How important is the British monarchy? Is it the pillar that sustains British political stability? A symbolic totem that ensures the unity of the population? A cultural marketing tool? The last remnant of an imperial past? Does it still make sense today?
Yes, it makes sense, but less and less, judging by recent research. In the average adult population, 61% of Britons told YouGov in April 2021 that they preferred to keep a monarch as head of state, compared with 24% of those who would like to elect their institutional representative.
Pro-monarchy had declined slightly from the 65% who gave a similar response in 2019, but it was still twice as many as Republicans. It is not simple, however, to determine the share of these responses influenced by the popularity of Queen Elizabeth II, who completes 70 years in office this Sunday (6). As of November 2021, she had a much higher approval rating than her successors.
Those who said they had a positive opinion of the Queen were 83%, while 60% said the same of her immediate successor, Prince Charles. And although the queen was 95 at the time of the poll, nearly two-thirds (64%) wanted her to stay in office for life — one-fifth (19%) would prefer she resign.
Even with all the support for Elizabeth II, the YouGov survey detected an unprecedented turn in the opinion of young people. Among Britons aged 18 to 24, those who favor an elected head of state (41%) outnumbered those who support a monarch (31%). When the same question was asked in 2019, pro-monarchy young people were 46%, and those who preferred the electoral route, only 26%.
If cost-effectiveness is also behind the choice of political regime, the trend towards progressive disdain for the monarchy may indicate that the perceived gains do not seem to outweigh the expenditures, even though they have already been cut back in 2010.
Every year, each British taxpayer pays 58 cents (R$ 3.09) to support the royal family, a funding questioned by the population. Most agree to pay the expenses of the Queen, Prince Charles and Prince William’s family, but are against the allowance given to other relatives.
On the other hand, the gains side is more difficult to measure, and the debate involves historians, social scientists and even psychoanalysts, but there is a lack of empirical studies that test hypotheses and support conclusions, say Richard Rose and Dennis Kavanagh, authors of “Monarchy in Contemporary Political Culture”. “.
In the 1970s work, they use quantitative research and historical analysis to explore some of the most common hypotheses. According to social scientists, the monarchy has lost institutional importance in Western nations, where the head of government no longer needs to be commissioned by a sovereign.
Opinion polls that show high approval for a king or queen are also not the best way to understand the importance people place on the monarchy, argue Rose and Kavanagh. The best, in these cases, is to compare the relevance attributed to different positions.
In the survey presented by them, the post of prime minister is cited as very important by 59% of Britons, while only 22% say the same about the post of monarch. Adding the percentages of very important and important, the prime minister appears with 91%, and the queen, with 54%, behind parliamentarians (90%) and senior civil servants (80%).
In a ranking of 12 institutions with influence on the opinion of citizens, the royal family appeared in tenth, behind unions, churches, politicians and the press, among others.
On the other hand, the British gave the queen the best assessment of the performance of her duties. There were 88% of those who considered that she carried out her tasks well, against 61% of those who had the same opinion as the prime minister. “In other words, the queen is a good actor in a less important role in the play. This is better than acting poorly in a leading role,” say the authors.
They also argue that changes in society have altered the political weight of the monarchy. “The disappearance of a servile class happened at the same time that education became universal by the mass and demands for representative government grew in the western world.”
While the population emancipated itself, the kings that remained gave up power and moved away from 19th century figures, to whom absolute obedience was owed. In Europe, since 1850, only seven monarchies have survived continuously: Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, Holland, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Thirteen disappeared to make way for republics —Albania, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany, France, Greece, Iceland, Portugal, Italy, Romania, Turkey and Yugoslavia — and eight countries were created under the republican system: the former Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Ireland, Poland and Switzerland.
The Spanish monarchy was the only one to regain its role at the head of the state during the 20th century.
This shows, according to Rose and Kavanagh, that the monarchy does not guarantee more political stability to a country, nor is it a more lasting system. They also contest the hypothesis that the king is a totem that allows the population to reaffirm its identity: “Nationalism is a stronger bond than monarchy; that is why multinational monarchies imploded”.
According to the authors, the states in which the monarchy survived were those in which sovereigns relinquished executive power, something that follows the history of the United Kingdom since the establishment of the constitutional monarchy in the 17th century.
By taking this step back and abstaining from crises, British monarchs were protected from the consequences of their outcomes, for better or for worse. “In World War II, for example, when the English Channel alone prevented Hitler from conquering, the figure who filled the institutional void and symbolized national unity was not real, but [o primeiro-ministro] Winston Churchill.”
In this new contemporary role, the importance of the monarchy has shifted to ceremonial performance, philanthropy and the representation of a role model, an unattainable, fairytale-like family, wrote historian Andrzej Olechnowicz of the University of Durham in England.
For that, she fundamentally depends on how these facets reverberate in the media, something that Elizabeth II realized early on and knew how to take advantage of since her coronation in 1953. The monarch decided that she would be televised, leading thousands of families to buy her first device, he wrote. Victoria Larchenko in a chapter on the British royal family on social media, in the book “Pop Culture in Europe”.
Real antennas haven’t lost their tune over the decades. The British monarchy’s official website was launched in 1997 with a speech by the Queen at London’s Kingsbury High School, and in October 2014 she posted her first tweet in front of 600 visitors at the opening of the exhibition “The Information Age”.
Under the hashtag #TheQueenTweets, the message in English was 135 characters long: “It’s a pleasure to open ‘The Information Age’ show today at the Science Museum and I hope people enjoy visiting. Elizabeth R.” In addition to Twitter, the royal family has one or more accounts on Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, YouTube, Google Plus and Linkedin, adding up to millions of followers.
If the monarchy’s survival is somehow linked to popularity on social media, the heirs may be on the right track. The accounts of Kensington Palace, where the second in line to the succession, Prince William, and his wife, Kate, live, are now among the most popular of the royals.
Source: Folha
