Closeness to citizens as a source for political trust? A comparison of opinions on local parliaments and the European Parliament in 12 European regions

Abstract

In everyday political life, closeness or proximity to citizens is often cited as a key factor in generating political trust. Closeness to citizens is regularly taken for granted, especially at the local level in the European Union (EU). Our paper compares two main indicators of closeness to citizens, namely personal interactions (facework commitment) and the role of perceived expertise (faceless commitment). It then asks if a transfer (or spillover) of trust from the local level to the European level can be observed. Our analysis is based on data from a novel survey in six EU member states and 12 regions (N = 8700), which aimed to determine citizens’ proximity to and trust in parliaments in the multi-level system of the EU. The results of the paper highlight the importance of generating ‘faceless commitment’ (perceived expertise) as an indicator for closeness to citizens, which can be an important driver for increasing political trust. We found no spillover effects of trust from the subnational level to higher levels in the EU, which raises doubts about the potential of the subnational level to serve as a source and a promoter for trust in European institutions.

Points for practitioners

Personal contact is not always key for generating trust. Citizens expect politicians to rest their decision-making upon perceived living conditions and opinions of their constituencies instead. Large institutions like the European Parliament can benefit from these results since they can hardly seek direct contact with all citizens. Social sciences data and research can be one source of information to gather such expertise about living conditions. Trust cannot be simply transferred from one level (subnational) to another level (national, European).

Keywords

Trust parliaments closeness to citizens spillover effects

Introduction

Distance, be it physical or mental, is by no means a good ingredient for generating trust. The more distant a person, group or institution is, the more challenging the development and maintenance of trust appears. Giddens (1990) stresses that trust in modern societies has most often to be developed in contexts of time–space distanciation. This requires special ‘clues’ from which trustworthiness can be derived: according to Giddens (1990), expertise and knowledge are the main sources in modern societies in this respect. Expertise includes knowledge about the living conditions and opinions of citizens, if representation is taken serious in modern democracies. While trust in premodern societies was established by personal contact (facework commitment), trust in modern societies is developed by faceless commitment, which relies on expert knowledge.

Recent corruption scandals, such as in the European Parliament surrounding its former Vice-President Eva Kaili, have significantly shaken the already fragile trust in an institution that is perceived by many citizens as ‘distant’. One way to restore shaken trust is through spillover effects of trust between different institutions (Ares et al., 2017; Torcal and Christmann, 2019). In addition, seeking direct contacts to citizens – as can be observed in times of elections – is often performed by politicians to present themselves as trustworthy. It is here that we have focused our research in this paper, where we have sought to observe (1) how trust in parliaments is generated and (2) how different levels of the European Union (EU) influence each other. Political trust and support for a political system are closely linked (van der Meer and Hakhverdian, 2016). Citizens must be able to expect political actors to use their authority to adopt policies in the general interest without continuous oversight by citizens (van der Meer, 2010). However, if there is a decline in trust, or even a lack of trust, then political support declines, calling the legitimacy of a political system into question (van der Meer, 2010). In a dense institutional network such as the EU multi-level system, determining in what way citizens trust which institutions at different levels is complicated, as is identifying what connections exist between different institutions. Our object of study – trust in parliaments at the various levels of the EU – can therefore serve as a valuable case study of the phenomena of ‘nested trust’ and help to clarify the relationships and mechanisms through which trust takes effect in institutions in hierarchical systems. To this end, in our paper, we focus on two main research questions:

What influence do different indicators of closeness to citizens (facework commitment and faceless commitment) have on trust in parliaments?

Are there spillover effects when it comes to trust in parliaments, and can we assume from the ‘proximity thesis’ (Proszowska et al., 2023: 170) that local parliaments can serve as a source of trust in other parliaments?

In answering these questions, our article makes an important contribution to understanding the possibilities and limits of the transfer of trust between institutions. Furthermore, by considering closeness to citizens as an independent variable in our analysis, we can identify approaches to strengthening trust in parliaments. In addition, we advocate for a more nuanced understanding of closeness to citizens, which we argue must be established primarily through ‘faceless commitment’, since trust in modern societies – to a large extent – is not developed in situations of co-presence.

