The Founders rejected democracy because rule by the many is a danger similar to absolute monarchy.
In 1655, Charles XI, King of Sweden who created an absolute monarchy which ruled until 1718, was born.
Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy, practices a puritanical version of Islam and is governed by Shariah, or Islamic law.
The new constitution is Thailand's 18th since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932 and, sadly, may not be its last.
Among them was Girija Prasad Koirala, a three-time prime minister and veteran of the 1990 uprising that ended decades of absolute monarchy.
Thailand itself transitioned from an absolute monarchy to a democratic constitutional monarchy.
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The country is an absolute monarchy in which political parties are banned.
The country is in some ways the world's most absolute monarchy, though there are many warring factions within the ruling house of Saud.
After all, that was his justification for restoring an absolute monarchy.
Or perhaps the sultan felt the activist winds blowing in nearby lands, and wanted to give democrats less reason to call for an end to absolute monarchy.
That execution, in 1649, at Parliament's order, followed in 1688 by the ouster of the even stupider James II, was the death-blow of absolute monarchy in Britain.
The former king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, had announced the end of the absolute monarchy three years earlier before an audience of yak herders in a remote mountain village.
Capitalising on this, King Gyanendra restored absolute monarchy in 2005.
In one amateur video posted online, female protesters burned a picture of Prince Mohammed, a particularly brazen act in such an absolute monarchy -- one that Al-Oadah addresses in his letter.
That is a consequence of the king's third blunder: he assumed that, although absolute monarchy is unfashionable these days, foreign countries would forget their democratic platitudes if faced with a straight choice between him and the Maoists.
Poet Ali al-Demaini and academics Abdullah al-Hamed and Matruk al-Faleh have been in prison since their arrest in March 2004 after they called for the Saudi rulers to take steps towards becoming a constitutional rather than an absolute monarchy.
For one thing, it is simpler for absolute rulers to defend monarchy than for democracies to act together in defence of democracy if only because electorates are fickle and may want to change the score.
It is not a word for a dramatic shift from an absolute (though relatively gentle) monarchy with a weak consultative assembly to a constitutionally limited monarchy with a strong, sovereign parliament and an elected president who can remove executive branch officials without entreating the king.
FORBES: Why Is Obama's State Department Uneasy About Democracy?
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