The absolute monarchy was a system of government where power is concentrated in a single person in an absolute way, denying the possibility of a division of powers. The king is the owner of the nation and of all its assets, with a hereditary and life-long nature.
This system of government differs from authoritarianism because it comprises legitimate power, whereas authoritarianism is characterized by being arbitrary and illegal when exercising power. In the absolute monarchy it is the king who holds power, there is no division of powers and it is the monarch who decides what, how and when to do things without being accountable to anyone.
The reason why the monarch has all these powers lies in the fact that the absolute monarchy represents an institution that supports the idea that it is God who gives the king authenticity. Another of the real characteristics of this system is its hereditary condition, that is to say that the king remains in command until he dies and then it passes to his heir.
Many of the European states were characterized by this way of governing, as is the case of France, Great Britain, Spain, etc., are some of the countries that between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries remained in absolute monarchies. However, this supremacy began to decline once the French Revolution began. It was from there like little by little, the absolute monarchies were coupling new values such as democracy.
It is important to note that, despite the fact that over time the monarchies have been modernizing and adjusting to democratic systems, there are still nations that, although they are fully democratic states, maintain the presence of a monarch.
In this way, the king's command was represented in a symbolic way, being subject to popular power, personified in parliament. This new kind of monarchy was called " parliamentary monarchy ", in these times it is still in force in many nations of Europe: Belgium, Holland, Great Britain, Spain, among others.
There are cases such as the countries of Africa and Asia, where the role played by the ruler is fundamental, while in the countries mentioned in the previous paragraph, this role is symbolic.
