A monarchy is a government system that has a monarch as its highest leader.
Throughout history, human beings have developed different ways of exercising government, with very diverse structures and rules. One of them is the monarchy , where the most important position in the State is for life (it is held until death) and is generally designated through inheritance (power is received from the father or another relative).
The term monarchy comes from the fusion of the Greek terms monos (one) and arkein (power) which means "power concentrated in one". It is distinguished from tyranny and despotism because it implies a legitimate power , unlike these other governments that are characterized by illegality and arbitrariness in the exercise of power. On the other hand, it differs from the republic because there is a close relationship between the power of the king and the exercise of the same in the public environment. In the republic there is no power inherent to the people, but whoever exercises it holds a public office.
The one who has the power in a monarchy is the monarch , although according to the legal structure of the government or the region, he can receive different names: king , emperor , tsar , kaiser , etc. The State that is governed by a monarch can also receive the name of kingdom , in addition to monarchy .
The authoritarian monarchy
There are several types of monarchies. An authoritarian monarchy is a government that has powers over a territory , which are based mainly on bureaucracy (taxes, a single army and an economic system managed centrally by the monarch). It was a very common system in ancient times, where the ruler was the King who came from the noble sector of society and whose position was ceded to him by a hereditary bond. Said monarch commanded all the people, using the service of vassals and peasants and imposing a mandatory sum of taxes.
There have been monarchs who were merely puppets of the most powerful nobles or of the Church, to whom they often owed economic favors that allowed them to be manipulated by said sectors.
The first authoritarian monarchy that existed was the one established in 1385 by John I of Portugal, of the Avis dynasty. After him came many years of monarchies throughout the European continent.
The characteristics of an absolute monarchy are a government where the king has three powers: judicial, executive and legislative. This representative is based on divine law and power is granted to him hereditarily (son of kings). Among the European monarchies, the best-known model of monarchy was the absolutist one imposed by the French.
The crown is often seen as a symbol of the power of a monarchy.
A constitutional or parliamentary government
Parliamentary or constitutional monarchy is a form of government where the monarch has limited powers by an institution called Parliament, which is governed by a set of established laws (Constitution). A group that represents the three States. In this type of government, the powers are divided into three: judicial, executive and legislative, and Parliament regulates the normal functioning of the Kingdom, collaborating with the King and imposing certain structures and limits on his mandate, especially in the legislative branch.
This form of government was the one that made possible for the first time in history the right to individual freedom and to have a defense in court and is native to England and the Netherlands (17th century).
Other types of monarchy
Hybrid monarchies exist when the system of government is somewhere between an individualistic and absolute monarchy and a monarchy governed by a constitution. This means that the king does not hold all the power over a territory, although he retains considerable political strength.
These last two regimes, therefore, differ from absolute monarchy , where the monarch concentrates total power (there is no division of powers and he makes decisions on his own, without giving explanations to any legislative chamber or judicial power).
Many monarchs have always been consecrated by deifying their person. In these cases, the king is considered to be a God or to have been chosen by a higher being. A classic example of this situation can be found in Egypt thousands of years ago, when the pharaoh was elevated above mortals.
The system today
Today there are several countries in the world where constitutional monarchy coexists with other forms of government , mostly democratic. In African and Asian countries the role of the ruler is fundamental, in other countries it is merely symbolic. In these latter cases, in order to continue with the tradition of the country, societies have preferred to maintain the monarchy so as not to break with certain customs, although in these cases the essence of these governments has had to be modified and the monarchs have lost power .
To illustrate this, we can mention, among others, the current monarchies of the United Kingdom, Spain, Denmark and Canada. They are constitutional or parliamentary monarchies , under a democratic system and sovereignty that is in the hands of the people and where the monarch maintains a particularly symbolic and representative role, although he can also act as an arbitrator or consultant.