Originally posted by
[email protected] 10 2005, 01:20 PM
. The Dali Lama created a constitution with a clouse that he can be voted out be the people.
Not when he was in power he didn't. He was both king and high priest: that's what theocrat means. And the Dalai Lama continues to excercise unchallenged control over the exile communties in India. I give a rather repressive example at the beginning of my article linked above. Actions speak louder than words, and the constitution decreed by the Tibetan government-in-exile remains merely a piece of paper.
The main difference with the reincarnate-lama monarchy is it guaranteed the new monarch wouldn't be born until a few years after the old one died; so there inevitably were long regencies between monarchs. Most Dalai Lamas were also short-lived - only 3 of the 14 ever grew old enough to assume power. Melvyn Goldstein, a leading historian of Tibet, suggests this may have been, in part, because they were often poisoned by rivals in the clerical hierarchy or nobility. If that's accurate, perhaps the current office-holder owes his long life to the Chinese Revolution? (In part because the sky-high infant mortality rates and low life expectancy of traditional Tibetan society would clearly provide a simpler partial explanation.)
This made for a weak central power and let local nobles, heads of monasteries, etc excercise the real power in their areas. They tended to block anything even slightly progressive the central government might attempt.
It was, in fact, the worst theocracy in the world, and the most resistant to change.