Trust assessment of regulatory regime actors into the regulatory agency: a cross-national elite experiment on EU regulation

Trust between the constituent actors of EU’s multi-level regulatory regimes is important but hardly targeted by the literature. This paper asks whether trust by actors from within the regime in regulatory agencies is explained by the governmental level to which the regulatory agency is affiliated (national or EU), and/or by the performance of the regulatory agency. While most literature focuses on why citizens in general put trust in governments or (regulatory) agencies, this paper copes with the specific nature and dynamics of trust of regime actors (like politicians, agency officials, ministerial officials, interest groups and regulatees), bringing original insights regarding elites’ trust formation. Accordingly, first, the paper theorizes how the level of regulation and performance is expected to determine trust by regime actors (as elites) in regulatory agencies. Second, a large-scale vignette experiment is applied to EU regulation across nine countries amongst 1183 top-level decision makers from all relevant organizations. As drivers of trust, we particularly scrutinize the level of regulation (national versus EU) and regulatory performance. Findings suggest a substantive different trust assessment in an elitist environment vis-à-vis a citizen one. We find a rather practical understanding of trust amongst elite actors with the focus on ‘getting the job done’ as visible in the strong effects of performance, while the level of government has less importance.