Multi-level democracy and political trust in Europe: The role of the subnational level

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By Felix-Christopher von Nostitz

The Horizon Europe project Activating European Citizens’ Trust in Times of Crisis and Polarisation (ActEU) examines questions of political trust and democratic legitimacy in Europe. This article is part of a series in which ActEU researchers present their findings.

“To foster trust in governance, it is essential to prioritize the enhancement of democratic quality within subnational entities.”

Multilevel governance is a key concept used to describe the functioning of the European Union. However, how democracy is structured in this multi-level setting is less explored, leading to a recent increase in the interest of multi-level democracy in Europe (Giegerich 2026; Sellers et al. 2020). Given its quasi-federal non-state polity of still sovereign member states, democratic institutions are implemented and organised in very different ways at the local, regional, national and European level across Europe.

This blog post will look at how multi-level democratic institutional design differs at subnational level across the EU and how these features affect not only trust in politics at the same level but also trust at higher levels. We argue that design of democratic institutions at the sub-national level can foster trust towards subnational political institutions which in turn has a positive effect on trust at higher levels.

Systemic factors impacting trust at the subnational level

In contrast to the existing literature (Harteveld et al. 2013; Schakel & Brown 2022; Scholte 2019), our approach focuses less on individual-level factors such as a person’s attachment to their region of residence or their interest in local politics, but on systemic-level variables of decisional autonomy and democratic legitimacy at the subnational level. Thus, we expect that regional political institutions will be more trusted in a context characterized by broader levels of autonomy of subnational authorities towards the national central power, and by a high degree of democratization of the subnational political life.

Our analysis relies on datasets covering the 27 EU member states between 2019 and 2023, combining multiple waves of individual data – emanating from the Standard Eurobarometer – and of institutional data – extracted from V-Dem.

Trust in one political institution influences trust in others

Figure 1: Trust towards the national parliament (click to enlarge).

Adding data from the European Social Survey (ESS) to our study, we assessed the level of trust towards subnational authorities, the national government and the national parliament. Concerning trust in the national parliament and government we see a huge variation in our sample of EU member states but observe similar trends. Trust in both is particularly strong for example in Luxemburg, Finland and Denmark. In contrast, Bulgaria and Slovakia exhibit the lowest levels of political trust, with particularly low levels of trust expressed toward their national governments as well as their national parliaments.

We can hypothesize a relationship between the use of a specific type of voting system during legislative elections with more proportional voting systems (Sweden, Luxemburg and Finland) leading to higher, and majority systems (Bulgaria, Lithuania and Slovakia) to lower, levels of trust.

Figure 2: Trust towards subnational political authorities (click to enlarge).

Concerning trust towards subnational political authorities, we also see a huge variation but no clear pattern. For example, there are no straightforward differences between de-centralized and centralized countries. So, it would be hasty to establish, from our present descriptive analyses, a relationship between the (de-)centralized organization of a country and the level of trust towards subnational authorities. Thus, other factors such as formal level of subnational autonomy might be an important factor here.

Overall, however, we see that political trust in one institution tends to influence trust in other institutions – a tendency that becomes even stronger when both institutions operate at the same level of governance (such as national parliaments and governments) within a multi-level political system.

Subnational autonomy

Regarding our first factor of systemic conditions, we hypothesize that citizens will declare a higher degree of political trust towards subnational institutions when they enjoy decisional autonomy at subnational level. For an overview of the recent evolution of power relationships between central and regional (peripheral) governments, we relied on five items of the V-Dem dataset between 2019 and 2023. As Figure 3 shows, this period was characterized by a decline of the indexes related to the relative power of elected and non-elected political authorities at the local and regional scales.

Figure 3: Indexes of subnational governments and power relationships: EU members (click to enlarge).

Our OLS regression analysis shows that the relationship between subnational autonomy and political trust seems to manifest itself in diverse (and even opposite) directions in multi-level political systems. In regions with more subnational autonomy, political trust in subnational authorities tends to be higher, whereas trust in the European Union tends to be lower. Regarding trust in national governments and parliaments, the results are more mixed.

Overall, the findings suggest a linear trend: The closer a political institution is perceived to be to citizens, the stronger the positive influence that political-institutional factors have on trust in that institution.

Quality of democracy

As a second systemic factor, we have analysed the relationship between subnational quality of democracy and political trust. For this, we focused on the political-institutional framework (de)facilitating subnational democracy and the dynamism of democratic life at the subnational level. In order to measure political-institutional framework (de)facilitating subnational democracy we looked at the following political-institutional features:

1. the average freedom and fairness characterizing local and regional elections,
2. the lowest variation of freeness and fairness of subnational elections across different areas of the concerned country,
3. the lowest variation of the authorities’ respect for civil liberties across different regions of the country.

To capture the dynamism of democratic life at the subnational level, we used

1. the de-centralization of the selection process within the parties (primaries) concerning candidates for legislative elections, and
2. the proportion of parties having permanent local sections.

Contrary to the relationship between systemic-level variables capturing subnational autonomy and political trust, we do not notice any sharp distinction depending on the level studied. Indeed, the general trend is that higher measures of subnational quality of democracy mostly tend to strengthen citizens’ political trust on every level of the political system. This positive effect of subnational quality of democracy on political trust concerns both political-institutional factors and variables capturing the dynamism of subnational democratic life.

Conclusion

Our comparative analysis finds first that both subnational autonomy and subnational democratic quality have a positive correlation with trust in subnational authorities. Institutions that are perceived as transparent and inclusive foster higher levels of trust.

However, the two factors have different effects on trust in the other levels of governance. In a phenomenon referred to as “zero-sum legitimacy”, subnational autonomy may reduce trust in national governments or in EU institutions. Mixed results can be observed regarding the relationship between subnational autonomy and trust towards national parliaments. On the other hand, the quality of democracy at the subnational level complements trust in both national governments and parliaments and in EU institutions, indicating cohesion in democratic governance.

High subnational democratic quality fosters trust in all levels

Thus, the quality of democracy at the subnational level serves as a more robust predictor of public trust compared to the degree of subnational autonomy. While autonomy can enhance trust within local governance structures, it has the potential to fragment trust at higher levels of governance. A high quality of subnational democracy, on the other hand, reinforces shared democratic values at all levels.

This leads to the following two policy implications: First, to foster trust in governance, it is essential to prioritize the enhancement of democratic quality within subnational entities. This can be achieved through measures such as ensuring transparent electoral processes and promoting participatory governance mechanisms. Second, it is crucial to strike a balance between granting autonomy and maintaining cohesion in democratic governance to preserve systemic trust across different levels of governance and achieve multilevel democracy in Europe.

Felix-Christopher von Nostitz is a maître de conférences at the research centre of the European School of Political and Social Sciences (ESPOL-LAB) of the Université Catholique de Lille.

This article is based on the chapter “Territories, identities and attachment: patterns and determinants of political trust at subnational level in Europe”, by Max-Valentin Robert, Giulia Sandri and Felix-Christopher von Nostitz, which is part of the ActEU “Report on how trends in trust among specific social and political groups, including ethnic and territorial identities, territorial attachment and regime types at subnational level impact on varying levels of trust across European subnational units”, published in March 2025.

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Pictures: Corts Valencianes: José Cuéllar/Corts Valencianes [CC BY-NC-SA 2.0], via Flickr; graphs: Felix-Christopher von Nostitz; portrait Felix-Christopher von Nostitz: private [all rights reserved].