In our paper, we will proceed as follows: in the next section, we will outline our conceptual framework for understanding political trust in the EU multi-level system. We examine closeness to citizens as a source of trust in political institutions and use facework commitment and faceless commitment as two different indicators for closeness to citizens. In the third section, we explain the methodological approach, the survey method and the indicators used. Our hypotheses are then tested in the fourth section on the basis of a population survey carried out in six EU member states. In order to answer our research questions, we compare indicators of trust in local parliament and the European Parliament, which can be regarded as the two most distant representative institutions in terms of EU's multi-level system; here, we also analyse spillover effects. The paper concludes with a discussion and evaluation of our hypotheses in the fifth section, and, in the sixth and final section, we draw our conclusions and suggest possible avenues for future research.

The relationship between closeness to citizens and trust in the European Union multi-level system

Trust in parliaments is driven by the idea that citizens must be able to expect parliaments to use their authority to adopt policies in the general interest without continuous monitoring by citizens (van der Meer, 2010). In the EU’s ‘multi-level parliamentary system’ (Abels and Eppler, 2015), parliaments at the subnational level are considered to be particularly close to citizens and to enjoy high levels of trust compared to those at the national and European levels (Munoz, 2017). On the other hand, the EU is often described as distant from its citizens and symbolizes (too much) technocracy, bureaucracy and centralization (Lobo and McManus, 2020). The underlying assumption of the potency of the subnational level with respect to the European level is driven by the assumption of spillover effects; that is to say, the possibility that reputation might be transferred from one institution to another (Bachmann et al., 2015). Many studies in the ‘multi-level’ nature of trust take national political institutions as their main reference point (Proszowska et al., 2023). According to this approach, two main strands can be identified to explain trust in the institutions of the EU. Firstly, there is the ‘congruence theory’ or the ‘equal assessments model’ (Anderson, 1998; Munoz et al., 2011; Torcal and Christmann, 2019), which states that citizens assess the European Parliament congruently based on their attitudes towards their national parliament; here, high trust in the national parliament leads to high trust in the European Parliament. Secondly, there is the ‘compensation theory’ or the ‘different assessments model’ (Ares et al., 2017; Kritzinger, 2003; Sánchez-Cuenca, 2000), according to which citizens set general benchmarks for trust building and assess the EU against this background; here, the more citizens trust the national parliament the less likely they are to trust the European Parliament (and vice versa). Contrary to these two prior approaches, a further approach argues that citizens fundamentally differentiate between the levels in a multi-level system in their trust assessments (Armingeon and Cekar, 2014; Harteveld et al., 2013); here, the trust assessments of different parliaments in the EU multi-level system are carried out independently of each other. According to this approach, we assume that citizens have at least a vague understanding of which competences parliaments at the various levels in the EU possess. This perceived effectiveness of parliaments, which is different in federalized/regionalized countries compared to centralized countries, influences the evaluation of trust by citizens to some extent. Since our sample includes federal states such as Austria and Germany, where levels of decision-making are closely intertwined, we expect citizens to perceive parliaments at the local and regional level in these countries as more powerful, more effective and hence more trustworthy. This leads us to our first hypothesis:

H1: Local parliaments in federal states (Austria, Germany) and regionalized states (Spain) are perceived as more powerful and more effective by citizens, and hence receive higher amounts of trust.

While there are a number of studies of trust in local political authorities (Fitzgerald and Wolak, 2014), the links between trust in local parliaments and that in the European Parliament are less well researched (Proszowska, 2022; Vetter, 2002). This research gap is worth noting, as various surveys regularly emphasize the high level of trust placed in the local level compared to other political levels (Denters, 2002; Steenvoorden and van der Meer, 2021). The concept of ‘cognitive proximity’ (Proszowska et al., 2023) explicitly addresses the local level as a reference point for assessing trust in the EU multi-level system; here, the local level is the most trusted of all political levels, as it is the closest and most familiar to citizens through its handling of matters of public interest (Christensen and Lægreid, 2005). Even more, direct contact between citizens and public institutions at the local level can be established easily due to physical proximity. In modern, complex and highly networked societies, however, it is becoming increasingly difficult to establish ‘thick trust’ (i.e., interpersonal trust), through direct contact and interactions with others (Fuchs et al., 2002). Encounters are increasingly taking place virtually as a result of the spread of new technologies (Song and Lee, 2016).

