Institutional trust and multilevel government in the European Union: Congruence or compensation?

Abstract

Does trust in national institutions foster or hinder trust in the institutions of the European Union (EU)? There is no agreement in the literature on popular support for the EU about the direction of the relationship between trust in national and European institutions. Some scholars argue that both will be positively related, others have proposed the opposite hypothesis: low levels of trust in national institutions will lead citizens to higher levels of support for the EU. We argue that both hypotheses are true but operate at different levels: whereas more trusting citizens tend to be so in both the national and the European arenas, we also find that at the country level the relationship is negative: living in a country with highly trusted and well-performing institutions hinders trust in the European Parliament. We test our hypotheses using data from the European Social Survey and Hierarchical Linear Modeling.

Determinants of Trust in Institutions in Times of Crisis: Survey‐Based Evidence from the European Union

“…This is consistent with similar finding by Munoz et al . () who find that when the performance of national institutions increases, trust in the European institutions tends to weaken. The cyclical component of the unemployment rate carries the expected negative sign for all EU institutions but does not seem to significantly affect trust in the national government (similar findings by Hudson, ; Wälti, ), when robust standard errors are employed.…”

The loss of trust in the European Union during the great recession since 2007: The role of heuristics from the national political system

“…According to this perspective, attitudes toward the EU are derived from attitudes toward other levels of government, such as the national government, because citizens know much more about their domestic politics than they do about EU level politics. Likewise Munoz et al (2011) show that, at the individual level, trust in national institutions is strongly and positively correlated with trust in European institutions. This does not preclude the possibility that country level trust in national institutions is negatively correlated with trust in the EU.…”

Introduction: the differentiated politicisation of European governance

“…She finds that '[c]itizens use domestic realities as proxies for their attitudes towards the EU' (Armingeon and Ceka 2014;Rohrschneider and Loveless 2010). In some countries, a negative assessment of national politics is associated with a positive attitude towards European integration because citizens see the EU as a lifebuoy to protect them from the incompetence of national politicians (Munoz et al 2011). In Germany and Italy, for example, citizens who dislike national politics because of corruption or historical militarism have a positive attitude towards European integration.…”