Bhutan, after prioritizing happiness, now faces an existential crisis

This article is an interesting case study in the difference between "monarchy" and "dictatorship". The way I think about it, the differences are as follows:

* Under monarchy, one person is chosen to rule "at random". Under dictatorship, there is a competition where the most ruthless person gets to rule.

* Under monarchy, the people believe the monarch rules by divine right. Under dictatorship, the dictator rules by fear.

* Monarchies are more stable, meaning the ruler can plan with a long time horizon. Dictators are more likely to siphon resources while the siphoning is good, since they fear a coup.

* Lacking popular legitimacy, a dictator is forced to consider the self-interest and loyalty of their underlings. This leads to extractive and regressive policy. See this excellent video explaining the game theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

* Under monarchy, criticism is kept in check while maintaining rule of law, via lèse-majesté laws which make it illegal to criticize the monarch. Under dictatorship, criticism is kept in check via repression. That same repression makes the dictator less popular, which triggers more criticism, and thus more repression, in a doom loop.

Monarchy is an imperfect system. A lot comes down to the person who is "randomly" chosen to rule. But I do wonder if monarchy should be considered an option in countries where democracy has been consistently dysfunctional and the population is poorly educated -- Haiti perhaps?

Most successful democracies were monarchies at some point in the past. Maybe it's just a phase of development a country needs to go through -- in order to achieve mass literacy and civics education, if nothing else.

There is usually nepotism in monarchy though, right?

What about enforcing the "at random" part by implementing monarchy as sortition with one person?

To me, the most notable difference is "confidence" in what happens when leadership change. The next in line is already decided in a monarchy, often already well-known by the time of the official handover.

Dictatorships tend to fall into chaos when leadership changes, and the current leader tends to remove any potential leader replacements to remove threats to their authority.

Which one is NK? It's hereditary rule on the third generation, and as such I guess it fits what you mean by "ruler chosen at random".

A Monarch is a dictator who managed to stay in power long enough to pass the position on to more generations. This comes with culture changes such that they can act like a monarch instead of a dictator.

Based on my reading about history, I sketch the situation as follows:

In pre-industrial societies, having a king was considered the mark of a developed state. The king was seen as a divine or semi-divine figure. Democracy popped up every so often, but it had a tendency to end in chaos, enhancing the legitimacy of the nobility.

It's only in the past few hundred years that we've seen a reversal, where democracy is now considered the legitimate form of government. The lack of legitimacy is a big problem for dictatorships, and creates the need for repression.

There's also an adverse selection problem in modern times -- since 'everyone knows' that democracy is the more ethical form of government, those who volunteer to be dictator tend to be unethical.

Great question. Maybe it's sort of an in-between case. They seem pretty deep down the repression doom loop at this point. It's too bad we don't have a stronger tradition of amnesty for repressive rulers -- offering them a cushy requirement in order to let someone else take the helm.

Or some sort of trial-by-ordeal, where winning the tournament is supposed to correlate with the characteristics that would make for a good monarch.

>The next in line is already decided in a monarchy

I'm not so sure about that... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_of_succession

Reading between the lines though, I suspect that isn't quite correct even though a simple reading of history says that. Remember the victors write history. The great dictator tends to be good at war, and so they write history. Democracy doesn't select the great war leaders and so they lose to the better generals, who in turn become kings and then write how bad other forms are to secure their legitimacy.

This book did a lot to inform my sketch: https://www.amazon.com/Pre-Industrial-Societies-Anatomy-Pre-...

I don't think she says anything about democracy at all. It doesn't seem to have been common in pre-industrial times.

Representative democracy as we think of democracy - didn't exist much from what I can tell (I'm not an expert in history though). However small villages tended to have the "elders" gather to deal with government matters which looks a lot like direct democracy (and has significant problems - "busy bodies" are more likely to attend and make decisions for the average person who is trying to do something else with their limited time).

Divine right is not a requirement for monarchy, and many historical monarchies took a very long time to develop something like that.

The distinction between lese-majeste and vaguely defined dictatorial "repression" is also unclear. You seem to imply that the latter is generally outside of the rule of law, but this isn't necessarily true - dictatorships absolutely can and do have actual laws similar to lese-majeste etc on the books, and in a stable and long-running dictatorship, consistent application of such laws is how most repression is implemented. Conversely, monarchies don't always have rule of law, either - indeed, autocratic monarchies are defined by the notion that monarch is above the law and can disregard it with impunity, including to punish subjects for things that aren't technically illegal.

NK is a theocratic monarchy with a God-Emperor cult.

*retirement, not requirement