Crowns, Constitutions and the Right to Rule

Freya Bennett

Welcome to Integrated Perspectives, a podcast from Mr. Brown’s Social Studies. I’m Political Scientist Freya Bennett, and I tend to look for evidence and institutions when a big political question comes up.

Professor Julian Mercer

And I’m Professor Julian Mercer, and I teach philosophy. But don't worry, this podcast isn't a college lecture. I like questions that can start arguments at perfectly ordinary dinner tables.

Freya Bennett

Well, this one might do it. Today we’re talking about crowns, constitutions, and the right to rule. Here’s the question I keep coming back to: who gets to choose who chooses?

Professor Julian Mercer

You asked a question in the intro, "who gets to choose who chooses." That's a question that I have asked myself many times. Freya, I wonder if a thought experiment might help us out.

Freya Bennett

What a lovely idea, Professor. I love a good thought experiment!

Professor Julian Mercer

Perfect. Imagine someone tells you that you have to follow a rule. Before you follow some random rule from a stranger, you ask two questions: You could ask whether they can enforce it.

Freya Bennett

Right, whether they have the power.

Professor Julian Mercer

But you could also ask whether they have the right to make it in the first place.

Freya Bennett

Right, and those are different questions. Power is the ability to affect what people do. Authority is a recognized right to make decisions.

Professor Julian Mercer

And that’s not quite the same as legitimacy, is it?

Freya Bennett

Legitimacy takes us a step further: is that claim to authority justified or accepted on defensible grounds?

Professor Julian Mercer

So I can have power without necessarily having a good reason to possess it. My little brother can seize the television remote, for example.

Freya Bennett

But that doesn’t make him sovereign. Sovereign means having ultimate political authority within a system, not control over Friday movie night.

Professor Julian Mercer

He may disagree with that distinction.

Freya Bennett

I’m sure he will. For governments, though, there are a few questions worth keeping separate. Where does authority claim to come from? Who actually exercises it? How are leaders selected, and what limits them? Later we can also ask how authority is shared across territory.

Professor Julian Mercer

So the name of a government might give us a clue, but it won’t answer all of those questions.

Freya Bennett

Exactly. Take monarchy. It means the head of state is a monarch, usually succeeding through a royal family. Historically, some monarchs justified their rule through divine right, the idea that God granted their authority.

Professor Julian Mercer

But that’s not a claim every monarchy makes. And a monarch doesn’t necessarily run the government, either. A hereditary title tells us something about how a head of state is selected, not by itself how free citizens are.

Freya Bennett

The United Kingdom is a useful example. The Crown is still part of the legal and constitutional structure.

Professor Julian Mercer

Even though the monarch doesn’t run the government.

Freya Bennett

Parliament passes a bill, and it receives Royal Assent before becoming an Act.

Professor Julian Mercer

That sounds as though the king personally gets to decide which laws are allowed. Is that what happens?

Freya Bennett

Not in the way that might suggest. Today Royal Assent is a formality. Elected government and Parliament do the substantive political work, so the Crown’s formal role coexists with democratic accountability.

Professor Julian Mercer

That helps. We’re distinguishing the formal source of legal authority, the historical story used to justify it, and the people who effectively govern.

Freya Bennett

Yes. Now compare that with the American constitutional republic. Its founding language begins “We the People.” That expresses popular sovereignty, the principle that ultimate public authority belongs to the people.

Professor Julian Mercer

And public officials take oaths to support the Constitution, rather than pledge personal loyalty to a hereditary ruler. The Constitution organizes political authority as a legal framework. It isn’t the people themselves, but a public institution claiming authority on their behalf.

Freya Bennett

That public part matters to the word republic, too. It’s connected to the Latin res publica, the public affair or public thing. The idea is that government isn’t supposed to be private property.

Professor Julian Mercer

Though calling yourself a republic doesn’t prove that’s how things work. A government can use the name and still deny citizens a meaningful political voice.

Freya Bennett

A bit like a restaurant declaring it has the best pizza in the galaxy.

Professor Julian Mercer

A claim the galaxy has yet to verify.

Freya Bennett

Exactly. So let’s try Mr. Brown’s Challenge. Country A has a hereditary monarch, but citizens freely choose a legislature that makes laws, and courts protect civil rights.

Professor Julian Mercer

Okay, so the monarch is hereditary, but there are democratic institutions.

Freya Bennett

Country B calls itself a republic, but its ruling party blocks real political competition.

Professor Julian Mercer

Which one better expresses popular sovereignty? What evidence would you want? And is the constitutional title enough to establish legitimacy?

Freya Bennett

If you’re listening in class, take a moment to write down one claim and one reason, then discuss it together.

