What is the Nature of a Political Process Preference? The 3Cs Framework as a New Multidimensional Conceptualization
Introducing the 3Cs Framework, which tries to map out three dimensions necessary to understand the nature of a political process preference: coherence, contextuality, conditionality. This is a development of my previous 2022 ECPR Conference paper. You can download the new version below.
What is the Nature of a Political Process Preference? The 3Cs Framework as a New Multidimensional Conceptualization
Working Paper, 27 September 2023. Currently under review.
Abstract
Rising concerns about dissatisfaction with democracy have recently driven a rapid expansion in empirical research of political process preferences. Drawing robust inferences about how people want to be governed requires a thorough understanding of the nature of these process preferences, but this research has largely proceeded without an explicit conceptualization of their ontology. Studies instead implicitly adopt a conception of process preferences as ideological models. This article proposes the 3Cs Framework as a new approach to understanding the nature of a process preference, based around three dimensions of contextuality, conditionality and coherence. This multidimensional approach provides a unifying framework that both better specifies the ideological conception and integrates insights from recent empirical work suggesting a more contingent conception of process preferences. It clarifies several conceptual confusions in the current literature, and demonstrates the need for new approaches to data collection to grasp the complex nature of these preferences.
Keywords: ambivalence; contextuality; conditionality; conceptions of democracy; models of democracy; political attitudes; process preferences.
Download the full paper as pdf