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I’m not sure it would, if only because the monarchs would inherit largely functional institutions built by their democratic successors. But to speak for the normie constituency: since the last time the nobility was in power their countries were quite a bit poorer and more war-prone, is there a reason you think they would do an equal/better job than moderns? I feel like an active case has to be made here.
Wrt democracy making people care about politics, most non-democratic countries still invest quite a bit into propagandizing their populations and demand even louder and more public affirmations of political views. Maybe this is because centuries of democratic examples have changed the way you have to govern citizens anywhere, maybe the information age just changes the way you have to keep control of a population, maybe increased urbanization just means rebellious commoners are a much more concentrated threat - either way that genie is likely not going back into the bottle.
Strong monarchies exist today- if we exclude oil states, we get Morocco and probably Malaysia, neither of them war prone, Liechtenstein and Monaco- both of which have higher standards of living than their surroundings, although they’re tiny micro states- Tonga- which doesn’t seem notably worse off than democracies in Polynesia, despite the instability of its leaders on a personal level- Swaziland- which is a shithole and may not have had any way to avoid being a shithole- and Bhutan- which is simply strange.
Notably, these are all constitutional monarchies with full parliaments.
The Malaysian king doesn’t do a ton of day-to-day governance, parliament handles the actual show. Even his role in recent years of playing a part in selecting the Prime Minister (who actually leads the country) has been a historical anomaly they justified due to instability, and even his own position as monarch is semi-elected as a rotating representative from their different states.
Morocco’s king is a lot more powerful (even if parliament still plays a big part) but, idk, it’s still a mid tier country with a lot of poverty and dysfunction. None of these places, or even the old European monarchies, seem as nice and functional as your average liberal democracy.
The King of Morocco is pretty powerful, but I wouldn't consider him all that competent I guess? His powers are greatest in foreign policy and the judicial system, two areas where Morocco is notoriously bumbling. Notably, Morocco experiences pretty significant population outflows of Moroccans leaving each year to try and live under liberal democracies. The leaders of Bhutan and Oman are competent (or at least bin Said was, I don't know much about his successor) but their countries are also poor. Even adding in the rest of the oil states, most achieve pretty middling GDP per capita and HDI scores.
Liechtenstein and Monaco do have extremely high living standards, but neither are anywhere near absolutist. Liechtenstein is a literal direct democracy - the princely powers you describe of vetoing referendums were vested in the monarch by a public vote in 2003 (notably the monarchy did not have these powers when Liechtenstein achieved its own huge takeoff growth) and those powers can be taken away by the public at any time as well, as they considered doing and rejected in the 2012 referendum. They can even vote him fully out of power whenever they want, and he has no power to veto (that was part of the deal for increasing his powers in 2003). For what it counts, I have no personal objection to people voting in a powerful executive like this, or in France or wherever.
I don't know much about Monaco, but it's not really clear to me how powerful the Monacan Prince is beyond his veto power; they seem to have an elected parliament that makes all the laws, no? He can call for new elections, but so can Macron. He's described as "representing the country" in foreign affairs, but the Minister of Foreign Affairs seems to make all the actual calls. Should we even consider this a normal case? France literally handles their whole military defense.
By the same token, both Liechtenstein and Monaco are tax havens with populations under 40,000, both countries put together could easily fit on some college campuses. This feels a lot more objectionable to me than the petro-states. If I was arguing for the success of the liberal democratic model I don't think wildly successful Luxembourg would be a fair go-to example: it's circumstances are too unusual and probably don't scale to bigger countries.
This is part of why I thought the more useful comparison would be between the modern European nation state democracies and those same countries under their former monarchies, which tend to look quite a bit poorer and more likely to go to war.
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This would be my suspicion as well. A good chunk of the reason that past monarchs could do so much to protect and advance their kingdoms is that they’d been raised and trained to handle statecraft on a level that just doesn’t happen today. Most democratic societies train their leadership to appeal to the masses, to become electable, and to raise funds for re-election. The entire job of a typical politician is not governing but winning the election.
This is the biggest advantage on a monarchy— in a true (I.e not tourist attraction) monarchy, a prince would be trained from youth to understand and wield power and the ins and outs of statecraft. Read the advice given to rulers in any society, and the goal is to create a stable and prosperous society and to use power effectively. Charles III wasn’t trained that way, because no one anticipates that he’ll do anything important. His role as monarch is limited to keeping the tourists coming to the pomp and circumstance, greeting world leaders, and waving from balconies at various personal and national events. If handed the power Richard III had to remake the country in his own image, he doesn’t have the ability to do that because he’s only ever had ceremonial power.
…maybe, idk. For all that specialized training in statecraft they seemed to always be getting in silly wars. How effective was their education in raising a stable and prosperous society when they never achieved a fraction of the stability and prosperity we’ve seen under our low budget, smile-for-the-camera leaders?
Yup - weirdly, the dumb politicians who have to appeal to the morons have kept the world much less violent than the ones with divine right ever pulled off. Probably, because even worse, the most corrupt politicians in a democratic society, no matter their ideology so pick your poison, can't get close to the amount of wealth by percentage kings held.
Even Trump, whose been the most openly corrupt President in ways that an ideological President's I dislike intensely would've never dreamed of is still only, a possible billionaire in a world of many billionaires.
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Silly wars that never reached the level of liberal democracies' wars.
Would a silly war between 2 slightly different kind of Slavs over who owns this or that grey bog risk escalating to nuclear apocalypse in a world without liberal democracies?
Traditional monarchies never developed the terrifying weapons (missiles, bombers, toxic gasses, nukes, drones) that the industrial revolution enabled liberal democracies to concoct.
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