Belgium was a constitutional monarchy from the start after breaking away from the Netherlands in 1830; Spain became a constitutional monarchy in 1837. The Dutch followed in 1848: their king, Willem II, although a conservative, saw a diminution in his powers as the only way the monarchy could survive and charged Johan Rudolf Thorbecke, who became the country’s first de-facto prime minister, with drawing up a new constitution that is still in operation today. “I changed from conservative to liberal in one night,” Willem declared. The document, passed in June 1849, ended absolute rule, established a bicameral parliament, limited the powers of the monarch and secured basic civil rights. In Sweden, following the replacement of the traditional parliament of the Four Estates with a more modern two-chamber system in 1866, Bernadotte’s grandson, King Carl XV, found his influence increasingly constrained by the legislature.
That, at least, was the theory. In practice Continental monarchs were, like British ones, often reluctant to submit to such constraints on their power. Despite his revolutionary origins, Bernadotte began his transformation into an old-fashioned royal autocrat even before he formally acceded to the Swedish (and Norwegian) throne in 1818 as Carl XIV Johan. As time went on, he increasingly chose as councillors loyal bureaucrats who would carry out his will. During the last fifteen of his twenty-six-year reign, the King – who rarely rose before two p.m. – ruled through what became known as his “bedchamber regime”, with Count Magnus Brahe, his personal advisor and favourite, acting as a kind of gatekeeper.
Belgium’s Léopold I and his son Léopold II also bridled at attempts to control their actions. Queen Isabel II of Spain, who reigned from 1843 until 1868, often interfered in politics, while Willem III, who came to the throne in the Netherlands in 1849, loathed the constitutional changes initiated by his father the previous year. His daughter, Wilhelmina, who was queen of the Netherlands for almost the entire first half of the twentieth century, was often unhappy with her government, and in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 she managed to see down attempts to turn the country into socialist republic.
The first decades of the twentieth century saw a series of clashes – not all of which were won by parliaments. In 1914, Sweden’s Gustaf V, an advocate of rearmament, appealed directly to the people in a battle with the government of Karl Staaff, which had come to power three years earlier on the promise to disarm. That February, more than 30,000 farmers marched to the palace in support of the King, who denounced the government’s defence policy in a speech to the crowds gathered in the courtyard. Matters rapidly escalated into a constitutional crisis, prompting some to call for a republic – but the King prevailed, managing to form a conservative administration. The outbreak of war a few months later proved him right.
Yet the tide of history was running against Gustaf and the other monarchs, especially after the extension of the vote to the working classes – and to women – which helped the rise of the British Labour Party and other social-democratic parties. These, by their nature, tended to be less favourable towards monarchy than their conservative rivals. Even so, many leading left-leaning politicians quickly became dazzled by the allure of court once they were allowed to taste its charms, turning the most determined class warrior into a royalist. The victory of left-wing parties in the Swedish elections of 1917 obliged Gustaf to accept a liberal government again, this time in coalition with the Social Democrats, whose programme committed them to a republic. Three years later, Hjalmar Branting, who had led the Social Democrats in their battle against the King, even briefly served as prime minister.
Gustaf’s Danish counterpart, Christian X, who became king of that country in 1912, also came into conflict with his politicians. Although a conservative, he had acquiesced in the formation of Denmark’s first liberal government in 1901 but never really came to terms with the loss of the monarch’s traditional influence. He tried to regain some of it in 1920 during what became known as the Easter Crisis, when he sided with nationalists against his own government in a dispute over the return of Schleswig, a former Danish fiefdom lost to Prussia sixty years earlier. The King, who rode over the border on a white horse with a young girl on his knee, initially prevailed, forcing the prime minister to resign and replacing him with a more conservative figure. The political crisis that followed threatened the monarchy, however, and it was Christian who was eventually forced to back down: he learnt his lesson, as did his successors who, despite the formal powers still granted them in the constitution, have not tried to exert direct political influence.
Christian’s younger brother, who had become King Haakon VII of Norway in 1905 after it broke away from Sweden, trod more carefully, conscious perhaps of his own potentially more vulnerable position. During a government crisis in 1928, he took the bold move of inviting the Labour Party, whose platform included a provision to abolish the monarchy, into the government for the first time. The administration lasted only twenty-eight days, but the point had been made: the king was above politics. From that time on, the Norwegian left was not as antagonistic towards monarchy as its Swedish equivalent, although it took the outbreak of war for the Danish-born monarch to become a truly national figure.
In Belgium, Léopold I’s successors proved unwilling to accept the constraints imposed on them by the constitution. Indeed, the premature end to the reign of Léopold III was the result in part of the way in which he tried to ignore the wishes of his ministers in the 1930s. When the King himself came under fire over his war record, few politicians were prepared to support him – which, in the end, was to leave him little choice but to abdicate.
