Marching to the Beat of a Different Drum: Royalty, Women, and Ideology in the Sultanate of Brunei Darussalam

Abstract

Unlike the other monarchies considered in this issue, where the focus was on the relationship between the monarch and gender justice within a framework of democratic constitutionalism, Brunei is a case study of monarchy and gender justice in an absolute monarchy. Although this monarchical model is out of step with reforms elsewhere it accords with familiar, albeit rejected, antecedents in western thought. Plato’s Republic idealised rule by a philosophical, benevolent, and wise dictator and the medieval writings of Christian theologians like St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas further developed the concept of a king ruling by divine right but with a duty to rule according to divine natural law as interpreted through Christian theology. In Muslim polities, a parallel concept is rule by Allah’s vice regent: a Sultan mandated by, and answerable only to, Allah [God]. Today in the Sultanate of Brunei this ancient, and arguably anachronistic, form of governance successfully operates in an ethnic, religious, and culturally plural society. This article postulates that unlike the monarchies of Europe and Japan where “divine rule” was discarded, Brunei’s Constitution endorses rule by divine will. With all power—executive, legislative, judicial and religious—consolidated in the hands of one man, the consequence is a stable and affluent society but at the expense of liberties and rights for its people. Women, along with ethnic and religious minorities, are excluded from positions of power and the throne, but all this could be reversed were it the Sultan’s will.