CZAS PRZECZYTANIA TEKSTU: 7 minut(y) / READING TIME: 7 minutes
In the latest instalment of my Monarchical Review, I would like to draw readers’ attention to four texts published in 2025–2026.
Victoria Melkisedeck Lihiru’s article “The absurdity of constitutional safeguards for women’s representation in Eswatini’s House of Assembly”, published in the “INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW” (Vol. 23, Issue 2, 2025), concerns the interesting issue of gender parity in the parliament existing in the absolute monarchy that is Eswatini (formerly Swaziland). It is worth noting the presence of a monarchical topic in one of the most important periodicals devoted to constitutional law in the world.
The Parliament of the Kingdom of Eswatini has a bicameral structure. The article under discussion focuses mainly on the House of Assembly, that is, the lower chamber. Its composition is not the result of one simple electoral mechanism. On the contrary – we are dealing here with a multi-layered structure. The core of the chamber consists of members elected in single-member constituencies whose boundaries correspond to units of the tinkhundla system. This is a distinctive electoral model characteristic of Eswatini, based on local communities and constituencies rather than on competition between political parties. Candidates are first selected at the local level and are then elected to the House as representatives of particular constituencies. To this group of elected members are then added members appointed by the King. The Constitution further provides that at least half of those appointed members are to be women. In addition, there is a third mechanism: if, after the elections and appointments have been completed, women still occupy less than 30% of the seats in the House, an additional compensatory procedure is activated, consisting in the selection of four more women – one from each region of the country – through a special indirect procedure. The Constitution therefore seeks to increase the presence of women in the lower chamber by means of three separate instruments: first, by allowing them to compete for seats in the ordinary constituencies; second, by obliging the King to take women into account when appointing part of the members of the chamber; third, by activating additional compensatory seats when women’s representation proves too low. Such a structure follows from the 2005 Constitution of Eswatini and from later implementing measures regulating the manner in which seats are filled, including “women’s” seats.
The author of the article examines a system which, formally, appears to have been consciously designed as a corrective system. The constitutional legislator did not confine itself here to declarations of equality, but created detailed instruments intended to bring the composition of the House closer to the minimum threshold ensuring 30% female representation. And yet – and this is the principal point of the article – these mechanisms failed in practice. As follows from the data concerning the 2023 elections, women held only 21.6% of the seats in the House of Assembly, whereas in the Senate their share reached 46%. This means that even after the safeguards provided for by the Constitution had been activated, the intended threshold was not achieved. V. M. Lihiru proposes an appropriate amendment to Article 95(1)(a) of the Constitution in order to create a more effective mechanism, one which would lead not to the symbolic, but to the actual realization of the principle of equal representation of women and men.
From the perspective of research on monarchy, the article is particularly interesting because it does not concern a so-called constitutional monarchy, but an absolute monarchy, in which the monarch has not been reduced to a purely representative figure. On the contrary, in Eswatini the King possesses real power. By virtue of the Constitution, he has been incorporated into the constitutional mechanism intended to correct inequalities of representation. The object of the author’s criticism is the situation in which, even with royal appointments and special compensatory seats in existence, it has not been possible to achieve the minimum level of female representation. The problem must therefore lie deeper. The article may be read as a critique of the concept of “seasoning” the system of representation with additional corrective mechanisms instead of changing the logic of the system itself. The problem may also be viewed from another angle – the realization of gender equality in Eswatini’s constitutional order depends to a significant extent on the intervention of the monarch, who thereby becomes a peculiar guarantor of the constitutional status and political rights of women.
The second of the texts under discussion – “The role of traditional authorities in conflict resolution: A case study of chieftaincy disputes in Northern Ghana” – was prepared by three authors, Mohammed Hamza, Ilyasu Hidaayatul-laahi, and Rashid Yakubu, and appeared in the “AFRICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS” (VOL. 20(1), JANUARY 2026). This article does not concern monarchy sensu stricto, but the institution of chieftaincy, that is, a traditional, hereditary, and hierarchical structure of leadership which constitutes an interesting manifestation of the monarchical principle functioning within a republic.
