Is political engagement by constitutional monarchs compatible with democracy?

Abstract

Constitutional monarchies have proved to be resilient, and some have made substantive political interventions even though their positions are mostly hereditary, without granted constitutional channels to do so. This article examines how constitutional monarchs can influence political affairs and what impact royal intervention can have on politics. I argue that constitutional monarchs affect politics indirectly by influencing the preferences of the public who have de jure power to influence political leaders. The analyses herein show that constitutional monarchs do not indiscriminately intervene in politics, but their decisions to intervene reflect the public’s preferences. First, constitutional monarchs with little public approval become self-restraining and do not attempt to assert their political preferences. Second, they are more likely to intervene in politics when the public is less satisfied about the incumbent government. These findings are illustrated with historical narratives regarding the political involvement of King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand in the 2000s.

Keywords

constitutional monarchy formal model hereditary political institutions monarchy Thailand

Introduction

Theoretical literature on monarchy suggests that constitutional monarchies¹ only survive if monarchs are precluded from influencing politics. North and Weingast (1989) analyse constitutional evolution in 17th-century England and argue that the creation of institutional checks on the Crown contributed to economic growth. Scholars such as Rosenthal (1998) and Acemoglu et al. (2005) suggest that checks on monarchs’ political or economic influence are a key determinant of the divergence between the French and British monarchies. Despite these theoretical insights, some monarchs continue to actively intervene in political affairs and sometimes make considerable political changes. In Thailand, King Bhumibol’s speech following the Asian currency crisis significantly affected the national development strategy (Piboolsravut, 2004); concerning a popular constitutional reform initiative, Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein explicitly asked the people to endorse his proposals (Veenendaal, 2014: 337); and regarding the political crisis in Catalonia, King Felipe VI of Spain fiercely accused separatist leaders of threatening national unity (Minder, 2017).

This article seeks to answer the question of under what conditions constitutional monarchs intervene in politics. In the process of liberalisation, monarchs typically make a public commitment to refrain from attempting to enact their personal political preferences. Although they are given pro forma final say over bills and appointments, they usually do not possess any other substantive de jure power over the decision-making process. What factors motivate them to intervene beyond their authority? By answering this question, this article also seeks to clarify what impact royal intervention can have on democratic politics. Since the positions of monarchs are mostly hereditary, they are not subject to electoral accountability. Mainstream democracy theory highlights the significance of elections in creating accountability (Barro, 1973; Besley and Burgess, 2002; Lijphart, 1999; Manin et al., 1999); in this body of theory, hereditary political institutions implicitly receive a negative assessment. Considering that some governments acknowledge hereditary political structures, however, there should be some mechanisms that can make monarchy compatible with democracy. In other words, revealing the conditions under which constitutional monarchs intervene in politics clarifies whether their decisions to intervene are in agreement with the public’s preferences.

This article addresses these questions by developing a simple formal model in which a constitutional monarch determines whether to intervene in domestic politics, taking into account the public’s susceptibility to royal intervention. This formal setup allows us to systematically examine monarchs’ behaviour, since it identifies not only the conditions under which a monarch intervenes in domestic politics, but also the conditions under which a monarch remains politically inactive. This is in sharp contrast with Baldwin and Holzinger’s (2019) expert survey on traditional political institutions, as their survey highlights traditional political institutions that are active enough to observe, and potentially overlooks those that are inactive or abolished. Thus, this article seeks to facilitate a coherent understanding of the strategic interaction between constitutional monarchies and political leaders, rather than simply arguing that the presence of politically powerful constitutional monarchs is anomalistic or monarch-dependent. In addition, this article provides historical narratives regarding royal interventions and their compatibility with the public’s preferences in Thailand. The narratives show that King Bhumibol Adulyadej exploited informal channels to intervene and varied the timing of his interventions depending on public opinion, despite being granted formal channels with strong legal protections for intervention.

