Kalistan

[Doc]

Kalistanis express enduring support for Royal Family
Support for republicanism slips below 15% for first time
Kaliburg, Grand Duchy of Ananto
May 20, 5737


Emperor William II Ananto, with his sisters, the Princesses Jennifer and Victoria Ananto-Rosenfeld, in April

A new poll released by University of Suldanor, in Yoshimi, with the help of The Kalistani Republic, finds that the Royal Family currently enjoys one of its highest amounts of support in its history. Support for any amount of republicanism in the Empire has also fallen below 15% for the first time in the poll's history, with only 14.8% expressing any sort of support for constitutional or divided government. The survey, taken between January and April of this year and eliciting the opinions of a random sample of more than 17,000 Kalistanis, giving pollsters a 99% confidence with a 1% margin of error.

"The survey was conducted over three months at the beginning of the year and was conducted through phone interviews, cell phone text pushes, social media, and in person interviews," said the leader of the study, Dr. Greg Humphrey, of the Political Science Department at University of Suldanor. "Our pollsters were undergraduate Students, and the poll was conducted, in association with The Kalistani Republic for a senior graduation requirement. Not only did the students develop the survey instrument for their practicum course in political methodology, but they also conducted the survey and analyzed the results. I was one of their faculty advisors, as was Dr. Denise Summerlynn, who oversees the Regional and Local Government curriculum here."

Dr. Humphrey said there was overwhelming support for the Monarchy and specifically for the Royal Family, across the nation. "Even when you look at the crosstabs, you find near universal support for the Emperor, his wife, and his sisters. This support cuts across all ages, with younger people surprisingly more supportive than older cohorts, though this might be the lingering effects of personal loyalty older respondents feel for the previous monarch that didn't automatically transfer to the current Sovereign. 9 out of 10 Kalistanis strongly support the monarchy, and there is corresponding support for aspects of Imperial Government, such as the Imperial Fiat, permitting factions within the Institutional Party, Ducal Government as laboratories for policy and the centralized administrative state. And almost nobody supports limited government or constitutionalism, or any policy measures like limiting the Emperor, creating additional parties, or a more open economy."

"We gave most of the respondents the opportunity to talk to us about a lot of these questions," said UoS senior Mattie Jimenez-Bretton. "Most people said they had thought about these questions within the last 6 months. We asked if they had the opportunity to change the system in Kalistan, what sort of government would they prefer, and most answered that they did not trust most politicians to govern in the name of the people, and certainly wouldn't prefer that politicians had authority of their own, because that would go to the detriment of the people. They would much rather have one person making the decisions, to get things done as needed than wait for a bunch of political novices to debate the item to death. 'Who else would anyone ever support to rule Kalistan if not an Ananto?' was a frequently asked rhetorical question."

Most respondents said they are familiar with at least one democratic nation, and nearly all of them thought that that nation has a "worse system" than Kalistan. "It takes too long for legislation, you can't really be sure who is actually making the decisions, there is no connection between who wins elections and policy outcomes, democratic governments lie to people, these are all common critiques of democracies among the people who answered the survey," said Jimenez. "It would seem that there is almost no situation that nearly everyone who answered the survey could imagine where society's interests are met at the same time as there is a republican form of government in place. At best, think most people, its only the elites that get their interests met." People in this country just reject the whole idea of republicanism, especially liberal republicanism, constitutionalism, and liberal democracy, most frequently calling that last regime type a "fraud" and those who support it "dupes".

Humphrey said that an interesting trend emerged when the students asked respondents about terrorism which seems to be on the rise in the world. "Well, there seems to be more intense support for the Monarchy in those who happen to be concerned about terrorism." Most said they think a monarchy can keep a nation safer from terror than a democracy, and a monarch can react faster and more decisively to the threat than a democracy. "It's a unity of government function that the students think people are keying in on. In Kalistan, for example, the Emperor says do this, and that's what is done. Other things may be done too, but when the Emperor fiats something, it is the law. There's no debate, there's no need for debate. When all law comes from the breath of a single man, it is quite easy to accomplish something. This counters the advantage of terror groups who can act with the same sort of unity of command. Those same terrorists will take advantage of the inertia of democratic states to hit them again and again and again while the democracies try to figure out how to respond."

"Circling back to support for the royal family, 4 in 5 respondents said that the wealth of the Royal Family is not an issue," said Humphrey. "Some people may take issue with it, but most of those people who have a problem with the very large wealth gap between the Royal Family and the average working person in Kalistan identify as regular attenders in Brethrenist meetings- after noticing this trend, students began asking them to describe their issues, and nearly all those who 'oppose' the Royal Family's wealth cited the Brethrenist testimony of simplicity. They don't have an issue with the wealth so much as the ostentatious display of it while others in the world have nothing. Its more of an optics problem for most of these."

It came as no surprise to the team that the Emperor enjoyed the highest amount of support of the children of Carolina II. "Its mostly because more people don't know a lot about the Princesses," said Jimenez. "But this conclusion is borne out by the fact that the Emperor enjoys an 87% approval rating, but the Princess Consort enjoys an 89% approval rating, and has a slightly larger following among Nationalists than the Emperor does." Carolina herself is similarly universally loved, while other members of the Ananto tribe tend to get more "I don't knows."

"Overall," said Humphrey, "these students learned a very valuable lesson about surveying Kalistanis. You'd think that people would be clamoring for more of a role in their government, that everyone would demand that they should not only have the right to vote, but that those votes should be able to dictate policy. If you only ever listened to the liberals of this world, that would be an easy conclusion to come to. But it is also possible that people do not trust those who ask for power any further than they can throw them. If you ask me to help put you into power so you can make rules for my life, I should be suspicious about your motives. And if I ask you the same thing, you would be justified in feeling that same suspicion. Kalistan has that prevailing attitude toward politicians and political leaders. As long as our government is able to supply the people what they need to live a good life without crushing need being the rule, a scenario we see in a lot of other nations, our government is doing precisely what the people think the government should be doing. They don't want a government that fights themselves over the scraps left after the elites have looted the county."

But the support for the Anantos is personal for most Kalistanis. "People regularly called the Emperor their 'avatar'," said Jimenez. "He represents not only the self conception of the people of this nation, but also their own aspirations. He carries those aspirations of these people, not as individuals, but as members of a society, on his shoulders. He goes forward, the people follow, because he is their leader, in a very personal sense. Despite the wide gap between his wealth and actual power and theirs, they identify with him, and with his family, and love him, I think that's safe to say, as if he was a member of their own family. There is a massive well of support for him, his sisters, his wife, his mother and father and his children in this nation. And when Ananto wins, the people count that as a win for all of us."

@TheRepublic