Originally Posted by
Maxtor2
Politicians don't have to stab each other in the back. That's what campaigns and advisors are for.
As for royalty being better suited for governing: Bullshit (sorry, but I sometimes like to be blunt). Politics is a skill that is difficult to develop, much like military strategy, which few people actually understand. Representative governments have competition between people and parties, thus allowing voters to pick the person whom they think is best able to fulfill their term. The oscillation between parties holding the high offices is natural to representative governments; as one party executes its goals, the problems that it claimed to fix will vanish, while the problems that the other side brings up will be more obvious and seem more imminent. Thus, the other party will win the next election, and the cycle will continue.
With life-long appointments, there are quite a few problems. First, you could end up with a drooling idiot, literally, as Spain realized when its empire was crumbling. Second, there is no check-and-balance system, so the monarch could really do whatever they want. Third, the monarch will act in their self-interest, and the population of the country will get screwed over (as has happened when monarchs are in power). There are countless more problems, but I haven't considered the subject enough to notice them. "tickle their own ego trip for power and lining their pockets" is exactly what a monarch will do, as history has proven.
You probably doubt that a monarch can take control of a nation if it only has the power to force elections. Assure you, a monarch can. What would happen if the monarch forced elections each and every month? Such actions would effectively sack the government, as no citizens would know who really is in power, and citizens will not follow the orders of someone whom they don't think is in power. The only person with a consistent grasp on power would be the monarch. Thus, the citizens would turn to the monarch for stability, either trading the monarch something the king/queen wants in exchange for not holding countless elections, or giving the monarch enough power so that they don't need to hold countless elections (because the monarch would have more power than Parliament, and thus is free to do whatever he/she wants, given a bit of time). On the other hand, the population might start a revolution an kill the monarch, but it's unlikely that they would be able to reform parliament, because there is no authority to tell winners of the earlier elections that they will not have a seat in the new parliament, and no authority to administrate a new election for a longer-lasting parliament.
The above is an extreme circumstance. Another, more likely, case may be that the monarch will call new elections whenever a certain party that the monarch dislikes has bad poll numbers, and the monarch can therefore weaken the party. So, all the political parties would work to receive the monarch's favor, in order to not lose power themselves. After some time, the power that the monarch slowly consumes would allow them more control over government, and thus more control over parliament. And, with enough time and a clever, skillful monarch, parliament will be more of a puppet of the monarch than it is a representative body.
Once you give someone a bit of power over others, that power can grow. There is no education system that can convince anyone not to seek more power, not to line their own pockets, or not ignore their subjects to save their own skin. Sorry, a part of humanity cannot be educated away. Education isn't the panacea to all evil, that was a belief in the years leading up to WWI (along with the popular opinion always being right, always), and it failed miserably.
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