Monarchies in Europe

While most of the states in the world, and in Europe, are republics (have a directly or indirectly elected head of state), there are still twelve monarchies in Europe, whose head of state (a monarch) inherits his or her office, and usually keeps it for life or until they abdicate.

At the dawn of the 20th century, France was the only major European nation to have a republican form of government. Among the smaller nations, Switzerland and San Marino held long republican traditions. The ascent of republicanism to the political mainstream only started at the beginning of the 20th century.

Most of the monarchies in Europe are constitutional monarchies, which means that the monarch does not influence the politics of the state: either the monarch is legally prohibited from doing so, or the monarch does not utilise the political powers vested in the office by convention. The exceptions are Liechtenstein, which is usually considered a semi-constitutional monarchy due to the large influence the prince still has on politics, and the Vatican City, which is a theocratic absolute elective monarchy. There is currently no major campaign to abolish the monarchy (see monarchism and republicanism) in any of the twelve states, although there is a significant minority of republicans in many of them.