Page "Constitutional monarchy" Paragraph 13

Following the Unification of Germany, Otto von Bismarck rejected the British model.

In the kind of constitutional monarchy established under the Constitution of the German Empire which Bismarck inspired, the Kaiser retained considerable actual executive power, and the Prime Minister needed no parliamentary vote of confidence and ruled solely by the imperial mandate.

However, this model of constitutional monarchy was discredited and abolished following Germany's defeat in the First World War.

Later on, Fascist Italy could also be considered as a " constitutional monarchy " of a kind, in the sense that there was a king as the titular head of state while actual power was held by Benito Mussolini under a constitution.

This eventually discredited the Italian monarchy and led to its abolition in 1946.

After the Second World War, surviving European monarchies almost invariably adopted some variant of the constitutional monarchy model originally developed in Britain.