Through formal analyses, this article argues that monarchs’ abilities to make their words heard allow them to affect politics indirectly by influencing the preferences of the public who have de jure power to affect political leaders. Pro-monarchy citizens may change their political preferences after hearing monarchs’ messages and may expect political leaders to follow sovereign guidance, while others may not. The level of public susceptibility affects the cost that political leaders face through bargaining failure, and thus the monarch’s willingness to intervene in politics. Furthermore, the formal analysis demonstrates that constitutional monarchs do not indiscriminately intervene in politics, but that their decisions to intervene reflect the public’s preferences in two ways: first, constitutional monarchs will be reluctant to make political interventions that can backfire. Being exposed to de facto punishment by the public in the form of criticism against individual interventions and debate on the abolition of monarchy, constitutional monarchs who receive little public approval become self-restraining. Second, constitutional monarchs are more likely to intervene in politics when the public is less satisfied with the incumbent government. This result substantively suggests that monarchs opt to intervene as the public becomes disillusioned with the existing political order, so as to moderate the impact of the emergence of radical oppositions and to maintain political stability.

This article adds to the burgeoning literature on traditional political institutions (e.g. Acemoglu et al., 2014; Baldwin, 2013, 2014, 2019; Bjørnskov and Kurrild-Klitgaard, 2014; Herb, 1999; Mustasilta, 2019). Most existing scholarship investigates particular regions and/or countries, which seems to generate a polarised assessment of hereditary political institutions. For example, the negative aspects of hereditary political institutions, such as lack of accountability (Lijphart, 1999) and abuse of authority (Herb, 2004; Ntsebeza, 2005), have long been stressed. However, recent studies counter-argue that hereditary political institutions play positive roles in improving the responsiveness of democratic governments (Baldwin, 2014), by facilitating the provision of resources (Klick, 2016) and by managing conflicts (Tridimas, 2016; Veenendaal, 2014). By formally investigating monarchies, this article offers a complete picture of hereditary political institutions and their role in democratic politics.

The article is structured as follows. The next section summarises a conceptual and theoretical discussion about monarchies and their political role in democracies. The third section presents a formal model, and the two subsequent sections discuss equilibrium and its implications. The penultimate section provides historical narratives that illustrate the formal findings. Specifically, this article highlights political engagements by King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand. The final section offers conclusions and suggestions for further research.

Literature

Contemporary theories on democracy place a special significance on the role of elections in ensuring accountability and controlling political leaders (Barro, 1973; Besley and Burgess, 2002; Ferejohn, 1986; Lijphart, 1999; Manin et al., 1999). Through elections, citizens can both select and punish political leaders, thereby encouraging them to act in the interests of citizens. Nevertheless, not all political actors are exposed to electoral procedures. Out of the 86 extant states that began statehood as monarchies, 36 are still headed by a constitutional monarch, whose power does not derive from democratic procedures such as elections, but is typically hereditary. Despite being beyond the scope of this article, it is interesting to note that hereditary peers in the UK House of Lords and chiefs in African countries are granted constitutional leverage in politics. Little is known about whether, and if so how, hereditary political actors can be compatible with democracy, despite the fact that liberal democracy tends to reject birth privilege in appointments to public office.

In line with the conventional wisdom on electoral accountability, several studies argue that monarchs’ inability to influence politics matters for the survival of monarchical institutions. North and Weingast (1989) analyse constitutional evolution in 17th-century England and contend that the creation of institutional checks on the Crown contributed to economic growth and the maintenance of monarchical institutions. Acemoglu et al. (2005), Blaydes and Chaney (2013) and Rosenthal (1998) also suggest the significance of checks on monarchs’ political power as a key determinant of their survival. Consistent with these claims, some constitutional monarchs, mostly those in Western Europe, traditionally play ceremonial roles and tend not to even reveal their political preferences. On the other hand, other constitutional monarchs actively communicate their political preferences, and attempt to promote them on occasion. In addition to the examples presented in the introduction, in 2001, King Mohammed VI of Morocco presented the parliament with his plan to replace the traditional Moroccan family code with a more modern one, which would grant more rights to women and children (Harrak, 2009). Furthermore, shortly after a violent clash between mass demonstrators and the military government in 1992, King Bhumibol of Thailand summoned the leaders of the military government and of the pro-democracy movement to the palace and urged them to find a peaceful resolution. As implied by the aforementioned studies that assume a lack of royal interventions under constitutional monarchies, all these examples have received little academic attention, as they have been viewed as anomalies.² Thus, existing studies alone cannot explain how politically active monarchs can be compatible with democracy.

