Conceptual Foundations of Political Process Preferences

Abstract

Dissatisfaction with representative democracy and its attendant problems have precipitated a burgeoning interest in political process preferences to study how people want their political system to work. This has led to a rapidly developing literature on various alternative means of making political decisions. Nevertheless, there has been relatively little examination within this research community of the conceptual foundations of its approaches. Concepts have been borrowed from the broader political science literature on policy preferences, from normative democratic theory, and to understand preferences for favoured procedural reforms, with little reflection on whether these concepts easily translate to the empirical study of process preferences. What is the nature of a process preference? What are main conceptual dimensions structuring this attitudinal space? And what is the basis of support for process reforms? This panel aims to provide a venue for examining these fundamentals anew. It brings together theoretical and empirical contributions that will clarify and/or rethink the conceptual foundations of process preferences.

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