However, closeness to citizens in the context of politics does not only have to be based on direct contact. Politicians must credibly convey to citizens that their concerns are perceived and listened to (Patzelt, 2003). Knowledge about the living conditions and opinions of citizens is a pre-condition for implementing citizens’ needs in political decision-making. The importance of this knowledge and expertise has been captured by Giddens (1990) with the notion of ‘faceless commitment’. Giddens argues that trust in modern societies cannot be established by personal contact only, as was the case in premodern times. Referring to time–space distanciation, which is typical of modern societies, Giddens (1990) stresses that ‘clues’ other than personal contact are needed from which trust can be derived. These ‘clues’ are expertise, professionalism and knowledge, which can provide ‘guarantees’ of outcomes, like informed political decisions to some extent, and hence produce reliability and trustworthiness. Accordingly, Giddens (1990: 88) defines expertise as ‘faith in the workings of knowledge’ (emphasis by authors). In contrasting personal and impersonal relationships, Giddens develops a dichotomy of ‘faceless commitment’ and ‘facework commitment’ to address different ways of generating trust in modern societies. Giddens states that facework commitment is always established in situations of co-presence, while faceless commitment describes the development of faith in symbolic tokens or expert systems (Giddens, 1990). Thus, facework commitment is dependent on physical distance and frequent contacts, while faceless commitment grounds on the perceived expertise of the ‘other’. According to Patzelt (2003), one element of such an expertise would be to be aware of and be well-acquainted with the opinions and living conditions of citizens, thus fulfilling the most basic task of a representative institution.

Although Giddens (1990) elaborates a new form of trust generation in his model on modern societies, he emphasizes that trust in general is related to absence in time and space (Giddens, 1990: 33): ‘There would be no need to trust anyone whose activities were continually visible and whose thought processes were transparent, or to trust any system whose workings were wholly known and understood’. Giddens’ notion of trust is therefore located at an abstract level and captures trust as a vague phenomenon. His focus on expertise (faceless commitment) speaks to a specific aspect of trust that is also a core component in other recent models on trust, such as the ABCD-Model (Blanchard, 2013) and the IMT-Model of trust (Mayer et al., 1995).¹ These models have been developed in organizational studies (Halmburger et al., 2014) and rely on an interactional approach for generating trust. Interactions serve as a basis for a detailed calculation of components of trust (namely competence, benevolence, integrity), which is referred from personal encounters. Giddens (1990) in contrast stresses the vague aspects inherent to trust, induced by a disembedment of individuals in time and space, which is typical of modern societies. Although citizens and abstract systems of trust ‘meet’ each other at certain ‘access points’ (e.g., elections in political systems), an essential component of trust in abstract systems is the perception of expertise (Giddens, 1990).

Based on our research questions and the conceptual framework established in this section, we have formulated the following hypotheses regarding trust in local parliaments and the European Parliament.

Closeness to citizens

H2: Based on the theoretical ideas expressed by Giddens (1990), we assume that closeness to citizens in the form of perceived expertise/faceless commitment (i.e., perceived knowledge about citizens’ opinions and living conditions) has a greater influence on the formation of trust in parliaments than direct contact/facework commitment.

Nested trust and spillover effects of trust

In our data analysis, we compare theories of ‘institutional saliency’ and ‘proximity’ to analyse spillover effects on trust in local and European parliaments:

H3: Based on the ‘proximity thesis’ (Proszowska et al., 2023), we assume that trust in the local level, in respective local parliaments, is associated with trust in the European Parliament.

H4: Based on the ‘institutional saliency thesis’ (Proszowska et al., 2023), we assume that there is a correlation between trust in the national parliament and trust in the European Parliament.

Control variables: Age, gender, education and political knowledge

We included several control variables to our regression models, including age, gender and education. In addition, recent studies demonstrated the effect of political knowledge on trust (Hobolt, 2012). Since political knowledge can be associated with gender (Fortin-Rittberger & Ramstetter, 2021), we cross-checked this relationship on a bivariate level first. We found no influence of gender on self-assessed political knowledge in our data. A reason for this missing correlation could be the survey question we used to examine political knowledge. Fortin-Rittberger and Ramstetter (2021) state that women assess their political knowledge differently to men, especially when it comes to knowledge tests in surveys. While men more often ‘guess’ correct answers in such tests, women feel more comfortable reporting their political knowledge from their own point of view, as we have made possible by the wording of our item.

