New Quadrant article: Republics - The least stable form of Government

It's a bit embarrassing to note that the last post I did was announcing an article in Australia's Quadrant magazine over a year ago.

Unfortunately my wife had a serious injury last year, and many items have consumed by time since, meaning that I have not even had a chance to reply to the many excellent comments I have had during the year.

Can't promise much, but will try to be better.

Meanwhile my latest article, also in Quadrant (March 2018, Volume LXII, Number 3, No 544) is another little discussion about the flaws of Republics as a system of government.

http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/03/republic-least-stable-form-government/

Unfortunately it's behind a paywall, so you have to buy the magazine to get the whole article, but Quadrant is worth the subscription if you like magazines that value freedom of speech and expression. Another of my Quadrant articles was re-printed in Canada's Dorchester Review, which has a similar ethos.

(Amusingly when Quadrant was set up way back in the 1950's - in Australia that is called the Menzies era - it's commitment to freedom of speech and freedom of opinion was considered pretty left wing. Now of course, the same position is regarded by politically correct crowd as being extremely right wing. That is a comment on the way the society has changed, not the magazine...)


The articles main points are:
1. 95% of all 'republics' collapse into dictatorship, repression, or civil war, within about 20 years. Very few make it to 50 years. (France has only just got to 50 years under it's fifth republic - plus 3 monarchies and 2 empires - in the last 2 centuries or so, and Germany effectively has a new constitution dating from re-unification 2 decades ago - after 3 republics and a dictatorship causing two invasions in the last century, and is showing signs of being quite Italian in it's 'success' as a system of government since then...)
2. The wold's 44 Monarchies or Constitutional Monarchies - some of them quite new startups - have about a 17 times greater life expectancy than the world's 140 odd - some very odd - republics and peoples republics and soviet socialist republics etc. (Note that the longest lasting republics are mostly 'Soviet Socialist' style dictatorships, with a few limited exceptions).
3. Republics can last for 50 years or more, but apparently only if they are mono-cultures (like Finland and Botswana) or under constant threat of invasion and destruction (Israel, Germany, Italy and South Korea) to focus the mind.
4. The only 'long term' success anyone can identify (ignoring its foundation as a slavery state, it's failure to give much of it's population a vote until 50 odd years ago, and a minor civil war with 600,000 dead) is the one that 90% of the of the PRO-republicans in places like Australia think has completely unacceptable politics, system, or leaders! (Repeat after me, 'Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump... my evidence for wanting a republican system???')
5. More importantly, just note that 70% of the world's richest and healthiest places to live are Constitutional Monarchies, and 99% of the world's most horrible places to live are Republics. (The one monarchy that - barely - makes it into the bottom 100 being Morocco at about 97 from the bottom... Morocco!)
It was a fun article, and has received a lot of good comments.