Do constitutional monarchies really do better than republics?

Shane Warren
9 minutes ago
12 min read

A moment at the UN (and the itch it leaves)

There are speeches that echo because of what they say, and speeches that echo because of what they imply. Donald Trump’s address to the UN General Assembly was one of the latter; equal parts celebration and scold, delivered with the cadence of a halftime pep talk and the subtext that many nations are, to borrow his preferred phrasing, “going to hell.” The swagger is familiar: one constitutional blueprint cast as the gold standard; the rest treated as remedial students. That posture leaves an itch worth scratching.

Beneath the bravado sits a serious provocation: if there is a better way to organise a modern democracy, which model is it? Is the United States’ presidential republic the implied benchmark, or do democratic constitutional monarchies, where a non-partisan monarch reigns and elected governments rule; quietly outperform on the things citizens actually feel: economic resilience, civil and political freedom, and the lived sense of well-being?

A claim heard in policy circles (and more than a few dinner parties) is that such monarchies - think Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia - tend to be calmer and happier, with steadier economies and broader liberties. Not because kings or queens govern (they don’t), but because their apolitical presence, fused to parliamentary accountability and independent courts, nudges systems toward continuity, restraint, and trust.

It’s an arresting claim. It’s also one that’s easy to mangle with cherry-picked anecdotes and correlation-as-causation. So, let’s test it carefully…

“Constitutional monarchy” here means a democratic order in which the sovereign shares power with constitutionally organised government and serves as a ceremonial head of state, a different animal entirely to the absolute monarchies that govern by decree. And when we talk about outcomes, the instruments that matter are composite, not vanity metrics: the World Happiness Report’s life-evaluation model of income, social support, healthy life expectancy, perceived freedom, generosity, corruption; the freedom indices that track electoral integrity, association and expression; and the World Bank’s governance indicators for rule of law, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, and accountability. This is not a laboratory. History, geography, demography, and resources bear heavy weight. Still, when we scan the world with those gauges in hand, patterns do emerge imperfectly, unevenly, but often enough to be taken seriously.

The economic question: steadiness, rights, and the continuity premium

Across more than a century of cross-country evidence, one pattern turns up again and again: democratic constitutional monarchies tend to guard property rights more reliably and trace a steadier path for income per person, especially when politics gets rough. Large-N historical work that follows 137 countries across the twentieth century doesn’t just eyeball rich-country tables; it models how monarchies perform under stress and why. Three mechanisms repeat: internal conflict is dampened; the pathologies that creep in when individual executives linger too long are counter-balanced; and the space for ad-hoc executive meddling that spooks investors is narrowed. Each channel on its own is modest; together they add up to a measurable income edge during turbulent periods—nothing supernatural, but enough to compound into the difference between economies that chug and economies that lurch.

You see the same logic mirrored in the plain counts most of us recognise from IMF and World Bank tables. If you look at who actually sits near the top of global income rankings, nearly half of the world’s forty-odd monarchies recur in the top fifty by GDP per head, while only a fraction of the world’s republics do. Cruder averages tell a similar story: constitutional monarchies cluster around higher per-capita income than the global mean. Those tallies mix ceremonial monarchies with absolute, oil-rich ones, so they need careful handling. But even when you restrict attention to democratic constitutional cases, the over-representation near the top persists. The simplest reading is not fairy-tale: when paired with robust institutions, constitutional monarchy tends to reduce downside risk and shave volatility. That shows up, quietly but persistently, in people’s incomes.

Why would a purely ceremonial crown move any real numbers? Because it changes the temperature. In a parliamentary monarchy the head of state is permanent and non-partisan, so the state’s face is never an electoral trophy. Cabinets can rise and fall without making the country look leaderless; the monarch handles dignity and ritual; the government makes decisions and takes the heat. That separation lowers the stakes of turnover, lengthens the planning horizon inside the bureaucracy, and nudges investors to assume fewer lurches and cleaner handovers even when politics is noisy. Policy still changes, sometimes dramatically, but the rhythm of change is calmer. Bond markets, procurement officers, and long-term capital have a nose for rhythm.

