Question

In 3–5 sentences, compare the causes and effects of constitutional monarchy in England with the causes and effects of absolute monarchy in Russia.

Answer 1

In England, constitutional monarchy developed from a series of legal and political constraints on the crown—Magna Carta, the Civil War and Glorious Revolution—together with a rising commercial class and an assertive Parliament that demanded legal protections and religious settlement. In Russia, absolute monarchy grew out of Mongol-era centralization, weak urban/bourgeois intermediaries, Orthodox Church support, and rulers (Ivan IV, the Romanovs, Peter the Great) who concentrated power to govern a vast, multiethnic territory. The effect in England was durable limits on royal authority, parliamentary sovereignty, rule of law, protection of property and commerce, and relative political stability that aided economic development. The effect in Russia was a highly centralized autocratic state with a powerful bureaucracy and military, entrenched serfdom and social inequality, slower institutional pluralism, and long-term tensions that helped produce revolutionary change.