Recent studies on chieftaincy claim that traditional political institutions contain unique mechanisms for creating accountability. Through expert surveys, Baldwin and Holzinger (2019) assess the compatibility of traditional political institutions with democratic institutions and find that traditional political institutions adopt inclusive decision-making processes and that their leaders must account for their actions by publicly justifying them. That is, they propose a criterion for accountability other than the extent to which processes of choosing leaders approximate competitive elections. Despite the significant contributions made by their work, their survey may potentially have survivorship bias. The survey covers a disproportionally large number of indigenous ethnic groups with traditional governance institutions,³ and the findings in favour of nonelectoral accountability may depend on this sample bias. Furthermore, this framework cannot simply be applied to constitutional monarchs, since the survey questions assume that chiefs play active political roles,⁴ while constitutional monarchs do not necessarily do so. Hereditary political actors can be responsive to their citizens even while refraining from political engagement, but their study does not consider this possibility.

In sum, there has hitherto been no comprehensive study seeking to explain the impact of political involvement by hereditary political institutions. This article, by focusing exclusively on constitutional monarchs, seeks to move beyond single country or comparative case studies and instead present a theoretical framework to redefine the role of constitutional monarchy in democracies.

Formal model

The following game involves three players. The first two are the incumbent party (G, denoting government) and an opposition (O) potentially competing over a pie of power, represented by $X \in [0, 1]$ . They could bargain over a degree of influence on policies and institutional arrangements, such as elections and audits. Each player wants more power so the ideal offer for G and O is denoted by $x_{G} = 1$ and $x_{O} = 0$ . I assume that G holds all the power when the game begins. Observing tension between the primary bargainers, the third player, the monarch (M), may or may not intervene in politics to facilitate the transfer of power from G to O. $β \in [0, 1]$ represents M’s degree of bias in favour of G. M is more biased towards G as $β$ increases. $β$ can simply be interpreted as M’s ideal point on the interval X. The true value of $β$ is known to every player.

The game begins with Nature drawing the type of the Opposition, which is given by $c > 0$ . O with high c could mean a violent type, such as a terrorist group, while O with low c could mean a conventional political actor, such as an opposition party or a coalition of nonviolent campaign groups. Upon observing the threat posed by O, M chooses whether to intervene.⁵ I do not impose substantive constraints on the forms that M’s intervention could take, provided that the intervention is at least publicly observable. Intervention could be verbal, such as making speeches, or nonverbal, such as visiting politically important places and figures. M is assumed to stay silent when M is indifferent. Then, G proposes an ultimatum offer, x ₀ and x ₁ respectively, in the absence or presence of royal intervention. Finally, O either accepts or rejects the offer. O accepts G’s offer when O is indifferent. If O rejects the offer, O will exercise complete control of the government with probability $q,$ and O will be forced to accept G’s offer with probability $1 - q$ . Parameter q, for example, could mean O’s popularity relative to the government, or the level of the opposition’s weaponry.

Players’ payoffs basically consist of three components (see Figure 1). One component is benefits from power allocated. G and O respectively get x_i and $1 - x_{i}$ , where $i \in \{0, 1\}$ , when their negotiation peacefully reaches agreement, or in the case that O fails to remove G with probability $1 - q$ . Conversely, when their negotiation fails and O successfully removes G with probability q, G and O respectively get 0 and 1. M’s benefits from power-sharing outcomes are determined by personal bias and how much power the side has. For instance, M obtains $β x_{i}$ when negotiation succeeds and obtains $1 - β$ when it fails. The second component regards the execution of O’s threat. When O rejects G’s offer, O will execute the threat to remove the incumbent government. O’s challenge must mobilise resources and consequently will inflict costs on the whole country, including on G and M. The costs, represented by c in the model, could substantively take the form of political instability, legislative delays, damage to property and, at worst, human suffering.