Although the general tendency was towards a reduction in royal power, Russia remained a glorious exception. The experiment with a limited constitutional monarchy after the 1905 Revolution proved a brief one. The Tsar had absolute state power, delegating it to persons and institutions only as he saw fit. He was, in a popular metaphor, the father of Russia, and the subjects of his empire were his children. It all came to a bloody end in 1917, however, when the Bolshevik revolution replaced absolute monarchy with an even more brutal form of authoritarian rule that was to endure for more than seven decades.
So what, if anything, is left of royal power today? Are Europe’s kings and queens mere figureheads or do they still play a role in the political process?
The most obvious place where royal influence can be felt is in the formation of governments, especially in those countries where coalitions are the norm. In both Belgium and the Netherlands, for example, the monarch is charged with appointing first a so-called informateur after an election to assess the political landscape and then a formateur who, all being well, will go on to become prime minister. In theory, the monarch should play a neutral role – but the larger the number of parties and the more possible combinations capable of generating a majority there are, the greater the influence of the monarch will be. That influence will also tend to grow the longer he has been on the throne.
Belgium’s fragmented political system, with the parties split not just along left-right lines but also between Flemings and Walloons, provides further scope for royal influence, by increasing the number of potential coalitions. When these administrations fall apart, as they do regularly, the king also has the power either to accept or to reject a prime minister’s resignation and allow a dissolution.
During his forty-two-year reign, King Baudouin made what some critics saw as rather too much use of such powers. In October 1991, just under two years before his death, when Belgium was in the midst of one of its periodic political crises, he refused to accept the resignation of Wilfried Martens, the prime minister, which had the result of bringing forward the general election. He is also said to have routinely struck out the names of proposed cabinet ministers of whom he didn’t approve. His younger brother, Albert, who succeeded him in August 1993, was by nature less keen to intervene, but has been obliged to do so, especially as the growing polarization of Belgium along linguistic lines has made it more difficult to form gov
ernments – as was shown after the Flemish nationalist Bart De Wever’s New Flemish Alliance won the largest number of seats in the June 2010 election.
Britain’s first-past-the-post political system, in which either Labour or Conservatives typically obtains an absolute majority, leaves considerably less room for royal intervention. There were nevertheless several occasions during the twentieth century – including during Elizabeth’s reign – when the monarch exercised discretion over the choice of leader. This was particularly the case with the Conservative Party, which traditionally did not elect a leader but clung to a curious system under which the leader “emerged” – leaving scope for royal involvement. These days, however, the Conservatives, like Labour, formally elect their own leader, which meant the appointment of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and of Margaret Thatcher and John Major before them, was automatic rather than an example of the Queen exercising her discretion.
The general election of May 2010, which did not give an overall majority to either Labour or the Conservatives, seemed on the face of it to create a situation in which the Queen could play an interventionist role, as in Belgium or the Netherlands. This was not the British way: Buckingham Palace was careful to avoid giving the impression of any involvement, with the Queen remaining for five days at Windsor Castle while the party leaders back in London found a solution – a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. The contrast with the active role played by her grandfather, George V, in the formation of the National Government in 1931 could not have been greater.
Behind the scenes, however, Christopher Geidt, the Queen’s private secretary, was monitoring events closely from the Cabinet Office. Geidt, it subsequently emerged, warned Brown not to resign until a formal pact between his two rivals had been concluded – in part by giving the defeated Labour leader the false impression he might yet be able to cling to power.5 This averted a situation in which the country was left for a few days without a government; this is fairly commonplace for Belgium and the Netherlands, where coalition-building can sometimes take weeks or even months, but would have been an alarming constitutional novelty for Britain. It was therefore only once the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats had done their deal that Brown went to the palace to tender his resignation and the Queen invited Cameron to form a new administration.
Royal influence is not restricted to coalition-building. Between elections it can also extend to the day-to-day running of government. In the Netherlands, Queen Beatrix, as one of her former premiers revealed, would often be quite forthright as far as ministerial appointments were concerned. Monarchs have also occasionally given political direction at crucial moments: Baudouin, for example, suggested after the outbreak of troubles in the Belgian Congo in the late 1950s that independence for the African nation was becoming inevitable. In the late 1980s, a royal speech signalled acceptance of the country’s move towards federalism as the only way of reconciling warring Flemings and Walloons – even though the transfer of power from Brussels to regional and communal levels means ultimately a diminution of royal influence.
In most countries the prime minister holds weekly meetings with the monarch. Such meetings are not minuted and what goes on is known only to the participants, but as Margaret Thatcher wrote in her memoirs, “Anyone who imagines that they are a mere formality or confined to social niceties is quite wrong; they are quietly businesslike and Her Majesty brings to bear a formidable grasp of current issues and breadth of experience.”6 As Bogdanor puts it, “it is a good thing that those who have political power should give some account each week to those who do not.”7 The number of years that Elizabeth has spent as queen, and the dramas and crises she has lived through along the way, inevitably add to her influence. After all, she was already on the throne when David Cameron was born.
