Elective monarchy

[citation needed] The kings of Macedon[2] and of Epirus were elected by the army, which was similar in composition to the Ecclesia of the Demos, the assembly of all free Athenian citizens.

[6] In 14th, 15th, late 17th and early 18th century England, the evolving relations between the Crown and Parliament resulted in a monarchy with both hereditary and quasi-elective elements[7] – at least as between various contenders with some dynastic claim for the throne.

Following the Glorious Revolution, Parliament enacted the Act of Succession, whose effect was to disinherit the Stuarts and replace them by the Hanoverians, whose dynastic claim was far more remote.

Parliament passed laws in the late 17th and early 18th centuries which explicitly excluded Catholics (and thus the male descendants of James II) from the order of succession.

In Scotland, the Declaration of Arbroath of 1320 asserted the rights of the nobles to choose a king if required, which implied elective monarchy.

[9] In Ireland, from the beginning of recorded history[10] until the mid-16th/early 17th century,[11] succession was determined by an elective system based on patrilineal relationship known as tanistry.

Conversely, the House of Orange and its adherents tried to increase the powers of the Stadtholder to approximate those of a monarch, to make it officially hereditary (which it became in the later part of the 18th century) and finally to transform it into a full-fledged monarchy – as it was in 1815.

The same holds true for prince-abbacies, whose princess-abbesses or prince-abbots were elected by a college of clerics and imperially appointed as princely rulers in a pertaining territory.

Since 1526, when Ferdinand I assumed the Bohemian Crown, it was always held by the Habsburg branch who later became Holy Roman Emperor and who expected this situation to go on indefinitely.

This elective right carried on for another two more decades in the Principality of Transylvania which de jure continued to belong to the Lands of the Hungarian Crown but had split from Hungary when the childless King Louis II died after the Battle of Mohács.

[citation needed] Portugal's monarchy contained the remnants of the elective principle in requiring reciprocal oaths, the assent of the Cortes and acclamation before acceding to the throne.

His half-brother Ferdinand I had died without a male heir in October 1383, and different factions made strenuous efforts to secure the throne for Princess Beatrice, Ferdinand's only daughter and Queen consort of Castile and León, or for either of her uncles Infante John, Duke of Valencia de Campos and Infante Denis, Lord of Cifuentes.

[citation needed] The tradition of electing the country's ruler, which occurred when there was no clear heir to the throne, dates to the very beginning of Polish statehood.

The election privilege, exercised during the gatherings known as wiec, was usually limited to the most powerful nobles (magnates) or officials, and was heavily influenced by local traditions and strength of the ruler.

Kings of Poland and Grand Dukes of Lithuania during the times of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1795) were elected by gatherings of crowds of nobles at a field in Wola, today a district in Warsaw.

First, 'the citizens of the commonwealth were forced to de facto depose their first elected king – thus applying the right of disobedience they had inscribed in their public records only two years before.'

Second, it resulted in two candidates being proclaimed the winner, and in subsequent events the nobility was able to confirm their majority choice for Stephen Báthory and have it recognised, while avoiding war with Maximilian II of Habsburg.

In this case the elective aspect in the choice of Monarch was especially prominent, since Bernadotte had been a French commoner with no previous connection to Sweden and not the most remote of dynastic claims to the Swedish throne – his being chosen derived solely from urgent political and military considerations of the crisis time of the Napoleonic Wars.

[citation needed] In Afghanistan, loya jirgas have been reportedly organized since at least the early 18th century when the Hotaki and Durrani dynasties rose to power.

[36] The ancient Aryan tribes, who are hypothesized to have spoken Proto-Indo-Iranian, came down in intermittent waves from Central Asia and Afghanistan which is a common myth.

[citation needed] Other monarchs, such as the former Shahs of Iran, have been required to undergo a parliamentary vote of approval before being allowed to ascend to the throne.

[41] There were several occasions that the Kingdom of Siam and Thailand turned to a semi-elective monarchy system to settle the succession of the crown among disputed heirs: Several Māori tribes of the central North Island of New Zealand elected Pōtatau Te Wherowhero as their monarch in 1858.

In practice, however, during the entire time from 1864 until the abolition of the monarchy, the throne was never passed from parent to child, as every Hawaiian monarch who reigned during that period died without leaving issue.

Alexander Hamilton argued in a long speech before the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that the President of the United States should be an elective monarch, ruling for "good behavior" (i.e., for life, unless impeached) and with extensive powers.

While sometimes a monarch may be forced to abdicate in favour of his or her heir, on other occasions the royal family as a whole has been rejected, the throne going to an elected candidate.

By selecting a foreign prince or aristocrat, nations could expect to gain diplomatic links and a figurehead accustomed to the trappings of courts and ceremonial duties.

[citation needed] At the start of the 20th century, the first monarchs of several newly independent nations were elected by parliaments: Norway is the prime example.

Previously, following precedent set in newly independent Greece, new nations without a well-established hereditary royal family often chose their own monarchs from among the established royal families of Europe, rather than elevate a member of the local power establishment, in the hope that a stable hereditary monarchy would eventually emerge from the process.

The first king of Belgium, as well as the now-deposed royal families of Greece, Bulgaria, Albania (unsuccessfully) and Romania, were originally appointed in this manner.

[citation needed] Examples include: Currently, the world's only true elective monarchies are: Article 13 of the Cambodian Constitution stipulates that the monarch is chosen for a life term by the 9-member Royal Council of the Throne, the composition of which includes the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the National Assembly, the Prime Minister, the two Patriarchs of the country’s two main Buddhist Sangha Nikayas, the 1st and 2nd Deputy Presidents of the Senate and the 1st and 2nd Deputy Speakers of the National Assembly.