This is what makes the case of Ghana so interesting. Ghana is a republican state, but at the same time it retains in its public life the enduring presence of traditional leaders – chiefs, elders, and heads of lineages. Their position does not derive from election, but is based on custom, genealogy, heredity, historical priority, and communal recognition. We are therefore dealing here with a situation in which monarchical elements do not appear as a form of state, but as a lasting pattern of the legitimation of power operating within a republic. And it is precisely in this sense that the text under discussion should be regarded as important for monarchical constitutional law: it shows that the monarchical principle may endure even outside a formal monarchy.
The authors focus on Northern Ghana, where traditional leaders still play a significant role in resolving disputes over succession, land ownership, jurisdiction, and communal leadership. The main thesis of the article is clear: traditional authorities remain, for many communities, more accessible, better rooted culturally, and often more effective than formal state institutions (this applies, for example, to courts), above all because their actions aim at reconciliation, the renewal of relationships, and the restoration of communal order, rather than merely the repressive settlement of disputes. Community gatherings, libation rituals, oaths, and the authority of elders are significant not only in procedural terms, but also in symbolic, moral, and spiritual terms.
The authors do not idealize the institution of chieftaincy. On the one hand, they present it as a source of local legitimacy and as a structure of authority deeply rooted in the history of the community. On the other hand, they clearly point to the weaknesses of this model: the political instrumentalization of chieftaincy disputes, the inconsistency of customary norms, tensions resulting from legal pluralism, and the systemic exclusion of women and youth from genuine participation in decision-making. Thanks to this, the article does not stop at a description of local techniques of mediation, but becomes an analysis of how far a republic can absorb structures of hereditary authority and under what conditions they preserve their legitimacy.
The institution of chieftaincy in Ghana shows that heredity is not merely a historical or ceremonial matter, but may still constitute a real source of authority, dispute resolution, and the organization of communal life. The monarchical principle – as is well known – is not exhausted by the figure of the king or by the formal classification of regimes, but may function more broadly – wherever power is derived from tradition, seniority, heredity, and symbolic rootedness, rather than from democratic election.
The third of the texts under discussion, by Sara Benítez Martel, is entitled “La princesa heredera y la Constitución” and was published in the “REVISTA GENERAL DE DERECHO CONSTITUCIONAL”, (N.º 42, ABRIL 2025).
The author analyses the Spanish constitutional regulation concerning succession to the throne.
Of key importance here is Article 57(1) of the Spanish Constitution of 1978, which provides that the Crown of Spain is hereditary among the successors of King Juan Carlos I de Borbón, the legitimate heir of the historic dynasty, and that succession takes place in accordance with the principle of primogeniture and representation, such that the senior line always takes precedence over the junior one, within the same line the nearer degree of kinship over the more remote, but above all – within the same degree of kinship a man has precedence over a woman, and, where the sex is the same, the elder over the younger. This provision therefore preserves the classic rule of male preference over female. Article 57(4), by contrast, provides that persons entitled to succession who contract marriage contrary to the express prohibition of the King and the Cortes Generales are excluded from the succession together with their descendants. Only by considering both provisions together can one properly understand the problem addressed by Benítez Martel.
The author focuses on the position of the Princess of Asturias (the official title of the heiress to the Spanish throne) as a constitutional symbol of the continuity and permanence of the Spanish parliamentary monarchy, but the central subject of her analysis is precisely Article 57(4). The main thesis of the article is unambiguous: the indicated solution is incompatible with the universal character of the rights guaranteed by the 1978 Constitution, including the principle of equality before the law, thereby infringing the rights of the Princess of Asturias. The author also links this problem with the right to marry, the right to free self-development, and the tension between the exceptional status of the Crown and the general catalogue of fundamental rights.
