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I don't follow your terminology or your reasoning. What you want to call "The Symbolic Sovereign" boils down to a (reasonably) independent judiciary/Supreme Court/High Court + (optionally) a constitutional monarch or ceremonial president, which the US does not have as a separate office (that gap gets filled by other nonprofits, watchdogs, civic bodies, activists like Leonard Leo, media organizations, churches, commentators like Jon Stewart, interest groups, lobbyists, authors). Couldn't we just call that "rule of law + an independent civil society + media"? But the US Supreme Court is(/used to be) credible not because it rarely took action, but because justices and their rulings (and the appointment process) were non-partisan. Pre-Citizens United (2010), anyway. Post-2013 the US now has unlimited untraceable dark money in politics, amplified by social media to inject influence into the political process. I think that renders it utterly irrelevant now whether a country has a popular referendum process (or else uses the executive or legislature to change things). Clearly this leaked into other countries. At least a-decade-and-a-half ago. If you have enough money you can now pervert/coopt any of these. The details are irrelevant (unless you're doing a post-mortem). Scott Galloway keeps warning about increasing inequality of wealth in US politics: this video You don't want to talk about social media + money replacing discourse, post-2010. I think that intentional omission alone inva