Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

Personal union

Encyclopedia : P : PE : PER : Personal union


A personal union is a political union of two or more entities that, internationally, are considered separate states, but through established law, share the same head of state—hence also whatever political actions are vested in the head of state, but no (or very few) others. It is not to be confused with a federation, which internationally is considered as a single state.

Personal unions can arise for very different reasons, ranging from near coincidence (a princess who is already married to a king becomes pregnant, and their child inherits the crown of both countries) to virtual annexation (where a personal union sometimes was seen as a means of preventing uprisings). They can also be codified (the constitutions of the states clearly express that they shall be joined together) or non-codified (in which case they can easily be broken by e.g. different succession rules).

Because presidents of republics are ordinarily chosen from within the citizens of the state in question, personal unions are almost entirely a phenomenon of monarchies, and sometimes the term dual monarchy is used to signify a personal union between two monarchies. With the decline of their number during the 20th century, personal unions have become quite uncommon. Where they do exist, most notably between the Commonwealth Realms, they are now mostly ceremonial, as the Governor-General, in theory the representative of the Head of State, has only marginal political power, and is nominated by and has to take the advice of the local Head of Government.

There is a somewhat grey area between personal unions and federations, and the one has regularly grown into the other. This article is an attempt at listing some historical and contemporary personal unions.

  • Personal union with Poland 1003 - 1004 (Bohemia occupied by Poles)
  • Personal union with Poland 1300 - 1306 and Hungary 1301 - 1305 (Wenceslas II and Wenceslas III)
  • Personal union with Luxembourg 1313 - 1378 and 1383 - 1388
  • Personal union with Hungary 1490 - 1526 (Jagellon dynasty)
  • Personal union with Austria and Hungary 1526 - 1918 (except years 1619 - 1620)

This article or section may contain [No original researchoriginal research] or [Verifiabilityunverified] claims.
Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the [talk page] for details .

Warning about accuracy

The assumption is made in this section that Commonwealth Realms came into personal union with the United Kingdom at the time they were given complete freedom to legislate for themselves. The editors of Wikipedia have not been able to verify this assumption from an external source. You can help Wikipedia by finding a source for this assumption or by finding a source that specifies a different date.

Other possible dates that personal union could claim to have come about are:

  • Personal union with Belgium from 1885 to 1908, when it became a Belgian colony.

The

Duchies with peculiar rules for succession.

Main article: Unions of Sweden

See also

 


From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: