Atlas / Organisations / Absolute Monarchy
Absolute Monarchy
Bourbon absolutism · c.1600–1789 · France, Spain, Russia · Monarchist / Traditionalist · Held state power · coding confidence high
Each axis runs from −10 to +10, with zero a genuine mixed or balanced position rather than an absence of opinion. A score describes a stated position and a governing record; it is not a judgement of merit. What each score means →
Core principles
Sovereignty vested wholly in a divinely sanctioned monarch; society ordered as fixed estates.
Economic model
Mercantilism, royal monopolies, venal offices, tax exemptions for nobility and clergy.
Organisation of powers
No separation of powers; representative estates suspended or ignored; law as the king's will.
Reading note
The reference point the entire left–right vocabulary was invented to describe the opposition to.
Check a claim about Absolute Monarchy. The interactive atlas measures the distance between any two organisations across all six axes and shows which ones carry the disagreement.
Open in the atlasThe evidence for every score
All six cells are sourced. A rationale explains what the score is measuring and each artefact is something a third party can check without taking anyone's word for it.
EC · Economic organisation · scored +04
Coded +4: mercantilism, royal monopolies and venal offices.
- Documented act or statuteColbert's system licensed manufactures and sold offices as a revenue instrument.
CU · Social and cultural order · scored +09
Coded +9: society ordered as fixed estates under divine sanction.
- Programme textBossuet's Politics Drawn from Holy Scripture set out the divine right doctrine for Louis XIV.
AU · Organisation of power · scored +09
At the ceiling: no separation of powers and no representative body.
- Documented act or statuteThe Estates-General did not meet between 1614 and 1789.
SC · Scale of decision · scored +08
Coded +8: intendants appointed from the centre over the provinces.
- Documented act or statuteProvincial estates and parlements were overridden by royal intendants.
ID · Rule of membership · scored +07
Coded +7: subjecthood by birth into an estate, with confessional exclusion.
- Documented act or statuteThe Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685 revoked toleration and drove out the Huguenots.
CH · Method and tempo · scored −08
At the floor: the order to be preserved was the point.
- Programme textThe regime's self-description was the maintenance of a divinely ordained order.
Nearest organisations by measured distance
Straight-line separation across all six axes, out of a maximum of 49.0. Proximity means similarity of stated position, not endorsement and not resemblance in outcome.
- Metternichian Reaction2.8
- Saudi Religious Monarchy3.0
- Hashemite Monarchy3.7
- Personalist Presidential Rule3.9
- Central Asian Presidentialism3.9
- Moroccan Monarchy4.5
Countries
Cite this page
Scores are revised on evidence, so a citation should carry the version it refers to. Version 4.3.1 is current; the revision log records every change.
Free to quote and reproduce with attribution. This is a synthesis rather than a peer-reviewed dataset — where an authoritative figure is needed, cite the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, the Manifesto Project or V-Dem.