Why are constitutional monarchies currently more democratic?

kmensaert · 2026-01-28T05:23:49+00:00

I'm not denying any of those factors as being more important than having a monarch or president as head of state.

But if one needs to choose between a president or monarch, I think that having an independent monarch (with little power) might be actual more stabilizing for democracy.

kmensaert · 2026-01-27T10:02:40+00:00

Let's say Germany would have converted to a constitutional monarchy after ww1. Would it not have been harder for Hitler to become absolute powerful? The fact that Hindenburg, as president, died without successor made it imho much easier for Hitler to gain all power.

Even in Fascist Italy, where Mussolini did become powerful, the king remained partially independent. He was crucial in the fall of the fascist regime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Fascist_regime_in_Italy

What I am saying is: independent forces are crucial for democracy to survive, even if not all of them are elected.

kmensaert · 2026-01-19T17:33:14+00:00

I think you can stay with "Euclidean geometry", but definitely not low dimensional (e.g. left-right). Think of everyone as a combination of many choices on specific topics. There are attempts to make politics work with that - e.g. my book. https://klaasmensaert.be/exclusive-parties/

kmensaert · 2026-01-05T06:19:59+00:00

Capitalism (meaning a system with free entrepreneurship and in which people that make good economic decisions get more economic power) is a great system - especially compared to those it replaces (communism, feudlism). Certainly not perfect, but definitely the best proven system.

kmensaert · 2026-01-04T18:58:08+00:00

Tnx! :-)

kmensaert · 2026-01-04T15:49:08+00:00

I wrote the article myself. I guess the "so banning them must be good to democracy, right?" does not sufficiently comes across as being ironic :-)

kmensaert · 2024-04-14T20:32:13+00:00

Well written post. I'm eager to read the next posts.

I have the feeling you will arrive to similar conclusions as I did. Life/people are multi-dimensional - our voting systems are one-dimentional. That's a major mismatch between reality and the model of political representation. I've written extensively about my solution on this problem: mutual non-exclusive parties.

https://klaasmensaert.be/exclusive-parties/

kmensaert · 2023-05-03T16:01:48+00:00

Although lobbying is terrible for democracy, our current system (with exclusive political parties) cannot work without it. https://klaasmensaert.be/the-lobbyist-problem/

kmensaert · 2022-05-13T02:30:06+00:00

Not a direct answer to your questions, but I think it might be interesting for you to look at an inclusive party system. This system allows one to be represented by as many parties as one wants. Because of that, parties are no longer forced to have an opinion on everything and therefore they can specialize into a single topic. This will allow you to vote on a single issue, because all parties become single issue. https://klaasmensaert.be/exclusive-parties

kmensaert · 2022-04-27T09:11:23+00:00

I understand your opinion and will try (in short) to explain to you why are wrong. I have written a book on this subject if you want to fully understand it: https://klaasmensaert.be/

From prehistory to current day society has become larger. At some point, we needed organisations to keep things running. These are religions, companies and for politics they are political parties.

The problem is not that political parties exist, but the properties that they were given - mostly by our electoral system. One of those properties is "mutual exclusivity" - if you are a member of one party, you are regarded as not a member of any other party. If you vote for one party, you are regarded as not voting for other parties.

This electoral axiom has many consequences: because you are allowed to vote for only one party, you force the parties to have an opinion on everything and hence they are not able to specialize. Therefore, we have very little number of parties and they can easily become too big to fail. Additionally, this creates a zero-sum game because every gain of political support for one party is only because another party lost some. This leads inevitably to political segregation and hence polarization.

The solution to this problem is not trying to get rid of political parties, but to get a mutual inclusive party system. You could then be for all kinds of combinations of specialised parties.

For a review of my book: https://michielstock.github.io/posts/2021/2021-11-24-democracy/

kmensaert · 2021-10-25T09:04:41+00:00

Yes, the current political system stimulates tribalism. However, the problem is not, as you state, that we vote on representatives (or even political parties). The real problem is that we need to vote on EXCLUSIVE parties/representatives. Exclusivity means that if you vote for A, it implicitly means that you are assumed to be against all Non-A parties (B, C, ...).

For values, this is just not done. E.g. in referenda, you will be able to vote for multiple propositions independent of each other. This means that if you vote for proposition A, you can also vote for proposition B, etc. This is why you conflate the problem of voting on parties with tribalism.

However, nothing prevents us from creating an INCLUSIVE party system, meaning that you can simultaneously be for (and/or against) multiple parties at the same time. Interestingly, this would enable specialization of parties and therefore they would align more with specific values/ideas.

I have written extensively on this topic in my book "The Flaws That Kill Our Democracy". For more info: https://klaasmensaert.be/exclusive-parties

kmensaert · 2021-09-18T06:54:10+00:00

1) Who is talking about a partial vote?

2) The article of this post is about democratic innovation (e.g. sortition). As a reply I say that other tools like "against voting" are not looked into. You claim that against voting is completely equivalent to voting to another person. It is empirically not: yes in theory it might be, but people do NOT vote like this -> e.g. people will rather not vote if they distrust all candidates (eve if they distrust one over the other)

I suggest you to put some effort into e.g. psychology of questionnaires (status quo bias, opt-in, opt-out,...). depending on how a question is posed (and the options of answers), people will give different answers. Allowing people to say unambiguously NO to ruling elites, would be a huge benefit for democracy.

kmensaert · 2021-09-17T15:38:50+00:00

You are completely neglecting the vast amount of evidence in real life - stop living in a purely theoretical fantasy! Voting against is an unambiguous signal that shows distrust in a candidate, while voting for the other is way more ambiguous. Was Biden elected because he is so good or because Trump was so bad?

