https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0831-9484
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ABSTRACT
This article combines the literature on authoritarian regime survival with that on small states to propose a new explanation for the survival and breakdown of authoritarian monarchies. To develop the conjecture that monarchy tends to survive in small countries into a theoretically and empirically sound argument, I follow the process of iterative induction. I first inspect all authoritarian monarchies between 1946 and 2018 and find that countries with monarchic survival have a significantly smaller population size than countries where monarchy broke down. Second, I develop a theoretical explanation for this relation: the feeling of vulnerability, the social proximity, and institutional centralization, which are all typically ascribed to small countries, facilitate the stability of monarchic regimes. I conceptualize this stability with Gerschewski’s model of three pillars of authoritarian stability, co-optation, repression and legitimation; and I argue that smallness enhances each of these three via several channels. Third, to illustrate the plausibility of this explanation I compare two most likely historical cases of monarchies with diverging outcomes: Jordan and Egypt. Fourth, I inspect deviant cases, particularly Bhutan, Maldives and Tonga, to refine and finalize the argument. The main finding is that smallness prevented the violent breakdown of monarchic regimes since 1946.
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this article were presented at the AAME Conference at Royal Holloway London in 2018, the DVPW Comparative Politics Conference Tübingen 2017, and the Hertie School's WIPS seminar and OML colloquium in 2017. I thank all participants as well as Luis Everdy Mejía, Kai Wegrich, and Robin Wilharm for their valuable comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
ORCID
Marlene Jugl http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0831-9484
Notes
1 The article focuses on the effect of size on the stability and survival of authoritarian monarchies but treats their emergence as exogenous.
2 Huntington, Political Order.
3 Frisch, “Why Monarchies Persist.”
4 Gause III, Oil Monarchies.
5 Herb, All in the Family.
6 Schlumberger, “Opening Old Bottles.”
7 Bellin, “The Robustness.”
8 Gandhi and Przeworski, “Authoritarian Institutions and Survival”; Lust-Oskar, Structuring Conflict.
9 Lucas, “Monarchical Authoritarianism,” 112–14.
10 For overviews see Bank, Richter, and Sunik, “Long-Term Monarchical Survival”; Lucas, “Monarchical Authoritarianism.”
11 Lucas, “Monarchical Authoritarianism,” 111.
12 I use the terms “monarchy” and “authoritarian monarchy” interchangeably for regimes in which a person of royal descent takes power or is replaced by rules of hereditary succession and exerts extensive public authority, see Cheibub, Gandhi, and Vreeland, “Democracy and Dictatorship Revisited,” 88; Geddes, Wright, and Frantz, “Autocratic Breakdown,” 318. Democratic countries with a monarch as purely ceremonial head of state are treated, instead, as democracies.
13 The article uses the terms “country size” and “population size” interchangeably, since population is the most widely used indicator of country size. The literature uses different thresholds to define small states, which are all somewhat arbitrary and range from 1 to 10 million, see, for example, Corbett and Veenendaal, Democracy in Small States, 14–15; Streeten, “The Special Problems,” 197. In this article, I do not define a cut-off point for small monarchies before the analysis but rather as one of its results.
14 Gerschewski, “The Three Pillars.”
15 Anckar, “Why Small States”; Hadenius, Democracy and Development, 122–27; Ott, Small Is Democratic.
16 Corbett, Veenendaal, and Ugyel, “Why Monarchy Persists”; Veenendaal, “Monarchy and Democracy.”
17 Gerschewski, “The Three Pillars.”
18 Yom, “From Methodology to Practice,” 626.
19 Cheibub, Gandhi, and Vreeland, “Democracy and Dictatorship Revisited.”
20 With reference to Bjørnskov and Rode, “Regime Types”; Anckar and Fredriksson, “Classifying Political Regimes” and Freedom House. Despite these data sets classifying monarchic regimes is not always straightforward. Some countries have largely democratic institutions, but the monarchic head of state retains substantive powers as in Monaco, Liechtenstein or Morocco (monarchy-democracy hybrid). For the first two I follow Freedom House’s assessment (“free”) and consider them democracies. Morocco, on the other hand, is considered an authoritarian monarchy by Freedom House (“partly free”) and in this article because political rights are significantly constrained in practice.