The third component is the cost imposed by the citizenry, which depends on the distance between the ideal division of power for each player and the public. Let x_P denote the ideal point for the public as a unitary actor. When M does not intervene, and O succeeds in removing G, G and O respectively pay $- (1 - x_{P})$ and $- x_{P}$ since the public may blame them for the bargaining failure. When M intervenes and O successfully removes G, G and O also incur costs from the public, but the public’s ideal point will be updated. Let $x_{P}^{'}$ denote the updated ideal point of the public. The location of $x_{P}^{'}$ hinges on the public’s prior ideal point, the proportion of susceptible citizens and M’s ideal point according to the equation $x_{P}^{'} = k β + (1 - k) x_{P}$ . A proportion equal to $k \in (0, 1)$ of the public is receptive to M’s intervention, while a proportion equal to $1 - k$ does not change its opinion about a given issue even after royal intervention. The level of M’s popularity, or the persuasiveness of M’s individual interventions, can be interpreted as k. Hence, G and O respectively incur $- (1 - x_{P}^{'})$ and $- x_{P}^{'}$ . In this way, public endorsement of monarchical institutions provides the monarchs with de facto political power to influence politics despite the lack of a formal channel. This mechanism of royal influence is consistent with existing studies claiming that monarchs can serve as focal points for the populace (Bjørnskov and Kurrild-Klitgaard, 2014: 475–476).

M also incurs a cost from the public, $- |β - x_{P}^{'}|,$ if and only if the monarch intervenes, since the ability of a constitutional monarch to politically intervene is usually not codified in constitutions. Put substantively, M’s dignity will be hurt by the extent of failure to persuade the public that intervention is justifiable. Decline in public endorsement towards the monarchy can negatively affect political elites’ decisions about the prerogatives of and finances for the royal establishment, though it might not necessarily lead to the immediate abolition of monarchy nowadays.⁶ Thus, M’s de facto political leverage is backed by the fact that the monarch will tolerate public criticism should political intervention deviate from the public’s preferences.

Figure 1.

Sequence of play.

Equilibrium

I now examine a subgame perfect equilibrium of this extensive game. In particular, this section discusses the strategies of the incumbent party and the monarch, in order to identify mechanisms behind royal intervention and its impact on bargaining outcomes. All proofs are supplied in the Appendix.

Proposition 1

The following strategy profile constitutes a unique subgame perfect equilibrium. M intervenes in politics if $β > x_{P}$ and $k > \frac{1}{1 + β},$ and does not intervene otherwise. G offers $x_{1}^{*} = x_{P}^{'} + \frac{c}{q}$ and $x_{0}^{*} = x_{P} + \frac{c}{q}$ . O accepts x ₁ if $x_{1} \leq x_{1}^{*}$ and rejects the offer otherwise. Meanwhile, O accepts x ₀ if $x_{0} \leq x_{0}^{*}$ and rejects it otherwise.

In the same manner as solving the game, the following statement summarises the players’ optimal actions in equilibrium. First, Proposition 1 states that it is optimal for O to accept an offer if it is equal to or greater than O’s utility after rejecting the offer. Similarly, it posits that it is optimal for G to make the smallest offer that O would accept. G’s offer in the absence of royal intervention only depends on the public’s preferences (i.e. x_P ) and O’s strength (i.e. c and q). $x_{0}^{*}$ is increasing in c and decreasing in q. Substantively, this means that the government makes a larger concession to the opposition when the opposition is less violent (i.e. lower c) and is more likely to remove the government (i.e. higher q). Meanwhile, G’s offer in the presence of royal intervention also depends on M’s bias towards G (i.e. $β$ ) and the public’s susceptibility to M’s intervention (i.e. k). This suggests that in ordinary situations, about which constitutional monarchs are politically silent, the government and other political actors are exclusively sensitive to the public’s preferences, as is claimed by political science literature, while they may consider the advice of outsiders (e.g. constitutional monarchs) in a period of crisis if the outsiders have high public approval (i.e. high k).

