thomblake comments on Voting is like donating thousands of dollars to charity - Less Wrong
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Check out the relevant Wikipedia page, for starters. The Divine Right of Kings as a notion went back to medieval times, when rulers would only rule with the blessing of the Pope, though the theory so named was not spelled out until later.
Note that the Divine Right of Kings was refuted in 1689 by John Locke, and I've heard it said that he was kicking a dead horse.
I'm not very impressed with the Wikipedia article on the subject. It seems to conflate several different theories of civil authority that were historically used in opposition to each other. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, The Divine Right of Kings asserts that:
If I'm not mistaken, The Mandate from Heaven and medieval divine right theories were generally thought to limit a kings power (by making it subject to revocation by religious authority), whereas The Divine Right of Kings (the Post-Reformation concept; note the capitalization) seeks to expand monarchical power. In any case, it would be wise not to update very strongly on my vague impressions from my university days (which are somewhat hazy and long before I started using spaced repetition software).