Continuity-Bearing Institutions in Modern Political Orders

This record contains Version 1.0 of the conceptual article “Continuity-Bearing Institutions in Modern Political Orders: Constitutional Monarchy as a Concentrated Case”. The article develops a conceptual account of continuity-bearing institutions in modern political orders. It argues that continuity should be treated as a distinct institutional function, analytically separable from legitimacy, democratic procedure, governing power, and stability in the fuller sense. The article does not argue for monarchy over republic, nor does it defend hereditary rule as such. Its narrower claim is that political orders differ in how they carry continuity beyond the time horizon of ordinary electoral politics. The article distinguishes between potestas, understood as the moving and contested sphere of daily governing power, and auctoritas, understood as the more durable sphere of symbolic authority, constitutional dignity, and temporal continuity. On this basis, constitutional monarchy is analysed as one concentrated case of a broader institutional function: the visible separation of state continuity from governmental turnover. The central comparison is therefore not monarchy versus republic in the abstract, but concentrated versus distributed forms of continuity-bearing institutional design. Constitutional monarchy is treated as one institutional form in which symbolic apex, inherited temporal linkage, depoliticised succession, and state–government differentiation are gathered in a single office. Republican orders may perform similar continuity-bearing work through more distributed arrangements, including presidencies, courts, constitutions, civic rituals, and political traditions. The contribution of the article is to reframe debates about monarchy, republicanism, and constitutional symbolism around the institutional organisation of continuity. It shows why symbolic institutions should not be dismissed as analytically empty merely because they do not govern, while also clarifying why continuity alone cannot secure legitimacy, viability, or democratic health.