Underlying data and survey method

In our empirical analysis, we use data from a population survey conducted as part of the REGIOPARL research project in 2022.² The survey was conducted online by the Talkonline Institute. The questionnaire was developed by the REGIOPARL project team and translated into respective national languages by expert staff members. Our survey aimed to make the notion of ‘closeness to citizens’ relevant to the different levels of the EU multi-level system. In accordance with the research focus of the project, the survey was conducted in six EU member states in a selection of 12 regions in these countries.

The selection of countries for the survey was based on parameters such as the geographical distribution within the EU and representation of both centralized and federal states. Also contributing to the selection of individual regions were criteria such as population size, the strength of the economy, regional identity and the Regional Authority Index (RAI) (Hooghe et al., 2016; see Supplementary Material Table 1). The RAI (Hooghe et al., 2016) maps the autonomy of regional authorities vis-à-vis national actors in political decision-making along 10 dimensions. The index covers a range of values from 0 to 30 points. While regions in Austria, Germany and Spain score high on this index, the Czech Republic, France and Poland have only low RAI scores. In addition, Supplementary Material Figure 1 informs about general legislative competences of regional parliaments and confirms what the RAI already illustrates: regions in federal or regionalized states dispose over more legislative competences than regions in centralized or unitary states. The Local Authority Index (LAI) (Ladner et al., 2019) measures local authorities using comparable indicators to the RAI at the local level. The LAI can range from 0 to 37 points, with a mean value of 21.42 for all 57 indexed countries. In contrast to the classification provided by the RAI, local authorities in our case selection enjoy comparatively high to medium-high local autonomy (Supplementary Material Table 1) and differences between countries are low. Different degrees of authority, especially at the regional level, might also influence the perceived effectiveness and hence the evaluation of trust in parliaments by citizens, as we hypothesized in H1.

The basis for data collection were online panels of the Talkonline Institute or its project partner institutes. The selection of potential respondents was based on a quota system using population census data.³ The participants were invited several times to be interviewed by Talkonline.⁴ The quota target was achieved in all participating regions (see Supplementary Material Table 2), although respondents with lower levels of education were difficult to persuade to participate, especially in the two Polish regions. The distribution according to gender is balanced in all regions, as is the distribution by age group (according to the quota target).

Operationalization

The dependent variable used measures trust in the parliaments on various levels in the EU: ‘In general, how much do you trust the following parliamentary institutions?’ Respondents rated four institutions on a five-point scale from 1 = no trust to 5 = very high trust: the local parliament, the regional parliament, the national parliament and the European Parliament. We aimed to ensure that respondents had an accurate understanding of the institutions and the geographic and political scope we are interested in by three different measures. Firstly, we provided an explanation at the beginning of the questionnaire:

Please note: If the term ‘region’ is used in the following questions, we always address XXX. Similar we use the term ‘regional’ for XXX. The term ‘your state’ always refers to XXX, as well as ‘regional parliament’ is used to paraphrase XXX.

Secondly, we added a control question at the beginning of the survey asking respondents to mark the region they are living in. Although we could retrieve this information from our technical data as well, we aimed to ‘prime’ respondents to which region we are going to refer to in the consecutive questions. Thirdly, we asked translators to use country-specific names of the respective institutions.⁵ According to the principles of intercultural research (Smith, 2004), we instructed translators to take care of both equivalence of items and adequacy/appropriateness of items.

We computed nested models in order to better assess which effects are achieved by socio-structural characteristics (model M1), which effects can be explained by the variables ‘closeness to citizens’ and ‘self-assessed knowledge’ (model M2) and how the explanatory power of the model subsequently improves when trust in other parliaments is also integrated into the analysis (model M3).

We use the following independent variables for our analysis.

Self-assessed knowledge of citizens about different parliaments: ‘When it comes to different parliamentary bodies, how well informed do you feel in general about the work and tasks of the members of the different parliaments?’, on a scale from 1 = very well informed to 5 = very poorly informed.

