On the ineluctable inner reverence

"At bottom, despite the differences in epochs and objectives, the representation of power has remained under the spell of monarchy. In political thought and analysis we still have not cut off the head of the king." (Jean L. Cohen, 1994)

Perhaps this observation, which I tend to agree with, has less to do with monarchy than it has to do with humanity's inner tendency towards hierarchical structures. That would actually be a no-brainer for anyone that knows the least bit of political theory; but the story goes, I think, deeper than this. Monarchy and hierarchy are not solely about power, as the quote above seems to suggest, but they're about a sense of the sacred as well. If you regard sacredness as yet another dimension of power which people needed to invent in order to justify and legitimize that power's existence in the first place, then this observation doesn't add much to the initial point made by Cohen, but if you tend to see the sacred more as something parallel, implied by power but also different from it - as I do - then the point changes. 
The fact that, as the author put it, the representation of power has still remained under the spell of the monarchy means not only that we tend to see power as centralized and hegemonic, but also that we tend to ascribe a certain ineluctable aura to it. The spell of the monarchy is a charming choice of words here, for pinpointing at the enchantment associated usually with magic (and the aura of the sacred I was referring to).
We don't just need to refer to a (political) power above us, we also want to idealize it. We don't just want to be part of a hierarchical structure, we want to have some trace of reverence for it. Monarchy may be well dead in many parts of the old and new world, but humanity still crowns its kings and queens in nearly all aspects of collective life.