Proposition 1 further states that M’s decision about intervention hinges on the relationship between $β$ and x_P . Figure 2 illustrates this. When $β > x_{P}$ , M intervenes if the public is susceptible enough to intervention (i.e. $k > \frac{1}{1 + β}$ ) and remains silent otherwise. In other words, M refrains from intervening in politics if the intervention would not substantively influence the public’s preferences or if it could even provoke public denouncement. When $β \leq x_{P}$ , in contrast, M never intervenes in equilibrium regardless of the value of k. Hence, everything else being constant, lower $β$ decreases the probability of royal intervention. This means that monarchs intervene in politics not simply because they are unsupportive of the incumbent government. In this way, M’s optimal behaviour considerably differs depending on the relative configuration of $β$ and $x_{P},$ even though M’s cost of intervention is the same (i.e. $- |β - x_{P}^{'}|$ ).

Figure 2.

Players’ optimal actions in equilibrium.

Discussion

Are constitutional monarchs responsive to the public?

The conditions for royal intervention specified above help answer the question of whether constitutional monarchs’ decision to intervene is in line with the public’s preferences. Inconsistent with the conventional negative assessment of political involvement by hereditary political institutions, the results show that constitutional monarchs attempt to be responsive to the public’s preferences in two ways. First, M is reluctant to make political interventions that can backfire. Being exposed to de facto punishment by the public in the form of denouncement and debate on the abolition of the monarchy, when M has little public approval (i.e. $k \leq \frac{1}{1 + β}$ ), M rationally chooses to be politically inactive.

Second, constitutional monarchs can intervene in politics only when the public is less satisfied with the incumbent government than the monarchs (i.e. $β > x_{P}$ ). Table 1 shows a comparative static about x_P . Provided that $β > x_{P}$ , the probability of M’s intervention decreases in x_P . Furthermore, as Figure 2 shows, M does not intervene when $β \leq x_{P}$ , no matter how much support the public provides. In this case, M lets the power-sharing outcome be solely dependent on the public’s preferences. In other words, royal intervention can play a complementary role when G fails to fully respond to the public’s preferences, for example because of sudden policy reversals or insufficient attention to significant policies. To borrow Strøm’s (2000) words, constitutional monarchy can complement ex post controls, which are less effective than ex ante controls under parliamentary democracy. The analyses have shown therefore that constitutional monarchs do not indiscriminately intervene in politics; their decision to intervene depends on the preferences of the public-as-sovereign.

Table 1.

The probability of royal intervention.

x_P	Probability of M’s intervention
0	0.31
0.3	0.27
0.5	0.21
0.7	0.14
1	0

Notwithstanding this finding, it should be noted that M’s intervention impedes the final power-sharing outcome from conforming exactly with the public’s preferences. If M does not intervene, O should make an offer that exactly corresponds to the public’s preferences if the players are completely informed. This puzzling consequence can be understood in terms of extremism. Suppose that this power-sharing game is played between an incumbent government and an opposition with extreme political views. If public support for the opposition is moderate, the transition of power to the opposition is also moderate. Even if the opposition gains power, its political influence can be offset. Yet, if the public strongly prefers the extremist opposition (i.e. low x_P relative to $β$ ), the absence of royal intervention would allow the opposition to radicalise the existing political order in accordance with the public’s preferences. Royal intervention can play a role in moderating the impact of the emergence of such radical opposition and maintaining political stability. This implication is plausible in that the consequences of royal intervention are in line with G’s preferences.

Is a constitutional monarchy desirable?

Although it is not the main focus of this article, it is useful to conclude this section with a brief discussion of efficiency. The model of this article has four possible outcomes: peaceful settlement with M’s intervention, peaceful settlement without M’s intervention, bargaining failure with M’s intervention and bargaining failure without M’s intervention. As shown in the previous section, the first two outcomes can be reached on the equilibrium path while the rest are off the equilibrium path. First, I consider whether a peaceful settlement with M’s intervention is Pareto superior to one without it; specifically, comparing the welfare values of the two equilibrium outcomes under the conditions in which M may or may not intervene (i.e. $β > x_{P}$ ). Peaceful settlement with M’s intervention ends the game with G receiving x ₁ and O receiving the remaining $1 - x_{1}$ while peaceful settlement without M’s intervention gives x ₀ to G and $1 - x_{0}$ to O respectively. The comparison shows that the equilibrium with M’s intervention is not Pareto superior to that without it. When $β > x_{P}$ , M’s intervention makes G better off while it makes O worse off.⁷ Due to the zero-sum property of this game, the desirability of royal intervention, and therefore of the existence of monarchical institutions, is not uniformly determined.

