From the Supranational to the International: The EU as a Proxy for Trust in the UN

Building on research about attitudes on the European Union, this study contributes to the largely ignored issue of trust in the United Nations. Reflecting on insights from American public opinion research and extending cue theory, it argues that trust in the European Union acts as a proxy for trust in the United Nations. It furthers illustrates that the less information about, and the less interest in, international organizations citizens have, the more likely they are to use the EU as a proxy for assessing institutional structures at the international level. While existing studies have systematically shown that citizens take cues from national political institutions in order to form an opinion about institutions at the transnational level, this study illuminates why the same is done one level up the chain of delegation – that is from the supranational to the international level.