Is “bringing people back in” the solution? The dimensionality and roots of Finnish preferences for political decision-making

Established representative democracies of today are often conceived as being in need of change. Political theorists have called for more deliberative and participatory forms of democracy, and scholars as well as policy-makers have pursued an array of project that engages citizens in participatory and deliberative modes. While research on democratic processes has flourished from many perspectives, citizens’ preferences concerning procedures for political decision-making were for long left unexplored. Some recent attempts to expand knowledge on this topic has however been made and they indicate that the preferences held by citizens are far from uniform and that these preferences have repercussions for the way and extent by which citizens engage in politics.

The aim of this study is disentangle the dimensionality that exists in citizens’ preferences towards political decision-making and to explore the roots of these attitudes. The analyses are based on the Finnish national election study 2011 (FNES 2011), and performed in two stages; first the dimensionality in citizens’ process preferences is outlined, and second the roots of the different process preferences found (representation, citizen-centred, technocratic) are explored with the use of personality traits, socio-demographic background and political values. Results suggest that satisfaction with attempts to bring citizens back into politics with the use of more direct citizen involvement is likely to be biased towards certain groups in society.