As a measure for faceless commitment, we chose an indicator that maps the perceived expertise of MPs about citizens: ‘How well informed do you think the MPs of these parliaments are about the opinions and circumstances of citizens like you?’, on a scale from 1 = very well informed to 5 = very poorly informed.

As an indicator of facework commitment, we used contact(s) with parliament in the last five years: ‘And have you had contact with one or more members of the following parliaments in the last five years, whether by letter, email, telephone or in person?’, measured on a binary scale of 1 = ‘yes, I have had contact once in the last five years’ or 0 = ‘no, I have had no contact at all’.

The following socio-structural characteristics were also considered in the data analysis:

age in years, measured by collecting the date of birth;

gender;

highest level of education, measured according to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) classification and dichotomized into two options, ‘without upper secondary qualification’ and ‘with upper secondary qualification or higher’ for the analysis;

region: ‘In which region do you live?’ with possible regions specified as closed-ended answers.

Results

We start our empirical analysis by comparing the level of trust placed in the different parliaments (see Supplementary Material Figure 1) compared to trust in local parliaments and the European Parliament. In addition, we get a first impression of how trust in parliaments is evaluated in the different regions and countries. It is noticeable that local parliament enjoys the highest trust values in each region. Likewise, high trust values can be observed for the respective regional parliaments. The national parliaments enjoy high levels of trust in the two regions of Austria and the two regions of Germany, as well as in the two Czech and French regions. In the surveyed regions in Spain and Poland, on the other hand, the European Parliament enjoys slightly more trust than the respective national parliaments. Although it can be generally observed that the trust values decrease the more abstract and distant the respective institution is from the citizens surveyed, the European Parliament, for example, still enjoys comparatively high trust values. Therefore, in the next step of our analysis, we will analyse different methods of making contact with parliaments (in person and virtual).

An item battery (with multiple-choice answers) in our survey asked about different types of contact citizens have with members of parliament (MPs) and parliaments (Supplementary Material Table 3). When one compares the different parliaments, it is noticeable that for local parliaments all types of contact were made comparatively frequently. Across all levels, however, the level of contact can be considered low, which corresponds to the results of similar surveys (Hilmer et al., 2014; Rauh et al., 2013). Given this low incidence, it is questionable whether in-person and virtual contacts can play an important role in building trust in parliaments. If one compares local parliaments with the European Parliament, the latter clearly provides fewer opportunities for face-to-face contact. However, even when it comes to virtual contacts, we find few interactions between respondents and the European Parliament. We therefore want to consider in our further analysis, in addition to demonstrable contacts, other possible factors influencing trust in parliaments; these additional factors will take into account the perception of mutual knowledge of citizens and MPs.

Supplementary Material Table 4 examines factors influencing trust in local parliaments by means of a linear multiple regression analysis. In the first step (model M1), where only socio-structural characteristics of the respondents are examined, effects can be considered extremely small. Only the influence of education and the slightly higher trust in the local parliament in the two Spanish regions are worth mentioning. Overall, however, the share of explained variance is very low at 11.7% (adjusted R²). In model M2, we add three variables that measure contacts with local parliament as well as citizens’ self-assessed level of knowledge about the work of MPs and respondents’ perceptions about MPs’ knowledge of citizens’ opinions and living conditions. Of these three variables, actual contacts between citizens and local parliament have the lowest influence on trust in local parliament. The variable with the greatest influence is the respondents’ self-assessed knowledge about MPs. If one compares the two indicators of closeness to citizens, one finds that contacts are less relevant for generating trust in local parliament than the perceived knowledge of MPs (i.e., their perceived expertise).⁶ The explanatory power of this model is significantly increased compared to model M1: 51.1% of the variance of the dependent variable ‘trust in local parliament’ can be explained. Finally, in model M3, the model fit is significantly increased by adding the three variables that measure trust in the other three parliaments (regional, national and European; adjusted R² = 0.681). Again, socio-structural characteristics (age, gender, education and place of residence) show only small effects on the dependent variable ‘trust in local parliament’. Individuals’ own perceived knowledge about the local parliament and the perceived knowledge of local MPs about the opinions and living conditions of citizens have significant effects. Direct contact has no influence in this model either; in order to have trust in the local parliament, it is more important to have the feeling that local MPs know about citizens’ opinions and living conditions. Trust in the regional parliament has the strongest effect in the model: if this trust is high, trust in local parliament is also high. This correlation cannot be established for the other two parliaments, the national and the European Parliament.

