Order of succession
An order, line or right of succession is the line of individuals necessitated to hold a high office when it becomes vacated, such as head of state or an honour such as a title of nobility.[1] This sequence may be regulated through descent or by statute.[1]
Features
[edit | edit source]Hereditary government form differs from elected government. In hereditary succession, the heir is automatically determined based on the family they are born in.[2] In the case of non-monarchical governments, political power is usually transferred from the head of state to other public officials to avoid a crisis.[3]
Organizations without hereditary or statutory order of succession require succession planning if power struggles prompted by power vacuums are to be avoided.
Research shows that authoritarian regimes that rely on primogeniture for succession were more stable than forms of authoritarian rule with alternative succession arrangements.[4][5][6][7][8][9] Scholars have linked primogeniture to a decline in regicide, as clear rules of succession reduce the number of people who could (absent a coup d'état) replace a ruler, thus making it less desirable to cause the death of the monarch.[10][11]
Vertical inheritance
[edit | edit source]Male-preference (cognatic) primogeniture
[edit | edit source]
- Grey: incumbent
- Square: male
- Circle: female
- Black: deceased
- Diagonal: cannot be displaced (see heir apparent)
In male-preference primogeniture (in the past called cognatic primogeniture) the monarch's eldest son and his descendants take precedence over his siblings and their descendants.[12][13] Elder sons take precedence over younger sons, and all sons take precedence over daughters.[12]
Absolute cognatic primogeniture
[edit | edit source]
- Grey: incumbent
- Square: male
- Circle: female
- Black: deceased
- Diagonal: cannot be displaced
Absolute primogeniture is a law in which the eldest child of the sovereign succeeds to the throne, regardless of gender, and females (and their descendants) enjoy the same right of succession as males. This is currently the system in Sweden (since 1980), the Netherlands (since 1983), Norway (since 1990), Belgium (since 1991), Denmark (since 2009),[14] Luxembourg (since 2011),[15] and in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth realms (since 2013).[16][17][18]
Agnatic succession (Salic law)
[edit | edit source]
- Grey: incumbent
- Square: male
- Black: deceased
- Diagonal: cannot be displaced
The Salic law, or agnatic succession, restricted the pool of potential heirs to males of the patrilineage, and altogether excluded females of the dynasty and their descendants from the succession, unless there were no living males to inherit.[19]
Agnatic-cognatic succession
[edit | edit source]
- Grey: incumbent
- Square: male
- Circle: female
- Black: deceased
- Diagonal: cannot be displaced
Agnatic-cognatic (or semi-Salic) succession, prevalent in much of Europe since ancient times, is the restriction of succession to those descended from or related to a past or current monarch exclusively through the male line of descent: descendants through females were ineligible to inherit unless no males of the patrilineage remained alive.
In this form of succession, the succession is reserved first to all the male dynastic descendants of all the eligible branches by order of primogeniture, then upon total extinction of these male descendants to a female member of the dynasty.[20]
Matrilineal succession
[edit | edit source]Some cultures pass honours down through the female line. A man's wealth and title are inherited by his sister's children, and his children receive their inheritance from their maternal uncles.[21]
Ultimogeniture
[edit | edit source]
- Grey: incumbent
- Square: male
- Black: deceased
Ultimogeniture is an order of succession where the subject is succeeded by the youngest son (or youngest child).[12]
Proximity of blood
[edit | edit source]
- Grey: incumbent
- Square: male
- Circle: female
- Black: deceased
- Diagonal: cannot be displaced
Proximity of blood is a system wherein the person closest in degree of kinship to the sovereign succeeds, preferring males over females and elder over younger siblings. This is sometimes used as a gloss for "pragmatic" successions in Europe; it had somewhat more standing during the Middle Ages everywhere in Europe.[22]
Porphyrogeniture
[edit | edit source]Porphyrogeniture is a system of political succession that favours the rights of sons born after their father has become king or emperor, over older siblings born before their father's ascent to the throne.
Examples of this practice include Byzantium and the Nupe Kingdom.[23]: 33 In late 11th century England and Normandy, the theory of porphyrogeniture was used by Henry I of England to justify why he, and not his older brother Robert Curthose, should inherit the throne after the death of their brother William Rufus.[24]: 105
Partible inheritance
[edit | edit source]In some societies, a monarchy or a fief was inherited in a way that all entitled heirs had a right to a share of it. The most prominent examples of this practice are the multiple divisions of the Frankish Empire under the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties, and similarly Gavelkind in the British Isles.
