Explaining trust and distrust in the politics – ministries – agencies triangle in regulatory regimes

In regulatory regimes regulatory agencies are crucial actors in regulatory decision-making. However, despite the regulatory agencies’ status and autonomy, the overall performance of a regulatory regime also depends on the relations and cooperation between the regulatory agency, the political actors and administrative actors, as the latter set legislative boundaries to regulatory actions and ask for accountability, but in some regulatory regimes also share some regulatory decision making with the agency. So the extent to which regime actors have high trust and low distrust in these three core actors, being the legislative politicians, the administrative actors like ministries and other executive bodies, and the regulatory agency, matters for the functioning of the regime, just like the extent to which politicians, administrative actors and decision makers in regulatory agencies trust each other. The paper studies the level of trust and distrust in and between these actors using TiGRE survey data from 9 European countries in three sectors (data protection, food safety and financial regulation), and subsequently seek to explain these levels of trust and distrust by country, sector and individual factors. Authors are Koen Verhoest & Tobias Bach (co-leading), Heidi Salomonsen, Anna Pikos, Jacint Jordana and others