Professor Julian Mercer

The point isn’t just to guess the right label. It’s to explain what the label can tell us and what it can’t.

Freya Bennett

That brings us to democracy. Political power is rooted in the people, with public participation, political rights, and ways to hold leaders accountable. In a representative democracy, citizens choose officials to make decisions on their behalf.

Professor Julian Mercer

And the word comes from the Greek demos, meaning people, and kratos, meaning rule or power. But that raises a question: who counts as the people?

Freya Bennett

Ancient Athens is a revealing case. Eligible citizens took part in the assembly, a form of direct democracy.

Professor Julian Mercer

Though not everyone was considered a citizen.

Freya Bennett

But women, enslaved people, and resident foreigners were excluded from citizenship rights.

Professor Julian Mercer

So when we call Athens democratic, we should also ask: democratic for whom? The label describes a real institution, but it doesn’t settle whether membership was fair.

Freya Bennett

And as a political scientist, I’d want to know the details: who could vote, who could speak, and who was excluded?

Professor Julian Mercer

A philosopher and a political scientist asking the same question. Someone alert Mr. Brown.

Freya Bennett

He’ll be delighted. And this is why republic and democracy can overlap without meaning the same thing. A republic generally lacks a hereditary monarch as head of state, while democracy concerns participation and accountability. You can have a democratic republic, a nondemocratic republic, or a democracy under a constitutional monarch.

Professor Julian Mercer

There’s another useful word here: constitutionalism. That means political authority is constrained by fundamental rules and institutions.

Freya Bennett

And those constraints have to mean something in practice.

Professor Julian Mercer

Writing down a constitution isn’t enough on its own. Those limits have to have practical force.

Freya Bennett

And that connects to the rule of law: public rules bind the people who govern, too. No special exemption just because you’re important.

Professor Julian Mercer

That’s disappointing. I already ordered my ceremonial exemption badge.

Freya Bennett

You’ll have to return it. There’s another way people compare governments: does one person rule, do a few rule, or do many participate? Aristotle studied arrangements like these, though modern systems are more complicated.

Professor Julian Mercer

And even there, we need to be careful with labels. A monarchy isn’t necessarily an autocracy. Autocracy means power is concentrated with little meaningful accountability, while a constitutional monarch may have almost no independent governing power.

Freya Bennett

Right. Dictatorship usually means one leader or a ruling group governs without effective political competition or checks. Oligarchy means rule by a relatively small group.

Professor Julian Mercer

A small group, but not necessarily a wealthy one?

Freya Bennett

Plutocracy focuses on the political dominance of wealth, while aristocracy traditionally emphasizes rule by nobles.

Professor Julian Mercer

What about technocracy? That gives governing influence to technical specialists. But having a scientist advise on policy doesn’t automatically make a whole country a technocracy.

Freya Bennett

There’s a similar distinction with theocracy. Religious institutions or doctrines are central sources of political authority. That’s not the same thing as a society simply having religious citizens.

Professor Julian Mercer

And hybrid is another word where we should ask what someone means. Governments can combine institutional features. But a hybrid regime is a particular term in comparative politics for a system combining some democratic practices with authoritarian constraints.

Freya Bennett

Then there’s anarchy, which literally suggests the absence of a ruler or central sovereign. It doesn’t automatically mean chaos, and it isn’t automatically the same as a failed state.

Professor Julian Mercer

I’m beginning to think classification is less like putting each country on one shelf and more like locating it on a map with several coordinates.

Freya Bennett

Yes, that’s a much better way to picture it.

Professor Julian Mercer

One last clarification for next time: the U.S. president is chosen indirectly through the Electoral College, so presidents in presidential systems aren’t universally elected directly. And remember, a hybrid regime is a specific comparative politics category, not a catchall for mixed institutions. A republic doesn’t guarantee democratic elections, and a monarchy needn’t be autocratic. Country examples show broad institutional patterns, not exhaustive or unchanging descriptions.

Freya Bennett

I like that. Today we’ve looked at different sources and claims of authority: hereditary institutions, constitutional frameworks, popular sovereignty, religious doctrines, and practical control.

Professor Julian Mercer

And the question underneath all of them is still there. Don’t confuse a government’s name with evidence of how it operates, or with an argument for why it deserves obedience.

Freya Bennett

Next time, we’ll take those ideas into the machinery of government: presidents and parliaments, federal and unitary systems, and parties that compete, or don’t.

Professor Julian Mercer

Before we go, here’s a question to take with you: if people give leaders authority, when may they justifiably take it back?

Freya Bennett

You’ve been listening to Integrated Perspectives: Power, Politics & Philosophy. I’m Freya.

Professor Julian Mercer

And I’m Julian. Keep asking who decides, and then ask who decided that.