The crown: a survey about the Spanish monarchy

Abstract

The distinction between constitutional monarchies and republics constitutes a striking divide in how modern democracies are institutionalized. However, the lack of data about citizens' preferences for a monarchic or republican model of democracy has hindered the analysis of public opinion about this topic. This research note introduces a comprehensive survey that gauges citizens' attitudes towards the monarchy in Spain. The survey was fielded in late 2020 and provides unique information such as respondents' preferences about different models of democracy, how they define an ideal monarch, and their evaluations of whether current and former Spanish kings live up to these ideals. We first highlight the unique features of the dataset and provide a detailed account of the variables included. We then illustrate the potential of this survey for the study of political culture through descriptive analyses of some of the key variables included in the dataset.