From an Ideological to a Contingent Conceptualisation of Political Process Preferences: A Multidimensional Approach

Recent years have seen a rapid expansion in empirical research of political process preferences, but this research has proceeded without a thorough conceptualisation of what a process preference is. Studies have instead implicitly adopted a conception of process preferences as ideological models. This article develops a new, multidimensional approach to understanding the nature of a process preference. It uses this approach to question the implicit assumption of the ideological conception that process preferences are by definition highly abstract, purely normative and ideological coherent, developing an alternative, contingent conception of a process preference based around three concepts of contextuality, conditionality and ambivalence. This multidimensional approach opens up the possibility of ontologically different kinds of process preferences, providing a comprehensive framework for integrating recent more piecemeal challenges to the ideological conception. The elaboration of the concepts of contextuality, conditionality and ambivalence offer a range of new departure points for future research, as well as a more fine-grained understanding of process preferences that could improve the predictive power and policy relevance of research findings.