The World's Longest Running Governments

Japan's imperial institution is the oldest continuous hereditary monarchy in the world. The legendary founding date of 660 BC is treated as mythological by historians, but documented imperial rule reaches back at least to the 5th or 6th century AD, still more than 1,400 years of unbroken dynastic succession, and the institution has never been abolished.

The traditional count reaches 126 emperors, ending with Naruhito, who acceded in 2019. The dynasty claims descent from the sun goddess Amaterasu; historians generally treat emperors from roughly the 6th century, beginning around Emperor Kinmei, as verifiable figures.

For most of Japanese history the emperor reigned but did not rule. From 1192 to 1868, real power belonged to shoguns, hereditary military governors, while the imperial court in Kyoto held ceremonial and religious authority. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 rebuilt the emperor into the symbolic center of a rapidly modernizing state.

After Japan's defeat in 1945, Emperor Hirohito publicly renounced any claim to divinity, and the 1947 constitution redefined the emperor as "the symbol of the State and of the unity of the people," with no governing power. Naruhito became emperor in 2019 after his father, Akihito, became the first Japanese monarch to abdicate in about two centuries.

Denmark's monarchy is one of the oldest in Europe with a documented, unbroken line of succession. King Harald Bluetooth united much of Denmark in the 10th century, and the monarchy has continued without interruption since. In 1849 the country became a constitutional monarchy, moving political power to an elected parliament while keeping the Crown as head of state.

The Jelling stones, raised by Harald around 965, are often called Denmark's "birth certificate": one carries the oldest known inscription of the name "Denmark." The current monarch, King Frederik X, who acceded in January 2024, traces his line back through more than 50 rulers to Harald's father, Gorm the Old.

The June Constitution of 1849 (Grundloven) ended the absolute monarchy that had been formally established in 1660, and created a two-chamber parliament. The constitution has been revised five times, most recently in 1953, when it replaced the two chambers with a single Folketing and allowed women to inherit the throne.

That 1953 change made it possible for Margrethe II to become queen in 1972. She reigned for 52 years, the second-longest reign of any Danish monarch after Christian IV's (1588-1648), before abdicating in favor of her son in 2024. Today the monarch is a nonpolitical head of state who formally appoints governments but holds no independent power.

The Swiss Confederation dates its founding to 1291, when three rural communities, Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, signed a Federal Charter pledging mutual defense and cooperation. That alliance grew, canton by canton, into the modern nation of Switzerland.

The 1291 Federal Charter (Bundesbrief), preserved in a museum in Schwyz, was a defensive pact among valley communities, not a state. The Confederation reached 13 members by 1513 and has 26 cantons today. The great powers formally recognized Swiss permanent neutrality at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and no foreign army has occupied the country in modern times.

A short civil war, the Sonderbund War of 1847, lasted under a month and killed about 100 people. Its settlement produced the federal constitution of 1848, which turned a loose alliance into a federal republic with a bicameral parliament and a seven-member executive, the Federal Council, whose presidency rotates yearly.

The constitution was completely rewritten in 1874 and again in 1999, but the 1848 framework, including its unusual reliance on frequent national referendums, has never been overthrown. Switzerland did not grant women the vote in federal elections until 1971, and it joined the United Nations only in 2002.