Constitutional and Absolute Monarchies

Historically, many societies were governed by monarchies, in which kings and queens ruled. (Some societies referred to monarchs by other names, such as czars, emperors, sultans.) Monarchies are hereditary governments, in which power and status are passed from one generation to the next. So, monarchs are not accountable to the will of the people. Most monarchies also included an aristocracy or nobility, a class of hereditary local elites.

Monarchs who governed with no limit to their powers are known as absolute monarchs. The French monarchy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is often cited as an absolute monarchy, in which the French monarch claimed to rule by the "divine right of kings," in which the king's power and legitimacy were ordained by God. (In France, unlike Britain, queens were not allowed to rule the nation.) The French monarchy was toppled during the French Revolution, which began in 1789 and continued throughout the 1790s.

Other monarchs' powers are limited. Such a form of government is known as a constitutional monarchy or limited monarchy. Great Britain is the most obvious example of this form of government. Beginning with the Magna Carta (1215), British nobles began to limit the powers of the British monarch. During the early eighteenth century (after the Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689), the British Parliament (legislature) increasingly gained the authority to govern the nation. Still, the sovereignty, power, and legitimacy of the British government theoretically flows from the monarch downward through Parliament to the British subjects. This is why the British Prime Minister is said to lead "Her Majesty's government."