Research on participation and trust often identifies attitudes to state-level politics, parties and politicians as possible predictors. Attitudes to state-level politicians, for example, are seen as a proxy for attitudes to politicians in general. And yet we know that in federal and other multi-level systems, individuals can form independent attitudes to politics and parties at different levels. It remains to be seen, however, how influential such independent attitudes are. Using multi-level analysis and a bespoke comparative dataset of Canadian, UK, German and Spanish data this paper identifies whether regional-level politics exert independent effects on more general measures of trust. It begins with a mapping of the relationship between specific and general trust and efficacy before exploring the specific contextual effects of regional politics. The paper is part of a larger project on regional political cultures in Europe, funded by a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship.