21 Seminally Dahl and Tufte, Size and Democracy.
22 Seminally Katzenstein, Small States, 24, 35, 80.
23 Campbell and Hall, The Paradox of Vulnerability, 4–5; Gingrich and Hannerz, “Introduction,” 32–33; Salamé, “Small Is Pluralistic”; Streeten, “The Special Problems,” 200.
24 Lowenthal, “Social Features,” 44.
25 Corbett, Veenendaal, and Ugyel, “Why Monarchy Persists,” 690, 692; Khalaf, “An Emirate,” 279; Ott, Small Is Democratic, 188. A striking example is Tonga, where monarchy was introduced primarily as a means to resist external influence (I owe this point to an attentive reviewer).
26 Anckar, “Homogeneity and Smallness”; Corbett and Veenendaal, Democracy in Small States, 9–10; Dahl and Tufte, Size and Democracy, 30–31.
27 Baldacchino, “Islands and Despots,” 112; Corbett, “Everybody Knows Everybody”; Gingrich and Hannerz, “Introduction,” 18–19; Lowenthal, “Social Features,” 30–33.
28 Corbett, Veenendaal, and Ugyel, “Why Monarchy Persists,” 690; Gingrich and Hannerz, “Introduction,” 28; Lowenthal, “Social Features,” 30.
29 Dahl and Tufte, Size and Democracy, 40.
30 Jugl, “Finding the Golden Mean,” 119–21; Katzenstein, Small States, 89.
31 Lowenthal, “Social Features,” 43; Streeten, “The Special Problems,” 197–98.
32 Salamé, “Small Is Pluralistic,” 98.
33 Gerschewski, “The Three Pillars,” 14.
34 Corbett and Veenendaal, Democracy in Small States, 38–39 on monarchies.
35 Gerschewski, “The Three Pillars,” 20.
36 Corbett, Veenendaal, and Ugyel, “Why Monarchy Persists,” 690, 692; Gingrich and Hannerz, “Introduction,” 28; Khalaf, “An Emirate,” 279.
37 Way and Levitsky, “The Dynamics,” 388.
38 Bellin, “The Robustness,” 145.
39 Way and Levitsky, “The Dynamics,” 396.
40 Ibid., 393.
41 Baldacchino, “Islands and Despots,” 112; see also Dahl and Tufte, Size and Democracy, 108.
42 Gerschewski, “The Three Pillars,” 22; Huntington, Political Order, 9.
43 For an overview of the literature on institutionalization, see Wilson and Woldense, “Contested or Established?”
44 Gerschewski, “The Three Pillars,” 22; see also Gandhi and Przeworski, “Authoritarian Institutions and Survival.”
45 Corbett, Veenendaal, and Ugyel, “Why Monarchy Persists,” 695; Khalaf, “An Emirate.”
46 Hudson, Arab Politics, 53.
47 Herb, All in the Family, 250.
48 Gordon, “Myth”; Vatikiotis, The Egyptian Army, 21–43.
49 Abdalla, The Student Movement, 4–7; Gordon, “Myth,” 224–26.
50 Gordon, “Myth,” 226.
51 Vatikiotis, The Egyptian Army, 56 see also 50, 59; Vatikiotis, History of Modern Egypt, 376.
52 Botman, “The Liberal Age,” 307.
53 Nasser, “The Egyptian Revolution,” 210.
54 Abbas and El-Dessouky, The Large Landowning Class, 185–200; Abdalla, The Student Movement, 18–38; Vatikiotis, The Egyptian Army, 21–43.
55 Botman, “The Liberal Age,” 297.
56 Ibid., 289, 297, 308.
57 Gordon, “Myth.”
58 Bellin, “The Robustness,” 145.
59 Ibid., 149; Vatikiotis, The Egyptian Army, 45, 58, 67.
60 Vatikiotis, 60.
61 Herb, All in the Family, 210–11.
62 Vatikiotis, The Egyptian Army, 40; see also Vatikiotis, History of Modern Egypt, 371–72; Abdalla, The Student Movement, 81, 85, 93–98.
63 Gordon, “Myth,” 234–35.
64 Vatikiotis, History of Modern Egypt, 373.
65 Vatikiotis, The Egyptian Army, 61–62.
66 Gordon, “Myth,” 234–35.
67 For an overview see Ashton, King Hussein of Jordan, 13–88; Milton-Edwards and Hinchcliffe, Jordan: A Hashemite Legacy, 26–38.
