Take the Commonwealth Poll today!

For the Commonwealth Realms, The Monarchist has devised the poll of the 21st century. In the world of constitutional choices, it is crucial to lay them all out in order to arrive at a meaningful result. Public opinion cannot be divided into a simple yes/no manner; unfortunately, as the 1999 Australian referendum demonstrated, politicians and pollsters attempt to put us into simplistic camps in order to control or achieve a desired outcome. But we will not be hoodwinked. We will not perceive a weight of inevitability towards any one system without first asking the question. What is your constitutional preference upon the demise of Queen Elizabeth II?

The choices, as outlined in the poll in the sidebar, are as follows (listed in increasing order of difficulty):

CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY

1. Maintain Personal Union: If you would like to continue our fraternal allegiance to a shared Commonwealth Crown, with the legally separate sovereign of each nation remaining in personal union with the British Monarch, then you favour the status quo. You are what we call a traditional monarchist (also Commonwealth monarchist or Anglo monarchist), one who holds a belief largely on principled and/or sentimental attachment to the monarchy, in part based on traditional associations with the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth of Nations and a personal identification with Elizabeth II and her family. If you are British and would like to see the United Kingdom survive as a political union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but also of England, Scotland and Wales, then you also favour this approach, for you are devoted to a single monarch reigning over the nations of the British Isles.

2. Patriate the Monarchy: If you are a national monarchist, be it Scottish, Australian, Jamaican, New Zealand, etc, then this is for you. You look forward to the day when another Royal of the House of Windsor or the House of Stuart is invited to become your national sovereign, totally separate from that of the British Monarch. If you reside outside of the UK, you may not be wholly satisfied by the fact that 15 of the 16 Commonwealth realms have a non-resident monarch. Patriating the monarchy would require no constitutional amendment, although unilaterally changing the order of succession and convincing a Royal could be challenging.

3. Crowned Republic: The clear choice of the liberal Canadian multicultural elite. We are in Ted McWhinney territory here, "quietly and without fanfare" dispensing with the need for Kings and Queens. You might plausibly be called a pragmatic or progressive monarchist, one who wants to sever all links to the Royal Family but keep the Crown and some trappings of monarchy. You maintain that, whatever the argued weaknesses of the current system, it also has many strengths; following the motto of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". You believe that constitutional monarchy provides the basis for stable democratic government, with the Governor-General (the monarch's nominal representative) acting as an impartial, non-political "umpire" of the political process. However, you would like to see the appointed Governor-General represent the Crown by becoming the de jure, not just de facto head of state. By the way, Australia is about as close to a Crowned Republic as one can get without actually becoming one. They are of the view that their Governor-General is the head of state, and the Queen their sovereign, which you have to hand it to them, is an admirable piece of monarchist sophistry. A national government or parliament deciding on its own to become a Crowned Republic would probably be vulnerable to multiple constitutional challenges. Incidentally, England became a Crowned Republic under Oliver Crowell in the 1650s and failed miserably. But hey, don't let that stop you.

CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC

4. Parliamentary Republic: You are what we call a "minimal change republican", who aimes to replace the monarch with an appointed head of state, but otherwise maintain the current system as unchanged as possible. Within this group in Australia, during the 1999 referendum, there were a small group of supporters of the ultra-minimalist McGarvie Model, but generally the favoured model of this group would be a non-executive president (probably) appointed by a two-thirds majority of a joint sitting of Parliament. In the 1999 referendum, it was the preferred choice of Australian republican politicians, earning the ridicule by monarchists as a "politician's republic". Alternatively, a parliamentary republic may have an elected ceremonial president such as that which exists in Ireland. (Added for the benefit of Lewis in the comments).

5. Semi-Presidential System: If your goal is to replace the monarch with a popularly elected head of state, who is more than just a ceremonial figurehead by virtue of the added democratic legitimacy conferred upon him by the electorate, then you are a progressive republican. This system is called co-habitation - probably the most feared option of every prime minister throughout the Commonwealth, the idea of sharing power and legitimacy with an elected president. France has a particularly powerful semi-presidential system, but the degree to which power would be shared in your particular country would be anyone's guess.

6. Presidential Republic: The choice of radical republicans, who see the minimal change option as purely cosmetic, and desire comprehensive revision to the current Westminister-based system. This would be the preferred option of people who admire the American congressional system, with its executive president and clear separation of powers between the judicial, legislative and executive branches.

In Sir Robert Menzies' words, "to get an affirmative vote from the Australian people on a referendum proposal is one of the labours of Hercules.", but it need not be if all six choices are truthfully laid out in a nation-wide referendum. I think you would find if you did that, the number of people voting for the constitutional monarchy options would be far greater than those voting for the republican choices. So monarchists and republicans, take the poll! The poll will stay up for the next year.