A strange aspect of the New Zealand head of state debate is the oft-repeated claim that monarchies are always better. It seems defenders of the status quo feel they must prove that monarchy is the best for every country, everywhere. We’re fortunate on our side that we don’t have any such argument to make. Whatever a country does with its own constitutional arrangements is their business. While we work together with fellow organisations in the UK, Australia and Canada, the decision with regards to the British monarchy in each of those countries is still up to them.
Proponents of the claim that monarchies are doing better will often cite studies, rankings and statistics to try and prove this point, ignoring republics that are performing well and the actual basis for the studies in the first place. For example, can anyone claim with a straight face that monarchies increase literacy?
Even on this basis, the case that monarchies are doing better is shaky. More often than not, there is a cluster of well-performing countries (the northern European states) that dominate the rankings. Take the Legatum Prosperity Index for example - of the top 30 “most prosperous” countries, all of the northern European states are included, four in the top 10. The interesting thing about this is that among them, Norway, Sweden and Denmark are monarchies while Iceland and Finland are republics. The same for The Economist magazine’s Democracy Index: the majority of full democracies are republics, with Norway then Iceland (a monarchy and republic) respectively leading the pack.
All of this points to the fact that the numbers don’t show what the proponents of monarchy say they do. The fact is there are plenty of other factors that determine the success or failure of a country outside of whether that country is a monarchy or republic. When it comes to political stability, it’s more to do with political culture than anything else. Does an absentee monarch have anything to do with that culture? It would appear not - otherwise, we would rank right alongside the United Kingdom in indexes such as the Democracy Index. In actual fact, we outrank the United Kingdom. Clearly being far away from the monarch and not having their involvement must help!