The King Has Lost His Crown? the Relationship between Support for the Monarchy and Social Trust in Belgium

In explaining cross-national variation in social trust, scholars have argued that political institutions are influential in enhancing trust in others. Recently, Bjørnskov (2007) underscored the importance of the role of monarchies in this. As a unifying symbol, monarchs are able to pacify past and future with the present, and are able to bind social cleavages that are politically represented by partisan institutions. This paper puts this macro-level model to a micro-level empirical test by questioning whether positive opinions towards the monarchy relate to social trust? We rely on the 2014 Belgian National Election Study which questioned about 2,000 Belgians about their political preferences and related social attitudes. Belgium – divided across linguistic lines – is ideally situated to test this unifying role of the monarchy. Contrary to the theory, regression analyses show a negative relationship between love for the crown and social trust: the most trusting citizens are most skeptical about the monarchy. Sub-national analyses show that this negative pattern can be attributed to Flanders. The complexity of our findings is enhanced by the fact that social trust is higher among those satisfied with democracy – by itself positively related to opinions towards the monarchy. We interpret the findings in opposite causal terms: peo ple low on trust are in need of political stability, which they ultimately can find in the role of the King, i.e. the monarchy.