When we employ model 1 to explain trust in the European Parliament (Supplementary Material Table 5), it shows similar patterns as in the analysis of trust in local parliament. Although some effects of the socio-structural variables age, gender, education and place of residence turn out to be significant, the coefficients can be considered low or very low. The variable ‘education’ has the largest effect in this model; however, the share of explained variance of the dependent variable is to be considered very low at 5.1%. In model 2, we have again included three additional variables: two variables address closeness to citizens (directly via contacts and indirectly via the perception of members of the European Parliament’s (MEPs’) knowledge of citizens) and one variable measures respondents’ self-assessed level of knowledge about the European Parliament. As in model M1, age, gender, education and place of residence have very little effect on trust. However, self-assessed knowledge about the European Parliament turns out to be a significant determinant again. If one compares the two indicators of closeness to citizens, it is again noticeable that contacts with the European Parliament do not play a role in confidence-building. Much more important is the perception that MEPs know about the opinions and living conditions of citizens. The explanatory value of model M2 is itself very satisfactory with 44.1% explained variance (adjusted R²), although this value improves even further in model M3 (adjusted R² of 63.9%). This third model also takes into account possible spillover effects of trust from other parliaments (local, regional and national parliaments). Even though the size of the effects changes somewhat, similar patterns can again be observed: the relatively low influence of socio-structural characteristics, the more relevant influence of respondents’ subjective knowledge about the European Parliament and a remarkable influence of indirect closeness to citizens (i.e., the perception of MEPs’ knowledge about citizens). Although trust in local and regional parliament has significant effects on trust in the European Parliament, the values can be considered low. By contrast, trust in the respective national parliaments has a more substantial effect on trust in the European Parliament.

Discussion

In summary, both models show similarities in some areas. The influence of socio-structural variables can be considered low throughout. Respondents who rate their level of knowledge as high also feel a greater level of trust in the parliaments. Of the two indicators of closeness to citizens, faceless commitment, that is, the perception of MPs’ knowledge about the opinions and circumstances of citizens, is clearly more relevant for building trust than facework commitment. Although Proszowska et al. (2023) suggest that the local level is the one that is most familiar to citizens, it is clearly not used universally as a basis for evaluating the other levels. This observation supports our assumption that facework commitment (e.g., personal contacts⁷) is not necessarily decisive for the establishment of political trust or trust in institutions: especially at the abstract level of the European Parliament, trust must also be derived from other sources.

When one considers the picture that emerges from spillover effects in the two models, two patterns can be identified: (1) trust in the local parliament and trust in the regional parliament are associated and (2) trust in the national parliament shows a correlation with the trust in the European Parliament. Thus, we find support for the ‘institutional saliency thesis’ (H4) from our data, at least when it comes to the association between trust in the national parliament and the European Parliament. The ‘proximity thesis’ (H3), on the other hand, cannot be confirmed from our data: trust at the local level does not spill over to all other levels. This suggests that trust in subnational parliaments is subject to different evaluation criteria than national parliaments and the European Parliament. Nevertheless, our results also show comparatively good trust in the European Parliament and confirm our hypothesis that direct contact is not always the decisive factor for building trust (H2). In the case of the two institutions we analysed, local parliament and the European Parliament, perceived expertise (i.e., faceless commitment, the perception of MPs’ knowledge about the opinions and living conditions of the citizens) was far more relevant to being able to generate trust. Just as direct contact with MPs and institutions is shown to play a comparatively minor role, so too should we avoid overestimating the role of social media when it comes to generating trust. Our data show that these media are (still) a relatively minor form as a means of making contact with individuals. In addition, we found very minor evidence for country effects and have to reject hypothesis H1. It is probably a way too difficult task for the average respondent to infer from the competences of a parliament (if these are known at all) its efficiency and further trustworthiness.

