Process Preferences and Ideology

The interest in procedures for political decision-making has grown tremendously during recent decades. Given the intense scholarly debate and the implementation of greater opportunities for citizen participation in many democracies, there has been surprisingly little interest in citizens’ conceptions of democracy understood as their preferences concerning the processes by which the political system works. Some recent attempts do, however, suggest that it is important to expand the study of public opinion from policy output to decision-making processes, and that there are coherent patterns in citizens’ expectations of the way in which political decisions come about. Less is however known of the correlates of peoples ‘process preferences and how it varies with individual characteristics and political ideology. Using the Finnish national election study 2011 and a regional Finnish survey from 2012 specifically designed to grasp process preferences; this study tracks public support for direct, stealth and representative democracy and accounts for these preferences with socio-demographic characteristics and ideology.