The trust in government gap: National trust, local trust, and compliance

According to Tang and Huhe, individuals “are nested in a multiplicity of governments,” including national and local governments, “and . . . constantly find themselves in variant relationships with government at different levels”. Yet, previous research has mostly concentrated on individuals’ assessments of national governments, or supranational organizations such as the European Union, overlooking assessments of local governments and their effects. To address this, we fielded a four-wave survey in England in 2020–2021 capturing local and national government trust, as well as contemporaneous indicators of performance across these levels of government. Disaggregating between- and within-individual explanations for variation, we find distinct influences on trust in national and local government, and that trust in local government exerts an influence on pro-social behaviour whereas national government trust does not. Importantly, for future research on political trust, our findings show that the level of government matters for both the drivers and consequences of political trust.