The Art of Self-selection or the Intervention of the Voters? The 2023 Election and the Shifting Social Bias of Slovak Parliamentary Elites since 2006

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Recent research has shown a trend towards more participatory nomination procedures in new as well as more established parties. However, in Slovakia most politically relevant parties have equally centralised, leadership dominated, and exclusive candidate selection modes. In the first part of the article I draw on the elite literature to investigate cross-party variation in the social bias of parliamentary elites since 2006. Using the 2023 election as a point of departure, I go on to assess how representative MPs are of their own voters, and why social bias varies across parties despite their similar selection modes. The analysis demonstrates that the impact of the selection mode as well as of voter preferences is contingent on the nomination practices of the individual parties. I found strong elements of self-selection in nearly all parties: the members of the presidium nominated themselves, and the composition of the parliamentary elites thus to a considerable extent reflects who the presidium members are. The influence of the voters is limited, because they tend to confirm the priorities of the selectorates; however, in the case of the four smallest parties in 2023, preference voting to some extent mitigated the effect of self-selection. The main drivers of preference voting were the idiosyncratic nomination practice of Ordinary People, and the presence of organised groups and parties on the list (informal alliances).