Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents the main features of democratic monarchy and attempts to defeat various opposing republican arguments. It explores the extent to which democratic monarchy is compatible with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel philosophy and political theory. In Hegel’s case especially, different commentators have frequently given baldly contradictory yet equally plausible interpretations. Hegel’s own political philosophy goes along way toward synthesising the two but the conceptual completion of this task is attempted. Hegel’s constitutional monarchy is not perfect, but arguably it does offer the closest available approximation to the best framework for modern political life. Hegel’s “hereditary monarch is the necessary apex of the rational political order”, an “interdependent unity”. “Since requires a tradition of accepting a royal family, as well as the historical experience and political conditions of post-Napoleonic Europe, Hegel’s rational constitution is not a universally applicable blueprint for the best regime.