Second, I examine whether the peaceful resolution of the dispute between G and O is Pareto superior to the bargaining failure with or without M’s intervention. Since both G and O suffer some costs for fighting, bargaining failure is always inefficient for the primary bargainers, regardless of M’s choice. Surprisingly, however, M may prefer bargaining failure to peaceful settlement in each subgame. After intervening, M receives $β x_{1} - |β - x_{P}^{'}|$ from peaceful settlement, and $q (1 - β) + (1 - q) β x_{1} - |β - x_{P}^{'}| - c$ from bargaining failure. When M does not intervene, meanwhile, M receives $β x_{0}$ from peaceful settlement and receives $q (1 - β) + (1 - q) β x_{0} - c$ from bargaining failure. Comparing M’s payoffs in each subgame shows that bargaining failure makes M better off when M is sufficiently biased in favour of O (i.e. $β < \frac{1}{1 + x_{i}}$ , where $i \in \{0, 1\}$ ), and O is sufficiently capable of removing G (i.e. $q > \frac{c}{1 - β - β x_{i}}$ , where $i \in \{0, 1\}$ ),⁸ though the public and the rational primary bargainers would never let the negotiations fail on the equilibrium path. This suggests that constitutional monarchs are significantly constrained by the public and by political elites, and thus they would not attempt to enact their political preferences when doing so would make others worse off.

Case studies from Thailand

This section examines historical cases of the presence or absence of royal interventions in Thailand, specifically highlighting King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s behaviour before and after revealing the political scandal in which Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was alleged to be involved. The Thai monarchy is a case in point for two reasons. As will hereinafter be discussed in detail, the first reason is that the King could have directly refused Thaksin’s accession to the prime ministership, given the history of his use of veto power. The second reason is that the King was likely unconcerned about a public denouncement of his political engagement, due to the monarchy’s high popularity and strict lèse-majesté laws (i.e. very high k). Narratives about the Thai monarchy show that the King, despite being granted formal channels with strong legal protection, is sensitive to the degree of the public’s anti-government sentiment (i.e. x_P ) and deliberately ensure the timing of their intervention. In line with Buthe (2002), information that is extraneous to the formal model is minimised.

Even since the abolition of absolute monarchy in 1932, the King has preserved substantive political power. According to the Thai constitution, the King retains three powers: he is the Head of State, the Commander of the Thai Forces and the Upholder of Religion. He plays a role in seating parliament, enacting and sending back laws, appointing the prime minister, cabinet members and members of the Privy Council, declaring martial law and conferring and recalling decorations. In the past, King Bhumibol sometimes exercised veto power over laws and policies. For instance, in 1976 he refused to sign a law extending democratic elections down to district levels after the parliament voted 149 to 19 in favour of doing so (Handley, 2006: 233). A royal veto can only be overridden by a two-thirds vote in both houses (Handley, 2006: 268).

The Thai monarchy has two underlying sources of its position and reputation. One is lèse-majesté laws, which are defamation laws that prohibit any criticism of the royal family (Streckfuss, 1995). Those who violate the laws are subject to imprisonment for three to 15 years, regardless of their nationality. For instance, 33 charges were brought before the court of first instance in 2005, 18 of which resulted in sentencing (Streckfuss, 2014: 119). The laws discourage people in Thailand from taking any action which goes against the will of the monarchy. The other underlying source of the Thai monarchy’s position is public affection, which was particularly fostered under the reign of King Bhumibol. The monarchy has garnered popularity through visiting rural provinces and encouraging development projects (Sakurada, 2013). Without approval from the populace, such anachronistic laws might have been abolished by now. These two interwoven sources of power and influence have made direct royal interventions possible, such as vetoing bills and reconciling the civil–military disputes that took place in May 1992.

