Sequence of people entitled to hold a high office if it is vacated
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]
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]
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]
In hereditary monarchies the order of succession determines who becomes the new monarch when the incumbent sovereign dies or otherwise vacates the throne. Such orders of succession, derived from rules established by law or tradition, usually specify an order of seniority, which is applied to indicate which relative of the previous monarch, or other person, has the strongest claim to assume the throne when the vacancy occurs.
Often, the line of succession is restricted to persons of the blood royal (but see morganatic marriage), that is, to those legally recognized as born into or descended from the reigningdynasty or a previous sovereign. The persons in line to succeed to the throne are called "dynasts". Constitutions, statutes, house laws, and norms may regulate the sequence and eligibility of potential successors to the throne.
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]
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
Agnatic-cognatic primogeniture diagram. Legend:
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]
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]
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 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
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
A secundogeniture was a dependent territory given to a younger son of a princely house and his descendants, creating a cadet branch.[25]
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.
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]
Historically the tanist was chosen from among the heads of the roydammna or "righdamhna" (literally, those of kingly material) or, alternatively, among all males of the sept, and elected by them in full assembly. The eligibility was based on descent from a king to a few degrees of proximity. Usually descent from the male lines of a king was the norm, however in Scotland, descent through the female lines of a king was also accepted, possibly because of an intermingling with the Pictish succession rules. An example of this is King Eochaid who claimed the Scottish throne as the son of the daughter of Kenneth I.
The composition and the governance of the clan were built upon descent from a similar ancestor. The office was noted from the beginning of recorded history in Ireland, and probably pre-dates it. A story about Cormac mac Airt refers to his eldest son as his tanist. Following his murder by a member of the Deisi, another roydammna, Eochaid Gonnat, succeeded as king.
The royal succession in Celtic Scotland was limited to the elective succession of the male descendants of Siol Alpein (House of Alpin) until the accession of King MalcolmII in 1005, who introduced the concept of hereditary monarchy in Scotland. He did so to try to eliminate the strife caused by the elective law, which encouraged rival claimants to fight for the throne. The earlier Pictish kingdoms had allowed female-line succession to the throne and in middle age Scotland, Pictish and Gaelic succession rules were intermingled. Since Malcolm had only daughters, the throne passed to his grandson through his eldest daughter and later, their descendants. The Irish monarchies, for their part, never at any stage allowed for female line succession.
Elective succession
Lateral succession
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.[27]
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.[28]
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.[31]
1 2 UK Royal Web siteArchived 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."
↑ Acharya, Avidit; Lee, Alexander (2019-11-01). "Path Dependence in European Development: Medieval Politics, Conflict, and State Building". Comparative Political Studies. 52 (13–14): 2171–2206. doi:10.1177/0010414019830716. ISSN0010-4140. S2CID29515121.
↑ Chen, Zhiwu; Lin, Zhan (2026), Chen, Zhiwu; Campbell, Cameron; Ma, Debin (eds.), "A Quantitative History of Regicide in China", Quantitative History of China: State Capacity, Institutions and Development, Springer, pp.65–108, doi:10.1007/978-981-96-8272-0_4, ISBN978-981-96-8272-0
↑ Explanatory note to the UK billArchived 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.)
↑ 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.
↑ 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, ISBN978-0-521-47030-8
↑ Kurrild-Klitgaard, Peter (2000). "The constitutional economics of autocratic succession", Public Choice, 103(1/2), pp. 63–84Archived 2021-02-25 at the Wayback Machine .
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