Republican Bias: Has Political Modernity Turned a Blind Eye to the Data?

In the modern era, republicanism has come to be regarded as a symbol of political modernity, liberty, and popular sovereignty. This view, rooted in major revolutions such as the French and American Revolutions, tends to regard the republic as inherently superior to monarchy. But do global data support this judgment? Is republicanism an empirically successful form of government, or merely an attractive political ideal? This chapter examines whether this prevailing perception is consistent with empirical evidence on government performance.

The Dominant Republican Discourse

In much of contemporary political discourse, republics are commonly associated with concepts such as democracy, liberty, equality, and political participation, while monarchy is often associated with traditional or authoritarian systems. This perception has meant that the success of contemporary monarchies—particularly constitutional monarchies—has received less attention or has been treated as an exception to a general rule.

What Do the Data Say?

In this study, the performance of contemporary monarchies and republics was compared using fourteen internationally recognized indicators, covering the five principal goals of government identified in this book: welfare, security, order, justice, and liberty.

The results showed that monarchies had higher mean scores than republics across all fourteen indicators. In twelve indicators, this advantage was also statistically significant. In the two remaining indicators—the Gini coefficient and Voice and Accountability—the main tests did not reach statistical significance, but neither produced statistically significant evidence contrary to the hypothesis.

This pattern was not confined to the global comparison. Similar results were observed in many regional analyses, including those for Europe and Asia. At the same time, some supplementary analyses—such as excluding European republics with a history of communist rule—showed that part of the observed differences may also be associated with historical factors.

Some Hypotheses About the Origins of This Bias

If the empirical findings reveal such a pattern, the question arises as to why republicanism continues to occupy a privileged position in contemporary political discourse. Providing a definitive answer to this question lies beyond the scope of this study, but several possible hypotheses can at least be considered:

• The mental association of republicanism with concepts such as liberty, democracy, and opposition to hereditary rule.
• The legacy of republican revolutions, which have acquired a special place in the historical memory of many societies.
• The tendency to equate being a “republic” with being “democratic,” even though many contemporary republics are, in practice, authoritarian or one-party states.
• The greater emphasis placed by contemporary political literature on the experience of republics, with comparatively less attention given to the performance of constitutional monarchies.

These hypotheses require independent investigation and are presented here only as possible explanations for the observed pattern.

Republicanism: Judged by Its Ideals or by Its Performance?

Republicanism is commonly presented in terms of ideals such as liberty, equality, and popular sovereignty. But if the purpose is to compare systems of government, the central question is not what ideals each system proclaims, but how successfully it achieves in practice the goals expected of government.

The data examined in this study show that many contemporary monarchies—particularly constitutional monarchies—have performed very well on indicators related to welfare, security, order, justice, and liberty. Being a republic or a monarchy, therefore, cannot by itself serve as an adequate criterion for judging the quality of governance.

Conclusion

The findings of this study show that, overall, contemporary monarchies have performed significantly better than republics on most of the indicators examined. This finding does not, by itself, establish the inherent superiority of either form of government. It does, however, suggest that the widespread assumption that republics are self-evidently superior to monarchies requires reconsideration, at least in light of the empirical evidence examined in this study.

If we are to judge between two forms of government, that judgment should be based less on historical assumptions or the appeal of political ideals and more on empirical evidence and their actual performance.