Did anyone else notice the quote in that article from a member of the Bagration family who happened to also be the senior member of the Romanov family? That could create some interesting complications in Russian politics if the Bagrations did come to power . . .

‘After a while, the old man confided that he wasnâ��t really called Henry Stevens, that was merely the name painted on the side of a van heâ��d bought years before. His actual name was Constantine Imeretinski and he was a prince of the royal family of Georgia, a family that can trace its roots back to Alexander the Great. He had been born in the 400-room palace of Vichnevetz on his familyâ��s estate in Poland (he showed Graeme a photograph), been educated in England and was a veteran of the Royal Flying Corps in the Great War. â��He said, â��Mister, weâ��d have to heave the bombs, 25lb bombs, out of the cockpit on to the German linesâ��,â�� Graeme recalls.’

all apologies. Subjective & poor logic on my part. But as JJ has suggested above, monarchs these days are mostly ornaments in a state, lacking real influence except perhaps during a event like foreign invasion.

If only the monarch in my country has the same influence as the one in Siam…

And how about the many great and prosperous societies organized around effective republican governments? Not just the United States. How about France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Israel and Ireland?

Every country needs national symbols, but there are many ways to skin that cat. I reckon a monarchy with some shred of historical legitimacy is probably good for a country lacking other powerful symbols of its own, but that’s about the extent of its utility. In a well-developed nation-state with a strong culture, monarchy is likely to have little practical effect.

I certainly think it has little to no practical effect in today’s Japan, other than maintaining a lovely green space in the middle of Tokyo: Japan’s language and its myriad of traditions would guarantee its coherence as a nation anyway. The UK, on the other hand, has seen its culture lost to diffusion over the years, and the omnipresent monarchy is about the best thing it has left.

That’s also poor logic. The question is, would things be better if there was not a monarch, and if so, how?

How does your countries situation compare to that of Georgia? I suspect your comment is entirely subjective within the context of an already stable (if flawed, as you suggest) national existence. I could be wrong.

Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia Ilia II highlighted the issue in an October sermon, commenting that it was �the dream of the Georgian people to have this [Bagrationi] dynasty restored.�

Meanwhile, the opposition New Rights party, which stood aside from the anti-government demonstrations staged by a coalition of ten opposition parties in October and November 2007, became the major political group to add a more nuanced view on the establishment of a constitutional monarchy to their agenda. They issued a special declaration supporting the idea and proposing to hold a referendum on the issue, a suggestion which was also included in the pre-election campaign of David Gamkrelidze, a candidate from the New Rights/Industrialis ts bloc for the early presidential elections scheduled on January 5, 2008.

Maybe an enlightened despot isn’t really such a bad idea. On the other hand, I presently live in one of the kingdoms listed by LG. & it doesn’t seem that things are gettin’ any better here despite having a monarch.

These are the major ones:

Asia: Japan, Thailand, Malaysia

Middle East: Oman, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Dubai, Kuwait, Qatar, Morocco

Europe: Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden

Anglosphere: UK, Australia, Canada, NZ, various islands

Monarchy takes the symbolic and identity element out of democratic politics and lodges it somewhere off to the side. A monarch is a source of stability in a a crisis. There are lots of reasons to want to have a reasonably well-behaved monarch with strictly limtited powers on hand.