The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (172 page)

 
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One which fails to command the guaranteed support of a majority of the members of a legislature. Minority governments have been judged to lead to political instability and ineffective government on the evidence of Germany during the Weimar Republic (1919–33), France during the
Fourth Republic
(1946–58), and Italy since the Second World War. In each case there was a rapid turnover of governments leading ultimately to a crisis of government legitimacy. The experience of minority governments in Scandinavia, notably in Denmark, present alternative evidence of relative success, suggesting that the implications of minority government are dependent upon the underlying political culture. Since the First World War Britain has experienced minority government in 1924, 1929–31, 1974, and 1976–9, in each case led by the Labour Party.
JBr 

 
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See
majority leader
.

 
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Organized politics of groups that consider themselves underrepresented in a political system. The minority characterization might be related to numbers or to influence in the public sphere, or both. Black, gay, and women's movements are examples. Minority politics tends to be both functional and normative, in that it generally has a ‘consciousness raising’ element to its politics; it is not simply organized around immediate, or long-term issues of political representation.
SR 

 
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social mobility
.

 
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community power
.

 
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Monarchy originally meant ‘the rule of one’, though the word has now come to be attached to the constitution of kingship (and queenship) that is usually conceived as hereditary, though many posts which we would consider as monarchs (Roman emperors, Holy Roman Emperors, and kings of Poland, for example) were, at least nominally, non-hereditary.
Monarchism is generally a belief in the necessity or desirability of this monarchy. An extreme version of this would be to believe in a monarch who actually ruled and did not merely reign, who had an absolute, perhaps divinely ordained, right to do so, and who acquired this right by heredity. But all of these are very difficult to believe in the late twentieth century. Contemporary monarchists normally support a ‘limited’ monarchy, and ground their support in the general utility of the institution in a particular context. For example, they may believe it is best to have a head of state who is ‘above’ politics and does not have to compete for the role. Or they may believe in the ruling family as a symbolic embodiment of a country's history. Monarchy is often seen as a ‘dignified element’, in Bagehot's phrase, which legitimizes the authority of the state without the need for precise constitutions and justifying principles which would prove divisive.
LA