Africa Speaks Reasoning Forum

Absolute monarchy, or despotic monarchy, is a form of monarchy in which one ruler has supreme authority and where that authority is not restricted by any written laws, legislature, or customs. These are often, but not always, hereditary monarchies.

 In constitutional monarchies, the head of state's authority derives from and is legally bounded or restricted by a constitution or legislature.

By what criteria are you assessing either as better? Persons have varying standards of what they consider good governance.

The criteria are:
1) Transparency-"The implication of transparency is that all of an organization’s actions should be scrupulous enough to bear public scrutiny"

2) Accountability-"The implication of accountability deals with how public institutions conduct public affairs and manage public resources, accountability is also an assurance that an individual or an organization will be evaluated on their performance or behavior related to something for which they are responsible."

3) Rule of Law-" The implication of rule of law is in the context that no branch of government is above the law, and no public official may act arbitrarily or unilaterally outside the law. Also no written law may be enforced by the government unless it conforms with certain unwritten, universal principles of fairness, morality, and justice that transcend human legal systems"

I will examine the first two criteria which you point out above. Your first does not seem to be dealing primarily with transparency per say but rather that the actions of the government be scrupulous. This can be married with the second which is accountability i.e the government should act in the best interest of the society or population and can be held responsible for their actions. Both can be achieved under either system and both can and have been corrupted in various places and points in history. The fact that people vote for their representatives within a constitutional monarchy or in Western Style democracy generally does not prevent that system from being manipulated by corporate business or by corrupt politicians, nor does it necessarily prevent that system from perpetuating backward prejudices and narrow agendas.

With regard to the rule of law I will take the latter part of your statement as the general spirit of what you are communicating (you can correct me if it is not), that the government general acts with fairness, justice and morality. Again here I do not think this is unique to a particular system or is assured simply by having one particular system in place. Also I will add that laws in and of themselves do not assure fairness on the whole in a society. In many of our societies ideas of morality are dominated by classist, sexist, racist and other prejudiced ideas that often contribute to unfairness and injustice.

Yes. Thanks. I was satisfied with both of those answers. So we need to avoid prejudice...and have integrity. So Does not matter what types or what number of systems we use. It all comes down to us. Thanks again for helping me out!