Jewish World Review Sept. 13, 2006 / 20 Elul, 5766

Long Live Royal Bloodlines!

By Niall Ferguson

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Heredity matters. All 109,000 of the baby boys born last Wednesday (yes, that's roughly how many are born every day in the world) inherited a Y chromosome from their fathers. All inherited a combination of genes from both parents, and these genes will help determine everything from the color of their hair to their aptitude at mathematics. An unlucky few will have inherited some hereditary defect or disease. By contrast, a lucky few will inherit fortunes.

But only one of these baby boys stands to inherit an imperial title and throne — the Chrysanthemum Throne, no less. He is the son who was born Sept. 6 to Japan's Princess Kiko, wife of the reigning Emperor Akihito's second son, Crown Prince Akishino. Should the baby's uncle, Crown Prince Naruhito, die without a male heir — as seems probable because he only has a daughter and his wife recently suffered a nervous breakdown — then this little lad will one day be the emperor of Japan.

To Americans, it all seems absurd. What could be sillier than to permanently confer a title like "emperor" on the members of a single family — and only the males at that. (The fact that the baby was a boy allows the Japanese government to shelve a bill that would have permitted female succession.)

And yet the Japanese are hardly unique in having a hereditary monarchy. The British have been doing it for more than a millennium, since the time of Egbert (802-839). There are 45 states in the world with monarchs as heads of state.

In some cases, such as Saudi Arabia, the king is a true sovereign; indeed, he and other monarchs of the Persian Gulf region are all but absolute rulers. In other cases, constitutional conventions have eroded the monarch's power — though one consequence of this political diminution has been to preserve Queen Elizabeth II's status as head of state in a remarkably extensive group of 16 former colonies. Nor is monarchy merely an idiosyncrasy of Arabs and Britons. The European Union likes to present itself as the last word in constitutional postmodernity. And yet six of its members (besides Britain) are monarchies: Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden.

The great puzzle is why all these countries have clung to a political institution that, to its detractors, seems hopelessly anachronistic. Edmund Burke's answer — in his "Reflections on the Revolution in France" — was that the hereditary principle had one advantage over popular election: namely, that monarchs ought to be more mindful of the interests of future generations (if only their own descendants) than elected heads of state, whose time horizon may be as short as four years. As Burke put it, turning Jean-Jacques Rousseau on his head, the real social contract is not a short-term deal between a ruler and "the popular will" but an enduring partnership with generations to come.

People may mock Prince Charles for his passionate commitment to environmental and architectural conservation. They fail to see that he is mindful of precisely that Burkean partnership with the distant future.

Not convinced? There's another argument. Consider the remarkable smoothness with which the British crown has passed from monarch to heir throughout the period since 1688. Despite the inevitable duds that arise in any hereditary system — the ones who die childless, or marry unwisely, or are too thick, or too clever by half — the history of modern British monarchy has been one of near-seamless transition.

Now compare the way in which the elected office of prime minister has changed hands in the same interval. As I write, we are somewhere in the middle of round 92 of the most wearisome heavyweight contest in the history of British politics. The fading champion, Tony Blair, is out on his feet, but the challenger, Gordon Brown, seems almost as punch-drunk. They cling to each other in the middle of the ring, alternately propping one another up and landing the occasional feeble punch. If the challenger were any good, it all would have been over long ago. Worse, the ringside is crowded with would-be contenders, eager to turn the fight into a free-for-all.

Of course, I do not say that succession crises do not also occur in monarchical systems: think only of Henry VI, deposed and imprisoned by his cousin Edward IV. When the stakes are high — whether in an absolute monarchy or an elective dictatorship — the likelihood of ugly scenes also will be high. Nevertheless, I would hypothesize that, taking all the world's polities over the last 100 years, the republics have, on average, witnessed more succession crises than the monarchies.

For the reality is that the United States remains quite exceptional in the durability and (one Civil War aside) stability of its republican institutions. Few other republics would have come through the knife-edge election of 2000 without a shot being fired. Compare what is happening in Mexico, where the loser in July's close presidential election is talking openly and ominously of civil resistance.

Kings — and queens — have their shortcomings. They can seem a little quaint. But maybe there are worse ways of choosing a successor than good old blood lineage.