TY  - JOUR
U1  - Wissenschaftlicher Artikel
A1  - Schomaker, Rahel M.
A1  - Kappler, Moritz
A1  - Verhoest, Koen
A1  - Guaschino, Edoardo
T1  - How do elite core actors assess trust in national and EU authorities? The varying role of generalised trust at different governmental levels
JF  - Comparative European Politics: CEP
N2  - 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 explai-ning 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 poli-tical 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 stakehol-ders 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 simila-rity 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.
Y1  - 2024
UR  - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41295-024-00400-9
SN  - 1472-4790 (print) ; 1740-388X (online)
SS  - 1472-4790 (print) ; 1740-388X (online)
N1  - online first
PB  - Palgrave Macmillan
CY  - Basingstoke
ER  -