You feel the contrast most sharply in winner-take-all presidential republics, where prestige and power are fused in one elected person. When the presidency becomes the nation’s identity in miniature, elections start to feel existential and the incentive to personalise and aggrandise the office intensifies. Not every republic slides into that pattern, Finland and Switzerland prove that well-designed republics can be just as steady, but enough do that the average differences in volatility and rights protection show up in the aggregates. That difference, more than any romance about crowns, is what the numbers are whispering.

Now watch the “continuity premium” at work in wildly different places. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is patience rendered in policy. Denmark and Sweden absorb energy shocks and recalibrate tax-and-transfer settings with fewer U-turns. Japan rotates prime ministers without changing the country’s pulse. Across the Anglosphere realms - Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK - governments make noisy mistakes like everyone else, but they tend to avoid policy whiplash. Cabinets come and go; the ritual of the state continues without drama. Markets notice; citizens feel it.

And yet: republics can match or surpass these outcomes when their institutions bite…

Finland is Exhibit A: no oil, no monarch, no special geographic kindness; yet an innovation engine and a social contract robust enough to keep the economy steady in ugly weather.
Switzerland is Exhibit B: its rotating presidency and direct democracy deliver what the continuity premium promises: predictability without pageantry.
Singapore is Exhibit C: a party-dominant republic that has manufactured more continuity than many monarchies. If continuity were the only ingredient, Singapore would sit atop the happiness tables. It doesn’t, which points us to the other pillars.

The liberty question: dignity and decision, decoupled

On freedoms, the crown’s value is not that it grants rights; it’s that it makes it harder to dress personal ambition up as “the nation.” In parliamentary monarchies, the head of government is tethered to the legislature; the head of state belongs to everyone and to no party. That split, dignity over here, decision over there; interrupts the winner-takes-the-flag instinct. It becomes harder to personalise the state because the state’s symbol is never on the ballot.

The scores that track this are imperfect but stubborn. In Europe and the Anglosphere, constitutional monarchies sit at or near the ceiling on political rights, civil liberties, and rule of law, and they do so year after year. Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Canada, the UK: all live in that high country. So do their best republican peers. Finland and Iceland often edge them on press-freedom sub-scores; Switzerland’s rule-of-law indicators are a perennial benchmark. The general lesson is not “crowns create liberty.” It’s simpler: where liberal institutions are already rooted, a non-partisan head of state deprives would-be Caesars of a useful costume. Courts, watchdogs, and media still do the heavy lifting.

Edge cases keep everyone honest. Thailand unifies in ritual while lèse-majesté laws chill speech; coups punctuate the calendar. Malaysia’s elective royal system has mediated coalition crises with restraint, but identity politics still bite. In these contexts, the constitutional form amplifies what already exists. If the cautionary tale on the monarchy side is that symbolism can’t repair weak democratic bones, the cautionary tale on the republic side is that symbolism isn’t the source of decay either. Decay lives in captured courts, partisan electoral rules, a browbeaten press, and the cheap temptations of zero-sum politics. Fix those and the head-of-state costume fades from view.

The well-being question: trust, temperature, and the unity premium

The World Happiness Report does not reward pageantry; it rewards trust, social support, health, perceived freedom, generosity, and clean government. It is striking, then, that constitutional monarchies are over-represented at the top of the league tables year after year, despite being a small minority of regimes. Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, Australia, New Zealand; they live in the upper reaches alongside Finland, Iceland, Switzerland, and Israel. Nobody seriously claims that a crown is a ticket to joy. But there is a plausible mechanism for the pattern.

Experiments inside constitutional monarchies have shown that priming the monarchy increases national pride and nudges down social distance, the sense that your political “other” is not an alien tribe. That softening doesn’t erase disagreements; it reduces their heat. Lower heat then shows up in the variable’s happiness actually counts greater perceived freedom, more generosity, higher trust in institutions. Call it a unity premium small, cumulative, real. It won’t solve housing or fix loneliness; Japan proves those limits every year. But it lowers the temperature enough for the other ingredients to do their work.

A fair comparison set: the Nordics

If you want the cleanest quasi-experiment, you go to the Nordics. Five small, wealthy, high-trust societies with different head-of-state designs share a social model: high state capacity, universal services, serious labour-market bargains, and civic trust that isn’t performative. Denmark, Norway, Sweden keep their crowns; Finland and Iceland do not.