The low influence of social-structural characteristics in our data analysis endorses approaches that not only attribute trust to individual characteristics or only to characteristics of institutions, but also understand trust as a relational concept (i.e., Bachmann et al., 2015; the ‘state–citizen relationship’, van der Meer, 2010: 530). This brings us to the limitations of our analysis. Although our survey addressed and queried all levels of the EU multi-level system in a large proportion of the questions, the special research interest of the project in regions and regional parliaments became evident in the introduction to the questionnaire and in some questions. This prioritization of the regional level may have had an effect on the results. A randomization of the mention of different levels in the questionnaire could yield further insight (see Brosius et al., 2020). Nevertheless, we decided against this approach as we were aware of the complexity created by asking about four levels (local, regional, national and European), especially for respondents with lower levels of education. Empirical findings show that respondents with a higher level of knowledge (i.e., about the workings of different parliaments) are more likely to evaluate political levels independently (Armingeon and Cekar, 2014; Harteveld et al., 2013).

Conclusions

Our analysis examined the relationship between closeness to citizens and trust in parliaments. We operationalized both direct contacts (facework commitment) and perceived expertise (faceless commitment). In this context, it seemed to us a logical corollary to also inquire about spillover effects of trust on the different parliamentary levels of the EU, which enabled us to investigate the thesis of proximity of citizens to local parliaments, particularly the effects of this proximity on the European Parliament. Our results suggest that respondents do indeed value the various parliaments in different ways. In addition, while we could also observe spillover effects, these displayed two patterns: commonalities between trust in local and regional parliaments and a further correlation of trust in the national parliament and the European Parliament. Further research should investigate these patterns by country-specific analysis to detect which directions these effects take when country-specific interactions are considered (see Dominioni et al., 2020).

The concept of closeness to citizens must be viewed in a more nuanced way, since facework commitment is becoming less important in modern societies. Access points like elections provide a rare opportunity where citizens and politicians have contact and trust is reestablished, enhanced or – at the reverse – endangered. Further research could add this rare point in time as another indicator for facework commitment. Nevertheless, Giddens (1990) argues that trust in modern societies has to be established and maintained at a high level of abstraction by faceless commitment most of the time. The expectation of citizens is therefore not (any longer) to get to know representatives of institutions in person or virtually, but to be convinced of their expertise and effectiveness. We want to emphasize the difference to complete issue-congruence between citizens and their representatives in this respect, since our item on perceived expertise addresses more general knowledge about the constituency as a basis for decision-making. We therefore challenge, with our results, the common assumption that the local level is closer to citizens only because of physical proximity, via which contacts can be established more easily.

With our research we have shed light on a hitherto under-studied field, namely the role of the local level, and local parliament more specifically, in the generation of trust in the EU. Our results enabled us to relativize the importance of direct contact and physical closeness in light of other factors for the building of trust. The perceived expertise of MPs was found to have a relevant influence on trust in the respective parliament. In order to establish this expertise, MPs do not always have to be in direct contact with citizens – social science studies and opinion polls can also be important sources of information. Future research could compare other possible factors of trust in local parliament and the European Parliament respectively, such as the perceived influence and effectiveness of political decision-making in the two institutions, or the sources from which citizens obtain their information about the work of the different parliaments. A common feature of the local and regional level is their presence in traditional, low-threshold media, which emphasizes once again demands for a Europeanization of national and subnational media in order to promote the development of trust. Finally, the mechanisms mentioned by Bachmann et al. (2015) for rebuilding trust are not dissimilar to the sources and mechanisms that must be used to establish trust in the first place: transparency and accountability. These should be considered essential features in both the establishment and maintenance of political trust, regardless of whether trust is generated by facework commitment or faceless commitment.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-ras-10.1177_00208523241268063 - Supplemental material for Closeness to citizens as a source for political trust? A comparison of opinions on local parliaments and the European Parliament in 12 European regions

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-ras-10.1177_00208523241268063 for Closeness to citizens as a source for political trust? A comparison of opinions on local parliaments and the European Parliament in 12 European regions by Elisabeth Donat and Simon Lenhart in International Review of Administrative Sciences

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and participants of the Entrust-Conference in Siena 2023 for their valuable comments on this paper. In addition, we would like to thank Matthew Perkins for English language review.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by Stiftung Forum Morgen, Austria.

ORCID iDs

Elisabeth Donat

Simon Lenhart

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

Elisabeth Donat is Senior Researcher at the department at the Department of European Policy and the Study of Democracy at the University for Continuing Education Krems, Austria.

Simon Lenhart is research associate at the Department of Political Science at FernUniversität Hagen, Germany.

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