Saturday, March 8, 2008

Hans-Adam II Says

Seiner Durchlaucht Fürst Hans-Adam II von und zu LiechtensteinI came across this interview from just about an Olympiad ago. His Serene Highness The Sovereign Prince of Liechtenstein says:

I can only say there are many people who would love to move to Liechtenstein, but unfortunately we are much too small to take them all.
If you look at human history world-wide you see that throughout human history usually monarchies dominated as the form of government and not republics. There have been of course republican periods but they were usually shorter. As an historian one has to ask oneself of course why this is the case. Monarchies can apparently offer some advantages which republics cannot. Probably it has to do with the fact that a monarchy usually offers more political stability over longer periods of time and that the monarch has the tendency to think in generations and not about winning the next elections. I think the combination which we have here in Liechtenstein with a strong monarch, a direct democracy which goes further even than in Switzerland and political decentralization which gives our communities a lot of autonomy could be a model for future monarchies. For a little bit less than a hundred years we have lived now in a republican age, which is not very long if you look at human history, and I think sooner or later monarchies will come back.

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