form of government in which the public and political elites view the state as an institution analogous to the family, and, therefore, monarchs as “parents of the people.” This view means that political rulers are responsible for providing care to people in need just as parents do in the family. Virtually all Western European countries were monarchies prior to becoming democracies, and they vary greatly by the degree to which they retained their monarchical legacies. Some destroyed the institutional and ideological legitimacy of their monarchical state by means of a violent revolution while others, to this very day, retain their monarchical legacies as symbolic components of government. I argue that to the degree that countries retain their monarchical legacies, they retain the principle that government is responsible for providing care to people in need. This, in turn, I contend, affects the degree to which people view welfare provision as the government’s responsibility. To test this hypothesis, I develop four measures of monarchical legacies, including monarchical legacies as a stock variable, and show that all four measures predict the degree to which the public views welfare provision as a necessary responsibility of government and as an essential characteristic of democracy. I then show how positive public attitudes about welfare provision promote welfare spending. The results illuminate how monarchical legacies promote democracy.

Author

• Eileen McDonagh, Northeastern University