Secundogeniture
[edit | edit source]A secundogeniture was a dependent territory given to a younger son of a princely house and his descendants, creating a cadet branch.[25]
Horizontal inheritance
[edit | edit source]Seniority
[edit | edit source]
- Grey: incumbent
- Square: male
- Black: deceased
- Diagonal: cannot be displaced
In seniority successions, a monarch's or fiefholder's next sibling (almost always brother), succeeds; not his children. And, if the royal house is more extensive, (male) cousins and so forth succeed, in order of seniority, which may depend upon actual age or upon the seniority between their fathers.
Rota system
[edit | edit source]
- Grey: incumbent
- Half-grey: predecessor of incumbent
- Square: male
- Black: deceased
- Diagonal: cannot be displaced
- cross: excluded or Izgoi (excluded from succession due to their parent never having held the throne)
The rota system, from the Old Church Slavic word for "ladder" or "staircase", was a system of collateral succession practised (though imperfectly) in Kievan Rus' and later Appanage and early Muscovite Russia.
In this system, the throne passed not linearly from father to son, but laterally from brother to brother and then to the eldest son of the eldest brother who had held the throne. The system was begun by Yaroslav the Wise, who assigned each of his sons a principality based on seniority. When the Grand Prince died, the next most senior prince moved to Kiev and all others moved to the principality next up the ladder.[26]
Tanistry
[edit | edit source]Under a Tanist system of succession, a ruler's successor was chosen from a parallel family line.[27]
Elective succession
[edit | edit source]Lateral succession
[edit | edit source]Lateral or fraternal system of succession mandates principles of seniority among members of a dynasty or dynastic clan, with a purpose of election a best qualified candidate for the leadership. The leaders are elected as being the most mature elders of the clan, already in possession of military power and competence. Fraternal succession is preferred to ensure that mature leaders are in charge, removing a need for regents.[28]
In East Asia, the lateral succession system is first recorded in the pre-historical period starting with the late Shang dynasty's Wai Bing succeeding his brother Da Ding, and then in connection with a conquest by the Zhou of the Shang, when Wu Ding was succeeded by his brother Zu Geng in 1189 BC and then by another brother Zu Jia in 1178 BC.[29]
Succession crises
[edit | edit source]When a monarch dies without a clear successor, a succession crisis often ensues, frequently resulting in a war of succession.[30] For example, when King Charles IV of France died, the Hundred Years War erupted between Charles' cousin, Philip VI of France, and Charles' nephew, Edward III of England, to determine who would succeed Charles as the King of France.[31]
In recent years researchers have found significant connections between the types of rules governing succession in monarchies and autocracies and the frequency with which coups or succession crises occur.[32]
Republics
[edit | edit source]| Part of a series on Orders of succession |
| Presidencies |
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In republics, the requirement to ensure continuity of government at all times has resulted in most offices having some formalized order of succession.[33] In a country with fixed-term elections, the head of state (president) is often succeeded following death, resignation, or impeachment by the vice president, parliament speaker, chancellor, or prime minister, in turn followed by various office holders of the legislative assembly or other government ministers.[34] In many republics, a new election takes place some time after the "presidency" becomes unexpectedly vacant.
See also
[edit | edit source]- Continuity of government
- Enthronement
- Inheritance
- List of monarchies by order of succession
- Presidential Succession Act
- Royal house
- Sede vacante
- Succession crisis
References
[edit | edit source]- ^ a b UK Royal Web site Archived 2015-03-13 at the Wayback Machine "The order of succession is the sequence of members of the Royal Family in the order in which they stand in line to the throne. This sequence is regulated not only through descent, but also by Parliamentary statute."
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- ^ Explanatory note to the UK bill Archived 2022-03-04 at the Wayback Machine, paragraph 42: "There is power to specify the time of day of commencement. Assuming that the other Realms make the same provision, this will enable the changes on succession to be brought into force at the same time – but at different local times – in all sixteen Commonwealth Realms." UK parliament official website. (Retrieved 30 March 2015.)
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- ^ SOU 1977:5 Kvinnlig tronföljd, p. 16.
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- ^ Kidd, Colin (2003). Subverting Scotland's Past: Scottish Whig Historians and the Creation of an Anglo-British Identity 1689-1830. page 88. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521520193.
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- ^ Luard, Evan. The Balance of Power: The System of International Relations, 1648–1815. Springer, 2016. 159.
- ^ Nancy Shields Kollmann, "Collateral Succession in Kievan Rus'." Harvard Ukrainian Studies 14 (1990): 377–87; Janet Martin, Medieval Russia 980–1584 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 27–29.
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- ^ Loewe M. and Shaughnessy E.L., eds., The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C., New York, Cambridge, 1999, pp. 234, 273, 303, Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
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- ^ Kurrild-Klitgaard, Peter (2000). "The constitutional economics of autocratic succession", Public Choice, 103(1/2), pp. 63–84 Archived 2021-02-25 at the Wayback Machine.
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