In Denmark, the Queen meets the prime minister once a week, usually on a Wednesday, unless either has a pressing engagement. She also holds a separate meeting with the foreign minister. Around once a month, she presides over the Council of State, a body that contains all the members of the cabinet. The crown prince becomes a member once he reaches eighteen. As elsewhere – with the exception of Sweden – the Queen also signs bills, laws and other documents.
Norway goes further: every Friday at eleven a.m. the members of the government assemble in the cabinet chamber of the Royal Palace in Oslo for a meeting of the Council of State, presided over by the King, seated in the original 1848 golden and red-velvet throne chair. One by one the various cabinet ministers read out their bills, which are then signed by the King. Often Crown Prince Haakon will also attend. Although the King’s signature is required, the meeting, which typically takes just half an hour, is largely symbolic these days. All the decisions have already been taken at a conventional cabinet meeting the day before – to which the King is not invited.
The nature of royal influence these days means that it is inevitably exerted behind the scenes: monarchs are as aware as everyone else that political power wielded by virtue purely of birth is an anachronism. The king or queen is not meant to have opinions – or at least they must keep them to themselves. In one notorious case in Belgium in 1990, however, King Baudouin broke this principle over the question of abortion. While other European countries had been liberalizing the law one by one, Belgium had been holding back, in part, it has been claimed, thanks to manoeuvring by the King. Baudouin’s main motivation appeared to have been his strong Catholic faith; a role may also have been played by his own personal experience: attempts by him and Queen Fabiola to have children ended in five miscarriages.
By the end of the 1980s, however, with Belgium, along with Ireland, almost alone in forbidding abortion, the popular mood was turning against him. After a bill approving terminations under certain circumstances was passed by the Senate in November 1989, the King vented his anger in public by devoting his New Year speech to a homily on the sanctity of human life. Despite his intervention, the bill was passed by an overwhelming majority in the Chamber of Representatives that spring, leaving the monarch in the invidious position of having to sign it into law. Instead he took advantage of a law that allowed him to step down if illness or “other reasons” prevented him from fulfilling his duties – but was allowed to resume his constitutional powers forty-eight hours later.
Although this did not allow Baudouin to block the measure, the republican lobby was angered by such an unusual constitutional manoeuvre. By putting his own religious faith ahead of his political neutrality, the King had clearly broken the rules – although opinion polls suggested his act of conscientious objection had actually increased rather than reduced his popularity.
The move nevertheless set a curious precedent that could have caused problems several years later when the parliament passed laws authorizing homosexual marriages and euthanasia – both of which Baudouin’s faith would have made him uncomfortable with. By then, however, he had already been succeeded by his more liberal younger brother, Albert, who signed both measures into law without objection.
A similar crisis was looming in Luxembourg in December 2008, when Grand Duke Henri, a devout Catholic, said he would refuse to sign into law an act on euthanasia voted on earlier that year by the Chamber of Deputies. The constitution was swiftly changed, making royal assent, which had been a requirement in the constitution since 1848, no longer necessary. But calls arose for a broader reform of the constitution, to reduce the powers of the grand duke, bringing his role more into line with that of Europe’s other monarchs.
Less dramatically, monarchs have also made use of their annual Christmas or New Year addresses – which, unlike the speeches to parliament, are their own rather than their government’s words – to express opinions. In the case of Queen Elizabeth II, the sentiments expressed are usually far from controversial: musings on the nature of Christianity and of family. Yet her words can also contain a more political message: in 2004, for example, she signalled support for a multicultural society – and opposition to the British National P
arty – by telling the story of an overseas visitor who had spoken approvingly of a trip he had taken on the Tube from Heathrow during which he had encountered children of different ethnic and culture groups, all of whom seemed to get on well with one another. “Some people feel that their own beliefs are being threatened,” she said. “Some are unhappy about unfamiliar cultures. They all need to be reassured… that diversity is indeed a strength and not a threat.” Significantly, the first stop in March 2012 on her five-month Diamond Jubilee tour of the United Kingdom was Leicester, a city with a mixed population. The Queen’s frequent references in her messages to the Commonwealth are also effectively a political statement of the importance of that organization.
Multiculturalism is a theme that has been seized on by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands too. After the murder of Theo van Gogh, the controversial Dutch film-maker, by an Islamic extremist in November 2004, she appealed for tolerance during an unannounced visit to a multicultural workshop set up by young people in Amsterdam. In June 2006, Beatrix won praise from Jan Peter Balkenende, the prime minister – but anger from the far right – over her behaviour during a state visit to the Mubarak Mosque in The Hague to mark its fiftieth anniversary. Contrary to her usual practice she agreed not to shake hands with the leaders in deference to their belief that Islam forbids men from touching women other than their wives. Critics noted that such tolerance appeared to extend only to Muslims: the Queen had refused to meet an Orthodox Jewish group in 1982 because they also didn’t shake hands with women.
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