Notwithstanding these favourable conditions for direct royal intervention, the behaviour of the King between 2001 and 2006 demonstrates that he did take the public’s preferences seriously. The first half of the 2000s was characterised by the absence of strong anti-government sentiment (i.e. high x_P ). In the 2001 general election, Thaksin Shinawatra, a leader of the Thai Rak Thai Party (TRT), won a landslide victory. Promising several economic policies to reduce rural poverty, the TRT gained 248 out of 500 legislative seats. Thaksin started universal healthcare policies; launched a local entrepreneurship programme of ‘One Village, One Product’; and directed several government banks to finance small and medium enterprises (Phongpaichit and Baker, 2009: 104-106). These policies strongly appealed to the rural poor, who comprise the majority of the population. His growth-oriented strategy pulled Thailand out of the 1997 currency crisis, and saw the economy reach 6.7 percent GDP growth in 2003 (Phongpaichit and Baker, 2009: 128–129). Some of his campaigns, despite their extraordinary approach, attracted nationwide popularity, including support from those who were later said to be strong opponents. For example, the Suan Dusit poll in 2003 showed that 90 percent of a 10,000 person sample were in favour of his ‘war on drugs’ campaign (Phongpaichit and Baker, 2009: 166). Backed by this high public endorsement, Thaksin gained 129 seats when re-elected in February 2005. Several scholars infer in retrospect that the occurrence of the 2006 coup can be attributed to Thaksin’s populist polices (Ferrara, 2010; Kitrianglarp and Hewison, 2009), but strong anti-Thaksin activists had not yet emerged by 2005. For instance, Thaksin enacted an emergency decree to manage the insurgency in the South in July 2005. Although critics warned of a dangerous exercise of unchecked authority, his rule by emergency decree received support from 72.6 percent of Bangkokians and 86 percent of people in the affected provinces, according to a poll by ABAC (Albritton, 2006: 144–145). The People’s Alliance for Democracy, which was to become a major nationwide anti-Thaksin group, was formed in late 2004 to campaign against the TRT, but it was soon dissolved after the 2005 election (Kitrianglarp and Hewison, 2009: 465, 467).

During this period, no irregular royal interventions took place. It should be noted here that the King did not enthusiastically support Thaksin’s government. During his annual birthday ceremony in December, he sometimes made ironic remarks about the Prime Minister. For example, in 2002, the King compared Thaksin to his pet dog, Thon Dean, stating: ‘the Prime Minister has come to bite…but I’m sure that Thon Dean does not bite’ (Bhumibol, 2002). In the following year, the King described Thaksin as ‘a super prime minister” (Bhumibol, 2003). In 2005, the King said that, ‘If I compliment the Prime Minister, some other people may not compliment me for complimenting the Prime Minister” (Bhumibol, 2005), and implicitly criticised Thaksin as lacking caution by saying that ‘I hardly do wrong because I am careful’ (Bhumibol, 2005). As mentioned earlier, the King could have refused Thaksin’s proposals and even his accession to the prime ministership. Despite the King’s distrust of the incumbent and the availability of constitutional channels, the King followed public opinion between 2001 and 2005, refraining from making direct interventions. In light of the results of the formal model, this reserved attitude can be understood as his response to the public’s support for Thaksin.

The political climate dramatically changed in January 2006, after the revelation of a political scandal that Thaksin was thought to have been involved in. A month after this revelation, the People’s Alliance for Democracy was re-established. The Alliance spearheaded rallies and marches to oppose Thaksin and the TRT, mobilising crowds of more than 100,000 (Kitrianglarp and Hewison, 2009: 467). In response to the rise of anti-government sentiment, Thaksin announced the dissolution of parliament on 24 February 2006. Yet the declaration of a snap election did not calm the protests, and the three major opposition parties boycotted the election. As a result, many districts across the country featured only a single candidate, one from the TRT. When the anti-Thaksin movement reached its peak, on 25 April, the King spoke to the judges of the Supreme Court and Administrative Court:

Should the election be nullified? You have the right to say what is appropriate or not. If it is not appropriate, it is not to say the government is not good. But, as far as I’m concerned, a one[-]party election is not normal. The one candidate situation is undemocratic. (Bhumibol, 2006)

In anticipation of such a situation, the constitution stipulated how to ensure electoral legitimacy for elections with sole candidacy.⁹ The TRT candidates tried to meet the constitutional requirement by holding several rounds of elections. Notwithstanding the TRT’s effort, the King chose to exploit informal channels to break the political deadlock. Shortly after this address, the Constitutional Court nullified the elections. As predicted by Table 1, the King’s address can be understood as the consequence of the lowering public bias in favour of the government (i.e. lowering x_P ). Moreover, this fact complements the mechanism of royal influence that constitutional monarchs attempt to manipulate the public’s ideal point and indirectly to pressure the government to alter the status quo.

