Trust lies at the heart of contemporary debates regarding governance and democracy. A recent study by the Herbert Quandt Stiftung foundation (2013) indicates that, while the public has confidence in democracy as a concept, many do not trust government and the way democracy is currently being implemented. There is a strong and growing demand for more diverse and effective forms of citizen engagement to increase levels of trust and engage an increasingly diverse, busy and complex urban population. Transparency is sometimes offered as a remedy to tackle the problems that ostensibly produce such distrust, but understandings of transparency are deeply ambivalent.  These questions have a general reach insofar as we can identify types of democracy. But how much do they vary within states?   The panel captures these processes of trust and transparency in multi-level governance by comparing regional- and city level dynamics in three key European states: the UK, France and Germany.  In each member-state, we select one strong identity region (Wales, Brittany, Saxony), and one ‘instrumental’ region (North-West England, Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes, Hesse); this comparative mix allows logically for varying identities, institutional configurations and resource profiles to be captured. The papers in the panel report preliminary findings of a major new funded research project (French National Research Agency [ANR]; UK Economic and Social Research Council, [ESRC]), involving a mass survey, interview panels based on a purposive interview sample and focus groups.