This is one of the most interesting directions in contemporary reflection on mixed monarchy. Instead of theoretical deliberations on the usefulness of the monarch and the legitimacy of the existence of monarchy, it focuses on testing specific constitutional arrangements and their coherence with the principles of a democratic constitution. The problem revealed by Benítez Martel is characteristic of many limited monarchies: on the one hand, we are dealing with institutions adapted to the standards of modern constitutionalism. On the other hand – there still remain areas of “hereditary exception” – especially in matters of succession, marriage, family status, and the symbolic continuity of the dynasty. The article seems to demonstrate that Article 57(4) is precisely such an exception, but, in the author’s view – the traditional justifications for this regulation can no longer withstand confrontation with the principle of equality and the test of proportionality.
Benítez Martel’s text indirectly broadens the Spanish constitutional debate, which is usually focused above all on Article 57(1) and the problem of male preference over female in succession to the throne. The author directs attention to another, less frequently highlighted provision of the Spanish Constitution and in this way shows that the tensions between hereditary monarchy and the logic of fundamental rights do not end with the classic dispute over the equal succession rights of women. The regulation concerning the marriage of a person entitled to inherit the throne also preserves the logic of a “dynastic exception”, which is becoming increasingly difficult to justify within a constitution based on equality and the universality of rights. In this sense, the article is not merely an analysis of the status of one particular heiress to the throne, but an important contribution to the broader question of the place of elements of hereditary monarchy in a constitutional order defined as democratic, egalitarian, and based on fundamental rights.
The fourth and final article under analysis, by Alfredo Ramírez Nárdiz, is entitled “Los mensajes del rey: oportunidad y modo de regularlos” and was published in the “TEORÍA Y REALIDAD CONSTITUCIONAL” (NÚM. 55, 2025). This is a particularly interesting text because it addresses a topic which at first glance appears marginal, but in reality is constitutionally highly significant: royal messages. The author begins from the accurate observation that the monarch’s public addresses are a lasting element of Spanish constitutional practice, ranging from routine speeches and Christmas addresses to messages delivered in moments of crisis. Nevertheless, the institution of the royal message has not so far been expressly regulated in any normative act devoted to this matter. Ramírez Nárdiz therefore asks whether such a state of affairs can be reconciled with the logic of the constitutional state, and concludes that royal messages ought to be regulated. In the author’s view, this does not require a constitutional amendment – it is sufficient to regulate the matter at the level of an act or even a regulation.
What is especially significant is that the author does not treat royal messages as a neutral institution. He invokes examples of royal messages which demonstrate that the concept embraces very different phenomena: from speeches of a mainly ceremonial nature to communications of exceptional political and constitutional significance. Two messages occupy a central place in his analysis: Juan Carlos I’s address on the night of 23 February 1981 during the attempted coup d’état and Felipe VI’s address of 3 October 2017 delivered in connection with the Catalan crisis. The former is sometimes interpreted as an event crucial to the defence of the then still new constitutional order, while the latter is presented as an address of extraordinary significance, but at the same time – in the author’s view – highly controversial from the perspective of the limits of the monarch’s role in a parliamentary system.
The value of Ramírez Nárdiz’s article lies in the fact that he does not stop at the simple statement that regulation is needed. The author links this need with the very nature of limited monarchy. If the king “reigns but does not rule”, then the sphere of public messages requires particular caution, because it is precisely on the occasion of delivering such messages that the symbolic head of state may produce serious consequences of a political nature. The problem lies not only in the content of the monarch’s statements, but also in the question of whose will they embody, who approves them, who bears responsibility for them, and how this relates to the foundations of the constitutional order. Ramírez Nárdiz argues that leaving this matter to constitutional custom, to practice that is not entirely transparent, and to presumptions regarding the approval of the content of such statements may lead to legal uncertainty and political tensions that serve neither the Crown itself nor the quality of the constitutional state.
