EVOLUTION OF MONARCHY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND: FROM ABSOLUTE POWER TO A SYMBOLIC ROLE

This study examines the evolution of the British monarchy from an institution of absolute sovereign authority to one that performs a largely symbolic and constitutional role.Existing accounts of this transformation tend to divide between legal-constitutional narratives, which describe a gradual and largely consensual transfer of power to Parliament, and structural readings, which treat the same events as expressions of underlying class conflict; the two are rarely combined within a single explanatory frame, and both rest substantially on scholarship that predates the institutions most recent challenges. This research addresses that gap by asking how and why the British monarchy lost direct political authority while remaining a functioning national institution.Methodologically,it adopts a qualitative,documentary approach, analysing primary constitutional texts, canonical political theory and historical scholarship. The study is framed jointly within classical social contract theory, which traces the philosophical logic of the transition through Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu and Rousseau, and a Marxist structural perspective, which situates the same transition within shifting socio-economic power.