On income, the monarchies average a little higher - Norway’s oil floats the mean - but growth and macro stability move like a school of fish. On freedoms, the five live at the ceiling together. On well-being, Finland has camped on the top step with Denmark and Iceland flanking it, Norway and Sweden never far away. If the crown had strong independent causal power, this is where you’d see it. What you see instead is a marginal smoothing of volatility on the monarchy side and a complete absence of penalty on the republic side. The decisive variables are the Nordic ones: a professional bureaucracy; unions and employers who bargain like adults; tax states that pay for what they promise; schools that teach civics; courts that actually stop governments when they should. The crown rides atop that machinery like a polished hood ornament. It doesn’t turn the engine; it stops the driver mistaking the car for themself.

The Commonwealth lens (including Australia)

The realms - Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK - are cousins by law and habit: common law, muscular courts, independent broadcasters, central banks that are believed, and civil services that function. They don’t always make elegant policy, but they avoid catastrophic zigzags. The non-partisan head of state allows governments to fall without the state feeling leaderless. That combination looks like steady, investment-friendly governance in the World Bank dashboards and lands these countries consistently high on measures of civil liberty and life satisfaction.

Australia is a useful touchstone. The economy has ridden commodity cycles without the policy pirouettes that so often accompany them elsewhere. Minority governments come and go; prime ministers rotate more than we’d like; yet the institutional drumbeat - Reserve Bank independence, credible fiscal rules, courts that bite - keeps tempo. Canada’s story is similar in a different key: strong provinces, strong courts, national rituals that unite more than they divide. New Zealand marries constitutional modesty to policy agility; the UK carries its own contradictions but returns, repeatedly, to the habits of rule-bound government. The rhythm matters.

Commonwealth republics are a chorus rather than a quartet. Singapore, still borrowing the DNA of British civil-service pragmatism, sits at the very top of economic freedom and income per head, and deliberately trades expressive freedom for social order. Mauritius looks realm-like across governance and liberties. India is a democratic epic whose subnational variance overwhelms simple verdicts. South Africa’s courts remain strong while the grid wobbles and inequality bites. The pattern that survives the noise is variance: the realms are consistent; the republics contain both the region’s finest performers and its most ragged.

Asia’s split-screen: Japan and Thailand vs Singapore and South Korea

Japan blends a modern economy with the world’s oldest continuous monarchy. The emperor confers legitimacy without wielding power; cabinets come and go; institutional routines endure. On freedom and governance metrics, Japan sits comfortably in the “rules-based, rights-respecting” cluster. Well-being lags its wealth - aging, overwork, social isolation - and the crown cannot magic that away. What it can do is anchor a constitutional rhythm so that politics doesn’t rattle the frame.

Thailand is the paradox that teaches humility. The monarchy unifies in ritual; speech laws chill; coups happen. And yet, in the well-being data, social support lifts the country above several richer neighbours. The crown here operates as symbol and brake, not as cure. Across the strait, Singapore, republic to its core, is proof that an elected head of state is not a synonym for volatility. By building a technocratic, party-dominant system with rigorous state capacity, it has engineered continuity many monarchies would envy. The price is paid in narrower expressive freedoms and happiness scores that lag income. South Korea pairs boisterous democracy with world-class firms and courts; well-being struggles with work intensity and housing pressure. Institutions and policy choices dominate any simple crown-versus-president story.

Where geology drowns out governance: the Gulf

Oil grabs the steering wheel. Absolute monarchies in the Gulf are fabulously rich in income per head and invest aggressively in infrastructure. They also suppress civil and political liberties, and their well-being scores reflect the trade-offs of material security with constrained expression.

These regimes are not the focus here, the question is about democratic constitutional monarchies, but their presence in “rich lists” can mislead casual comparisons. Strip out hydrocarbons and autocracy and the core claim becomes cleaner.

The Americas and Africa: resilience by different means

Latin America is overwhelmingly republican. If monarchies were a secret spice, the region should underperform across the board. Reality refuses that script. Uruguay, Costa Rica, and (often) Chile sit high on freedom and well-being, with credible governance and steady macro policy. The challenge is variance: boom-and-bust cycles, populist swings, the occasional lurch toward illiberalism. That dynamic is partly structural (resource cycles, external shocks) and partly constitutional: no non-partisan head of state to dampen the symbolic stakes of executive turnover. Strong electoral authorities and courts can compensate and often do.