Conclusion

While monarchs are significantly disempowered during the process of democratisation, some constitutional monarchs have attempted to enact their political preferences through extra-constitutional channels. This article examines the conditions under which constitutional monarchs intervene in politics, and the compatibility of their interventions with democratic politics. The formal analysis shows that the behaviour of constitutional monarchs is dependent on the public’s preferences, in contrast to the conventional view that royal interventions are violations of their non-interference commitments. Constitutional monarchs rationally intervene in politics if and only if the public is biased more strongly against the incumbent relative to themselves and is expected to be sufficiently persuaded by royal interventions. Otherwise, monarchs are careful to distance themselves from politics. That is, constitutional monarchs can obtain de facto political influence and attempt to be accountable to the populace, though at best informally, by running a risk of being publicly punished for their political activity.

This result implies that monarchical institutions might contribute to ensuring horizontal accountability that could complement vertical accountability between government leaders and the public. While elections are undoubtedly an important mechanism for making governments accountable to the public, they may be insufficient since they occur only periodically (O’Donnell, 1998; Schillemans, 2008). The secure political positions and longer time horizons that constitutional monarchs tend to have (Bjørnskov and Kurrild-Klitgaard, 2014) could allow them to serve as significant checks on elected political leaders, despite appearing to be incompatible with democratic principles. The role for constitutional monarchs suggested here could account for Garmann’s (2018) findings that monarchies exhibit significantly higher institutional quality such as government effectiveness, control of corruption and rule of law.

The model presented here also has important implications for further research. One relates to the choice between monarchies and republics. Although decisions on regime types are seldom seen explicitly today, constitutional monarchies still potentially face the threat of abolition, as exemplified by the 1999 referendum in Australia. By integrating such initiatives to disempower constitutional monarchies in the model, we might find another mechanism to make constitutional monarchs accountable to the populace. Another implication regards unelected political actors. The mechanism whereby constitutional monarchs manipulate public opinion and reconcile political disputes might also be applied to other unelected political actors in alternative forms of government, such as judges, bureaucrats, expert groups and international institutions, though their ability to make their words heard would not easily be comparable. They may cooperate with or sway political leaders for their personal political goals behind ostensible neutrality while considering the possible consequences of their intervention. This article can be a first step towards understanding how political institutions that do not possess electoral legitimacy can interact with those that do possess it.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Dominik Duell, Gina Yanitell Reinhardt, Jonathan Slapin, Masaru Kohno, Shuhei Kurizaki, Kubo Keiichi, Kentaro Hirose, Ryo Nakai and two anonymous reviewers for their excellent feedback.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Kana Inata

Notes

Appendix

Proof of Proposition 1.

Solving backwards gives the subgame perfect equilibrium. When M intervenes, O accepts x ₁ if and only if

and rejects it otherwise. Given this, G offers $x_{1}^{*} = x_{P}^{'} + \frac{c}{q}$ . When M remains silent, O accepts x ₀ if and only if

and rejects it otherwise. Given this, G offers $x_{0}^{*} = x_{P} + \frac{c}{q}$ .

Then M makes a decision. M intervenes if and only if

Now consider the case where $β > x_{P}$ . In this case, Equation 1 is equivalent to

$k > \frac{1}{1 + β}$ can be consistent with the assumption that $k \in (0, 1)$ since $β \in [0, 1]$ by definition. Thus, when $β > x_{P}$ , M intervenes in politics if $k > \frac{1}{1 + β}$ and does not do so otherwise.

Now consider the case where $β \leq x_{P}$ . In this case, Equation 1 is equivalent to

Given that $β \in [0, 1]$ by definition, $\frac{1}{1 - β}$ is always equal to or greater than 1, which contradicts the assumption that $k \in (0, 1)$ . Thus, M never intervenes in politics when $β \leq x_{P} .$

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