2024/01/05 by Thomas Bolognesi, Eva Lieberherr, Manuel Fischer · 1 voice · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #European Union Policy and Governance #Policy Transfer and Learning #Public Policy and Administration Research
paper · doi:10.1332/03055736y2023d000000004
openalex publication_date 2024/01/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
Policy preferences are a key element in understanding the policy process. In this article, we conceptualise policy preferences as latent constructs, which can be identified in an inductive way, based on actors’ choice of policy instruments and organisational structures. To inductively identify policy preferences, we take an approach based on principal component analysis, informed by theory on preference formation. Using water supply in Switzerland as a case study, we propose an approach based on policy preference spaces to identify preferences based on clusters of choices. Our results show the presence of three distinct policy preferences: 1) local management with regional support, 2) local autonomy, and 3) strong regional management with local financing autonomy. We investigate the factors affecting the formation of these policy preferences through a regression analysis. Our results indicate that preference formation is affected by actor types and, to a lesser degree, by goal priority. In this way, the article makes two distinct contributions to the field. The first is a methodological contribution, through its proposition for measuring and operationalising policy preferences; and the second is a theoretical contribution, in demonstrating how policy preferences are influenced by actor types and goal priority it highlights the context-dependent nature of policy preferences.