How do elite core actors assess trust in national and EU authorities? The varying role of generalised trust at different governmental levels

Abstract In this paper, we position generalised trust as central to the debate on elites’ assessments of trust in EU multi-level governance. We leverage one of the most influential factors in explaining political trust in single-government studies to understand variations in trust towards political authorities at various levels. Departing from existing studies, we hypothesise the dual nature of generalised trust: while it influences how individuals assess their trust in political authorities, its impact varies depending on different degrees of perceived similarity of these authorities at either the national or the EU level. To test our hypotheses, we conducted an elite vignette experiment involving 567 decision-makers from public and private stakeholders within regulatory regimes in eight countries. The results reveal a significant positive effect of generalised trust on political trust when evaluating a national-level regulatory agency. However, trust assessments of EU-level regulatory agencies appear to be largely unaffected by generalised trust levels. Furthermore, we observed notable differences in trust assessment between private and public stakeholders, reinforcing our argument that similarity and community belonging underlie the influence of generalised trust on political trust. Our study suggests that EU-level political authorities may derive less benefit from high levels of generalised trust, compared to national political authorities. However, in instances where generalised trust is low, political authorities at the EU level have comparatively more opportunities to cultivate trust in them.