68 Herb, All in the Family, 226.
69 Vatikiotis, Politics and Military Jordan, 97.
70 Milton-Edwards and Hinchcliffe, Jordan: A Hashemite Legacy, 36.
71 Hudson, Arab Politics, 35.
72 Ryan, “Hashimite Kingdom of Jordan,” 260; Tell, Social and Economic Origins, 119; Vatikiotis, Politics and Military Jordan, 124.
73 Milton-Edwards and Hinchcliffe, Jordan: A Hashemite Legacy, 36.
74 Susser, “The Jordanian Monarchy,” 98.
75 Ibid., 91–92; Tal, “Is Jordan Doomed?,” 51, 54; Tell, Social and Economic Origins, 114.
76 Jordan as a whole deviated from the ideal-typical small state through the Palestinian influx, and the conflictual relation between Jordanians and Palestinians remained a source of instability. The focus here is on the stability and support among the native (East-)Jordanian population.
77 Susser, “The Jordanian Monarchy,” 88.
78 Hudson, Arab Politics, 213; Susser, “The Jordanian Monarchy,” 89; Vatikiotis, Politics and Military Jordan, 97.
79 Hudson, Arab Politics, 216; Milton-Edwards and Hinchcliffe, Jordan: A Hashemite Legacy, 36; see also Tell, Social and Economic Origins, 96, 114.
80 Vatikiotis, Politics and Military Jordan, 111–12, 132, 134.
81 Ibid., 17–27.
82 Ibid., 134 for both citations; see also Susser, “The Jordanian Monarchy,” 93–95.
83 Hudson, Arab Politics, 216–17; Susser, “The Jordanian Monarchy,” 93; Tell, Social and Economic Origins, 110–21.
84 Lust-Oskar, Structuring Conflict, 51; Milton-Edwards and Hinchcliffe, Jordan: A Hashemite Legacy, 32–37; Tell, Social and Economic Origins, 112, 120–21; Vatikiotis, Politics and Military Jordan, 98, 124.
85 Ryan, “Hashimite Kingdom of Jordan,” 263.
86 Lust-Oskar, Structuring Conflict, 50–51.
87 Susser, “The Jordanian Monarchy,” 97.
88 The following account is based on Ashton, King Hussein of Jordan, 63–64; Hussein King of Jordan, Uneasy Lies the Head, chapter 11; Vatikiotis, Politics and Military Jordan, 92, 128–34. An alternative account asserts that it was a staged counter-coup by Hussein against the pan-Arabist movement in Jordan, potentially supported by the CIA, see Ashton, King Hussein of Jordan, 63.
89 Ashton, King Hussein of Jordan, 79; Hudson, Arab Politics, 218–19.
90 The President’s Office, Maldives, “President Mohamed Amin.”
91 Ibid.; Robinson, The Cambridge Encyclopedia, 228.
92 Robinson, 228.
93 Turner, Chuki, and Tshering, “Democratization by Decree,” 189, see also 196.
94 Ibid., 193, 199–201; Corbett, Veenendaal, and Ugyel, “Why Monarchy Persists,” 696–98.
95 Corbett, Veenendaal, and Ugyel, “Why Monarchy Persists,” 694.
96 Ibid., 695.
97 Campbell, “Across the Threshold,” 107.
98 Ibid., 97–98.
99 McMahon, “Tongan King.”
100 This applies to 8 out of the 12 large monarchies in the upper part of , based on Bjørnskov and Rode, “Regime Types”.
101 Lucas, “Monarchical Authoritarianism,” 111.
102 Bank, Richter, and Sunik, “Long-Term Monarchical Survival,” 180.
103 Ibid., 190–191.
104 For many: Anckar, “Why Small States,” 377; Corbett, Veenendaal, and Ugyel, “Why Monarchy Persists,” 690.
105 See Geddes, Wright, and Frantz, “Autocratic Breakdown,” 319.
106 Many studies arbitrarily exclude small states, e.g. Geddes, Wright, and Frantz, “Autocratic Breakdown,” 317.
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Marlene Jugl
Marlene Jugl is Assistant Professor of Public Administration at Bocconi University. She conducted her doctoral research at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. Her research interests include the effects of country size, the role and interaction of political and administrative executives in different political systems, and comparative public administration. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory.