Having spent more time thinking about political systems than I should, I'd say that this arrangement probably isn't a unique to the Brits (or their past colonies), but rather a universal political fact.
In general, words aren't worth the paper they're written on, unless they conform with the political reality. There's no monarch in the world that could actually exercise their powers on paper unless they also have the political clout to back them up.
The uniqueness of the British system is how weak the monarchy has gotten over the years, and how acutely aware they are about the situation. England's monarchy comes from a really long line of succession, due to the relative ease of defending an island from invaders. Monarchs that rule by right of conquest are generally strong and authoritative, their heirs becoming less so for each succession. (Japan shares this trait and hence the political system is somewhat similar)
And then, the near-death experience during the 1600s made the British monarchy even weaker, and more conscious about the dangers of angering the common mob. And so they invented the idea of constitutional monarchy, that is somehow "just like" the other democratic republics, except without the regicide part :)
Before this democracy thing became popular, it used to be cool for monarchs to proclaim to have more power than they actually had in political reality. After revolutions and regicides became a thing in Europe, they started to do the opposite and claimed to have less power than they had on paper.
But what I'm trying to say is, many monarchs (whether British or not) historically had little real power anyways, and would have most likely would have triggered constitutional crises if they disagreed with their ministers (or the powerful elites).
I think the re-imaging of the British monarchy as mentioned above is truly ingenious, and while I took my sweet time deconstructing it, I still think it's an amazing narrative. I'd classify it as "anti-republicanism propaganda", but it's brilliant nonetheless.
Note: used to be a British subject before 1997. Hah.
Having spent more time thinking about political systems than I should, I'd say that this arrangement probably isn't a unique to the Brits (or their past colonies), but rather a universal political fact.
In general, words aren't worth the paper they're written on, unless they conform with the political reality. There's no monarch in the world that could actually exercise their powers on paper unless they also have the political clout to back them up.
The uniqueness of the British system is how weak the monarchy has gotten over the years, and how acutely aware they are about the situation. England's monarchy comes from a really long line of succession, due to the relative ease of defending an island from invaders. Monarchs that rule by right of conquest are generally strong and authoritative, their heirs becoming less so for each succession. (Japan shares this trait and hence the political system is somewhat similar)
And then, the near-death experience during the 1600s made the British monarchy even weaker, and more conscious about the dangers of angering the common mob. And so they invented the idea of constitutional monarchy, that is somehow "just like" the other democratic republics, except without the regicide part :)
Before this democracy thing became popular, it used to be cool for monarchs to proclaim to have more power than they actually had in political reality. After revolutions and regicides became a thing in Europe, they started to do the opposite and claimed to have less power than they had on paper.
But what I'm trying to say is, many monarchs (whether British or not) historically had little real power anyways, and would have most likely would have triggered constitutional crises if they disagreed with their ministers (or the powerful elites).
I think the re-imaging of the British monarchy as mentioned above is truly ingenious, and while I took my sweet time deconstructing it, I still think it's an amazing narrative. I'd classify it as "anti-republicanism propaganda", but it's brilliant nonetheless.
Note: used to be a British subject before 1997. Hah.