Abstract
Formation of preferences is a question largely ignored by political science. Politics is seen just as a space to aggregate prior preferences. Liberalism justifies the refusal of a critique of preferences production by the idea that each person is the best judge of their own preferences. If we do not accept this, we are falling into paternalism, in which the autonomy of the agent is threatened by the idea that an outside observer will be able to identify their "true" preferences even against her expressed will. My argument here is that the anti-paternalistic position is correct in principle but shifts the discussion. The main obstacle to autonomous preference formation is not paternalism, but domination. Individuals and groups have difficulties to formulate and express their autonomous preferences when they are subject to relations of domination.
preferences; paternalism; domination; liberalism; autonomy