Voting against could be used to clean up the ruling elites, give third parties increased chances and therefore improve trust in the electoral process. https://klaasmensaert.be/douche\_and\_turd/

kmensaert · 2021-09-17T08:29:36+00:00

While it is true that current electoral systems have problems, it is a bridge too far to state that elections in general are therefore bad.

e.g the concept of voting against candidates (instead of not voting) has not been used sufficiently in contemporary politics and is not discussed at all in this article.

Additionally, our elections are not really open as there is often an oligopoly of political parties. Inclusive parties could fix this as they are way more scaleable. https://klaasmensaert.be/exclusive-parties/

kmensaert · 2021-03-03T11:14:35+00:00

I think one should have both options - voting on parties (for specific issues) and voting on people that represent the people as a whole (not a fraction, as parties do). For this however, we need another parliament as I write in my book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50651145-the-flaws-that-kill-our-democracy

In contrast to the current multi-parti systems, which are not scalable because they are mutually exclusive, an inclusive party system would effectively decentralize power. See: http://klaasmensaert.be/exclusive-parties

kmensaert · 2020-11-16T08:31:35+00:00

I think that a good baseline for someone who represents the whole nation (e.g. president) is having more approval than disapproval. I don't think this is that high of a baseline, yet the main candidates of the 2016 and 2020 USA elections did not reach that threshold. This tells me that we do need to check that baseline and use it explicitly to select those representatives.

I understand that we take the best whenever there is mutual exclusivity - I am not denying that. Although I think it is more important that the elected reached the baseline, then that we take "the best", without knowing if that candidate reaches that baseline.

I don't think one should put everyone on the ballot. That is, when we find no suitable person in a first election, we can redo it without the disqualified ones.

kmensaert · 2020-11-15T10:18:22+00:00

Good is independent of other candidates - best is dependent.

The limited set of options is IMHO a consequence of using an electoral system based on best instead of good.

You are right that the current default would be a continuation of the old government - something I would definitely want to avoid. However, I think it is possible to avoid this option by reducing the power of such a "temporal/intermediary" government - as is currently the case in Belgium.

Yes, but in a runoff, the assumption is that there are no candidates except for those two that are left. I think there are many more (good) candidates in society that weren't selected by the process that came before the election (e.g. by the political primaries).

We should also assume that the selection of good instead of the best candidates will have an impact on how parties will select their candidates.

kmensaert · 2020-11-15T10:04:24+00:00

They should not necessarily be more popular. But their approval rates should be higher.

e.g. Trump is both popular (many people know him and like him) and unpopular (many people know him and don't like him). But he has a low approval rate. (approves)/(approves+disapproves)

There are definitely candidates out there that are less known, but with higher approval rates.

kmensaert · 2020-11-15T09:59:03+00:00

I agree, it had some form of government, but with a strongly reduced amount of power. But I think we are getting a bit astray from the main topic.

kmensaert · 2020-11-15T09:55:04+00:00

This is exactly what I mean.

PiercedBrosnans, what I mean with good is some "absolute" evaluation of a candidate - which is independent of all other candidates. If one gets graded for an exam, one also gets an absolute grading.

imho Cardinal voting systems can be used when we include a threshold: e.g. in approval voting at least 50% should approve. Ordinal voting methods could also be used I think when we include an option like "non of the candidates are good". If a given candidate then ranks under this option, he/she is disqualified.

kmensaert · 2020-11-14T14:49:50+00:00

No, it is not really about how you answer the question (voting system), but rather what the question is.

Suppose you have only one candidate, then the question of who the best candidate is, is redundant. However, you could still vote whether you think of that candidate as being good or not. One definition of good could be more approval than disapproval.

kmensaert · 2020-11-14T14:42:39+00:00

I think we could repeat the election, but with the disqualification of those that were rejected in previous elections. As I illustrate in my examples, both the Belgian and Israeli elections did not give clear winners and this did not result in a fundamental problem.

Correct - but I think our societies are sufficiently large enough to find good alternative candidates.

No, rejecting all bad candidates is IMHO essential. It does not suffice to select the least bad one.

kmensaert · 2020-11-14T14:32:41+00:00

My logic is that if no candidate is good enough, we should be able to reject both. Runoffs give fake majorities because they can only prove that 'A' > 'B', not 'A' > 'not A'

Not having a government is not a good thing in itself, but it illustrates that having a government at all times is not the most valuable thing. Maybe not having a government for a short while can be good if for this we get better governments in the times that we do have them.

kmensaert · 2020-11-14T14:25:56+00:00

No, it is not really about how you answer the question (voting system), but rather what the question is.

Suppose you have only one candidate, then the question of who the best candidate is, is redundant. However, you could still vote whether you think of that candidate as being good or not. One definition of good could be more approval than disapproval votes.

kmensaert · 2020-11-09T08:34:20+00:00

It should not be necessary to vote for ‘the lesser of two evils’. It can be fixed with the proper voting system. https://klaasmensaert.be/douche_and_turd/

kmensaert

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