Tool or trap? Cognition or discourse? What is a procedural preference?

he small but burgeoning literature on procedural preferences takes what can be called a cognitivist approach to this phenomenon, mostly using quantitative surveys to measure individuals’ preferences. There is, however, an extensive literature in political science and social psychology criticising cognitivist approaches to political preferences for assuming that individualised subjects have preferences concerning decontextualized objects that persist across time and contexts. They argue that preferences are instead intersubjective, rhetorical, and action-oriented – they are constituted in social practices and vary according to discursive context. Using quantitative Q-method and qualitative interview data this paper explores the nature of the participation preferences of a group a citizens and policy-makers involved in participation activities in the UK. Drawing on techniques from discourse and rhetorical analysis, it demonstrates individuals’ preferences are at their core conflicted and bound by contextual factors. Nevertheless, it criticises the notion that preferences are simply interpretive repertoires applied in particular discursive contexts. Individuals also express differently patterned responses that are theoretically predictable and observed across multiple studies, and such consistency can be usefully modelled by quantitative approaches. Finally, the article analyses how preferences provide individuals with tools that help them negotiate participatory environments, but also become traps that prevent people from seeing other ways of working, or adapting to changing contexts.