The King of Norway has a mostly symbolic role in day-to-day affairs. New laws that have been passed by the Storting (Parliament) will have their final approval signed by the King, but this is largely a token approval. The King does have veto power over any given amendment, but if he invokes it, Parliament has the right to vote the same amendment through a second time, at which point it cannot be vetoed. He is the head of the Church of Norway, and also supreme commander of our armed forces. Though command is delegated to other commanders, the King would have a more direct role in questions regarding central command or wartime. When representing our country abroad, he is very much considered a personification of the nation, rather than a representative of the ruling party. Norway's main reason for maintaining our own monarchy stems very much from declaring independence from Denmark and Sweden, which ruled us for about 500 years.
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I just want to underscore the crucial part of the monarch being apolitical. I believe the only Norwegian citizens that cannot vote are the royal family (whether by tradition or law I'm not sure).
I think it definitely has an effect of bringing cohesion and stability to a country that you have a formal head of state, or a "personification" of the nation, that is not tied to any political party. One thing is in foreign diplomacy, another thing is in bringing the country together during a crisis. In the latter case, the monarch is a figurehead that everyone can gather around, regardless of political affiliation.
They still have power. The king has regular meeting with the prime minister and they own an awful amount of property which also translates to power
In my country they have enough support from both the left and right leaning voters. Also a vast majority of voters think there are more important issues to deal with.
Some parties (we have 8 with >4% votes) have an ideological position that we should abolish momarchy. No party is actively campaigning for it, because it's seen as unimportant.
In my country we have 2 kings, one of whom complains he does not get enough money to fuel his yacht. No joke.
I think taking a broad view, there are quite a lot of constitutional monarchies that are really great places to live (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, New Zealand, Canada, the Bahamas, Japan, to name a few). There are also quite a lot of republics that can claim the same. So, from a sort of human development POV, I don't think it really matters very much.
[EDIT: Should've added that there are also plenty of republics and monarchies that are disasters, too. My point is that there's no consistent pattern of one works and the other doesn't.]
Sure, monarchies are a bit daft but I think 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' is quite a good rule. Especially since spending time on fixing things that ain't broke is time you could be spending on fixing things that are broke. I live in the UK and we have a lot of major problems that need our attention. It's better to focus on those than have a big argument about the King when, as we can see from international comparisons, the King isn't really the issue.
I love that you said Canada but not the UK as we share a monarch 🤣 please send help i hate it here
Heh. Yeah, I can't really hold up a country backsliding on trans rights as an example of an effective constitutional monarchy.
I mean think of it this way: If your monarch isn't a dick and removing them would piss off the reactionaries and average people who don't care much about politics, why would you do that? They also help curb strongman autocrats by providing a target for the population to worship (therefore occupying that niche for a certain section of the population) but not give any real power to.
How would you get rid of them?
All the constitutional monarchies started as just monarchies. Every step between those days and what's around now have been gradual, and usually very stable.
If you want to completely sever royals from government, it isn't as simple as snapping fingers. Some of them, you'd have to unmake the constitution and rebuild it from the ground up. And that isn't something that everyone in those countries wants, so you'd have to get people on board and willing to deal with the transition instability.
Undoing all the baby steps from "King Bob, first of his name, absolute ruler" to "king Fred, he's kind of a figurehead, but kinda has a minor role too" is, in the cases I'm aware of, a damn hard one to unwind. Each movement comes along with other laws and decisions that would have to be untangled to sever the ties.
Not an impossible task, but a long, difficult, and expensive one. Yeah, you get enough people on board, throw a revolution, and you bypass all that, but then you've got to rebuild anyway, which means you'll be building the new government in baby steps with compromises and concessions and political expediency. With no guarantee of something better at all. It could end up better, but it could end up with a nation in collapse.
Again, if enough people want it, and accept that risk, it could happen.
But most people want stability. Very little gives the sensation of stability like hundreds of years of the same family being in place. Sure, you get assholes and idiots among them, but you have the constitution and the actual government to keep it in check. Another fifty years down the road, it changes faces and life goes on.
The simplest method in most cases would probably just be to change the law about succession. Keep the position of king, just make it an elected or appointed one. That way nothing else has to be touched unless you want to change it
All the constitutional monarchies started as just monarchies.
Nope.
Spain, for instance, started as a dictatorship.
Then the bastard died of being an old piece of shit, hopefully extremely painfully, and the corrupt fratricidal parasite he'd named as a successor, a descendant of some dude who had been king long before the dictatorship (which started as a coup against a democratic republican government) he'd been grooming for years, was named king.
There was a sham "democratic transition" that defecated a "democratic construction" with the military threatening the elected politicians to make sure the new constitution wasn't too democratic, and a referendum where the people voted for that thing because at least it wasn't as bad as going back to the dictatorship.
Then a few years later the parasite (secretly) staged a coup, and then publicly diplomatically dismantled it, enshrining himself as a saviour of democracy and making sure the citizenship wouldn't push for radical change, lest the next coup succeed.
As the bastard Franco said before he died, he left everything “tied up and well tied up”.
In the Netherlands, it's not like the King or his family aren't doing anything. They are somewhat like special ambassadors for the country. They also are highly connected, both to people in governments and other people in a position of power. And they do answer to the Parliament.