Doug64 wrote:In many respects an unwritten constitution, as much habit and tradition as anything else — and that habit and tradition has ceded practical power to Parliament while theoretically leaving it in the hands of the monarch. You ought to check out G. K. Chesterton’s take on the difference between the British monarch and the American president.
And going with the definition of “republic” as a system of government that mixes elements of the three types of government together (monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy), England has been a republic ever since Parliament became more than a rubber stamp and mouthpiece for the monarch.
Your definition of a republic makes everything a republic, even Saudi Arabia. Also parliament is more a "rubberstamp and mouthpiece" than it ever was. The parliament of the glorious revolution saw fit to betray one king for another, literally enabling a foreign king to stage an invasion. The parliament of Simon De Montfort went into armed rebellion against the king. Parliament
was a rowdy pit of snakes and demons, hellbent on insurrection and usurpation and now it is nice and safe and tame. There is zero danger to the monarchy from any parliament since the 1700s and it more tame now than ever.
The reason why it became tame was the relative empowerment of the commons versus the lords, especially universal suffrage. The king's worst enemy is not generally the average man in the street but the lords, only the lords. The lords all fancy themselves king and their loyalty can't be bought except by the most extravagant gestures and anything you give them only makes them demand more and gives them more resources to use against you. The common man? He never imagines himself king any more than he plans to go on holiday on the moon, it is just inconceivable. And all a king has to do buy his loyalty is not oppress him too much which is a very cheap price!
Understand this the commons was not a check on the monarchy but a check on the lords, the empowerment of the commons thus serves to empower the monarchy at the expense of the lords. The monarchy now has a complete monopoly over the armed forces where once a upon a time it had to share that privilege with the lords. Now the lords have nothing!
Now the better definition of republic is where the ultimate owner of the national real estate is a ghost called the "public" which is the amorphous aggregate of all the citizen's souls. A monarchy in contrast is where the national real estate is ultimately owned by an actual person, the king or sultan or whatever. A monarchy can have a public but indeed unless it was a desert island with only one resident, the king himself, it must have a public but the people that compose the public are subjects, tenants essentially, not without rights, a tenant can have rights, but the owner is not the public it is an actual person, a king.
In this way the US is a republic but the UK is a kingdom or monarchy. The US head of estate is just an
agent of the principal, a president or whatever, with the shareholders, the principal, being the ghostly "public". The UK's head of state is the
principal with all else serving as agents.
Democracy is by no means anathema to monarchy, indeed universal suffrage turned out to be a great way to protect it from the usurpers, the lords. Certainly many a republic had no democracy.
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