divine right

is one of the oldest ideas in politics. For the majority of written history, humans have been led by governments who invoked some kind of divine mandate to justify themselves; from the ancient Pharaohs of Egypt worshipped as incarnate gods, to the Chinese emperors invoking the mandate of heaven (天命), to the absolute monarchs of Early Modern Europe claiming to rule by the divine right of kings. Across religions and cultures, it seemed to be a consensus in the premodern world that power comes from above, from Heaven, rather than from below, from the masses.

By contrast, the modern world of politics is practically defined by the opposite idea: that the right to rule comes from the people, and that Heaven has no place in politics. In my maps, I use the label of "divine-right model" to describe states that exist in spite of this modern mindset of popular sovereignty, be they clerical regimes, hereditary monarchies, or any other state that looks above for its legitimacy rather than below. In the 21st century, these governments are few and far between, but they exist regardless. By modern standards, they are typically ultraconservative, even more so than regimes under illiberal conservatism that still believe in popular sovereignty in some form.

Indeed, when the modern "Left/Right" political spectrum was coined during the French Revolution (1789–1800), the "Right" originally referred to divine-right monarchists in contrast to the republican "Left." One must wonder how much of the modern "Right" would be "Left" by 1789's standards.

...

Examples

Current

Sorted in alphabetical order based on the country's common name (not its full name).

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (1996–2001, 2021–present)
Kingdom of Bahrain (1971–present)
Kingdom of Bhutan (1907–present)
Brunei Darussalam (1959–present)
Kingdom of Eswatini (1968–present)
Islamic Republic of Iran (1979–present) — partially, is actually quite hard to sort
Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (1946–present) — hybrid with illiberal conservatism
State of Kuwait (1752–present)
Kingdom of Morocco (1631–present) — hybrid with right-wing liberalism
Sultanate of Oman (1970–present)
State of Qatar (1878–present) — hybrid with illiberal conservatism
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (1932–present)
United Arab Emirates (1971–present) — hybrid with illiberal conservatism
Vatican City (1929–present)

Former

Sorted in reverse chronological order from when the regime ended.

Tibet (1912–1951)
Empire of Japan under the Tōseiha junta (1936–1945) — hybrid with "generic fascism"
Kingdom of Hungary under the Miklós Horthy regency (1920–1944) — hybrid with illiberal conservatism
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (1867–1918) — hybrid with illiberal conservatism
Russian Empire under Tsars Alexander III and Nicholas II (1881–1917)
Kingdom of France under the Bourbon Restoration (1815–1830)
…and, for that matter, most governments before the 18th century

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allison, Lincoln. "Monarchy." In Badie et al., International Encyclopedia of Political Science, vol. 5, pp. 1613–1618.
Badie, Bertrand; Berg-Schlosser, Dirk; and Morlino, Leonardo, eds. International Encyclopedia of Political Science. 8 vols. SAGE, 2011. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412994163.
Bartelson, Jens. "Sovereignty." In Badie et al., International Encyclopedia of Political Science, vol. 8, pp. 2469–2472.
Calvez, Jean-Yvez. "Theocracy." In Badie et al., International Encyclopedia of Political Science, vol. 8, pp. 2599–2602.
Collins, Andrew. "The Divinity of the Pharaoh in Greek Sources." The Classical Quarterly, vol. 64, no. 2 (December 2014): pp. 841–44. https://doi.org/10.1017/S000983881400007X.
Gómez-Dávila, Nicolás. Scholia to an Implicit Text: Bilingual Selected Edition. Edited by Till Kinzel. Villegas Editores, 2013.
Kern, Fritz. Kingship and Law in the Middle Ages. Translated by S. B. Chrimes. Basil Blackwell, 1939.
Vodovozov, Vasily Vasilyevich. "Реакция, в политике [Reaction, in politics]." Энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона [Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary], vol. 26, p. 401. Publishing Business, formerly Brockhaus-Efron, 1899.
von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Erik. "Credo of a Reactionary." The American Mercury, vol. 57, no. 235 (July 1943): pp. 86–92.

Image credits

Painting of the coronation of Charles VII of France by Eugène Lenepveu, 1889 (Wikimedia Commons).

Page created:2026.07.27. Last updated: 2026.07.31.