Africa’s bench of democratic constitutional monarchies is small - Morocco and Lesotho are the classic cases - and the lesson is blunt. Morocco’s crown helps manage reforms in rough seas; Lesotho’s king arbitrates communal tensions without overcoming structural poverty; Eswatini, nearly absolute, underperforms on liberty. The continent’s leaders on governance and freedom - Mauritius, Botswana, Seychelles - are republics that made boring, correct choices early and stuck to them. Again, institutions carry the freight.

Where monarchies were toppled without robust replacements, transitions often curdled. Nepal’s shift from revered kingship to republic has struggled to translate into institutional strength. Cambodia’s restored monarchy sits under party dominance and can’t perform the neutral-arbiter function. These trajectories don’t argue for crowns; they argue for underestimating ritual authority at your peril.

Synthesis without slogans

After the above world tour, what survives scrutiny?

On economics, democratic constitutional monarchies are over-represented among countries with steady growth, low volatility, and high investor confidence. The likely mechanism is a continuity premium: de-dramatized head-of-state transitions and political cultures shaped by parliamentary accountability. But the best republics - Finland, Switzerland, Singapore, Taiwan, Israel - match or beat any monarchy when institutions are strong.
On freedoms, the democratic qualifier is everything. European and Anglosphere monarchies score at the ceiling, right alongside top republics. The crown lowers the symbolic stakes of executive turnover and complicates the personalisation of power. Law, courts, media and civil society still do the real work.
On well-being, constitutional monarchies cluster near the top with a plausible unity premium at play, but culture, social support, health, perceived freedom, and clean government drive the result. Those are outcomes of competence and trust, not pageantry.

If there is one general distinction that survives, it is variance. Constitutional monarchies in mature democracies tend to show lower variance in outcomes, fewer spectacular breakdowns, fewer institutional crises, fewer policy pirouettes. Republics populate both extremes: some of the world’s finest free societies and some of the world’s most volatile. The crown, in short, is a risk dampener, not a growth engine.

What the UN moment gets wrong (and what it accidentally gets right)

The lecturing style such as American exceptionalist or any other brand, assumes a single best system and a universal checklist for getting “back on track.” That conceit ignores geography, history, and culture. It also ignores the soft power of ritual and restraint. The U.S. is a continent-sized experiment in presidentialism; it produces world-leading innovation and world-class whiplash. The constitutional monarchies of northern Europe and the Anglosphere are a different experiment: they trade sizzle for steadiness. Each throws off benefits and costs.

What the speechmakers accidentally get right is the moral seriousness of constitutional choice. This isn’t a parlour game about crowns and anthems. It’s a question about how much heat a society can carry without setting its institutions on fire. Do you want the thermostat set to simmer - the constitutional monarchy preference - or do you want the burner under the pan - the presidential republic preference - confident you can keep the flame from leaping to the curtains?

One line that honours the nuance

A constitutional monarchy is not a better government; it is often a better governance environment. It lowers the symbolic stakes of executive turnover, de-personalises the state, and offers a ritual centre people can share without having to vote for it. After that, outcomes are still driven by law, competence, trust, and fairness.

If a constitution is the skeleton, a crown is a cast helpful while the bones set, harmless when they’re strong, useless if the marrow is diseased. Continuity and ritual can calm a democracy’s pulse. The heartbeat is still trust.

Method note, for readers who like to look under the hood

The claims above lean on long-run panel studies comparing monarchies and republics (notably work that models internal conflict, executive tenure pathologies, and executive discretion); on descriptive income tables from the IMF and World Bank; on Freedom House and the Human Freedom Index for civil and economic liberties; on the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators for rule of law, effectiveness, regulatory quality, voice and accountability; and on the World Happiness Report’s life-evaluation model i.e. income, social support, healthy life expectancy, perceived freedom, generosity, corruption.

These instruments do not “prove” that crowns cause prosperity, freedom, or happiness. They do support a humbler claim: where a democracy already takes law and competence seriously, an apolitical head of state helps it stay serious in bad weather.