Monarchism is the advocacy of the establishment, preservation, or restoration of a monarchy as a form of government in a nation. A monarchist is an individual who supports this form of government out of principle, independent from the person, the monarch.

In this system, the Monarch may be the person who sits on the throne, a pretender, or someone who would otherwise inhabit the throne but has been deposed.

In 1687-88, the Glorious Revolution and the overthrow of King James II established the principles of constitutional monarchy, which would later be worked out by Montesquieu and other thinkers. However, absolute monarchy, theorized by Hobbes in the Leviathan (1651), remained a dominant principle. In the 18th century, Voltaire and others encouraged "enlightened absolutism", which was embraced by the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II and Catherine II of Russia.

Absolutism continued to be the dominant political principle of sovereignty until the 1789 French Revolution and the regicide against Louis XVI, which established the concept of popular sovereignty upheld by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Monarchy began to be contested by the Republican principe. Counterrevolutionaries, such as Joseph de Maistre or Louis de Bonald, sought the restoration of the Ancien Régime, divided in the three estates of the realm, and the divine right of kings.