From: cctimar@athena.cas.vanderbilt.edu (Cary Timar)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.canada,soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Queen of Canada
Date: 13 Apr 92 16:21:51 GMT
Organization: Vanderbilt U. Math Grad Student

For onece, I actually agree with Brad's posting :-)

In article <1992Apr13.101912.13188@clarinet.com> brad@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton) writes:
> I think the monarchy fills a very interesting role.
> 
> Consider that in any working democracy, there are appointed officials of
> tremendous power.  Examples include supreme court justices almost
> everywhere, Senators in Canada, Governors-general, U.S. Cabinet members,
> etc.

A democracy is a system where everybody makes the decisions.  This
requires every decision to be made by referendum.  In Western countries,
we delegate this responsibility to a small group of representatives.
The system is supposed to ensure that these representatives are the best
people, so the system is really an elected aristocracy.

Since oligarchies - systems in which the governing is done by a small
group of people - seem to be the only practical form of government in the
modern world, the only question is how these people are selected.  I can
think of five main mechanisms: elected by some body of people, appointed
by some individual, by advancement through a profession, by birth, and by
eliminating any opponents.  The first three are all widely used in all
Western governments.  The fifth is something we wish to avoid.

The Queen is, in fact, not just born to her position, she is trained in
it.  She is a professional head of state.  This has some advantages, and
some disadvantages, when compared to a system where the head of state is
a lawyer or actor by profession.

The major disadvantage is that a system with a professional head of state
must begin training these people quite early, and that they end up being
chosen rather arbitrarily.  Moreover, when you begin training a head of
state, it is impossible to predict when the current one will need
replacement, so you typically end up with trained, but more or less
unemployed, heads of state waiting for their turns.

On the other hand, positions that are elected seem to be more prone to
stupid politics.  It appears, based on the track record, unreasonable to
assume that the majority will, in fact, vote for the best qualified,
most competent candidate - they seem more inclined to vote for the one
who promises them the most.

(If the extra expense of supporting a small number of surplus heads of
state is not a problem, maybe we should have training programmes for
prospective heads of state, with stringent but more equitable entrance
criteria, and add each graduate of the programme to the list of available
successors from which new heads of state will be chosen.  This vaguely
resembles the Cardinals in the Roman Catholic Church.  You would want some
way to make terms of 10-20 years likely.

Alternatively, there's the Tibetan method - choose the new monarch from
among all children born on a certain day.)

> And I'm hardly suggesting a totally hereditary system of the sort that
> would enthrone mad Kings in days gone by.   Simply the concept of a
> person trained to a job very early.  One might have several people so
> trained, and pick the best through an objective test.   There are many
> possible variants of this concept, some or none of which might have value.

I feel that the UK monarchy is fine, but there is a slight flaw in the
Canadian one.  The UK has a tradition of replacing monarchs they don't
like (eg. Edward VIII).  There is a sort-of mechanism for doing this.

Canada has, at least traditionally, been stuck with the problem of taking
the British monarch, or having none.  We can't really afford the expense
of having one of our own, but as long as the Brits are willing to pay for
one, we're happy to use that one at minimal cost to ourselves.
-- 
	-- Cary Timar, Mathematics Department, Vanderbilt University
Newsgroups: soc.culture.canada,soc.culture.british