In August 2023, Dr. Jozef Michal Mintal & Róbert Vancel representing the Institute for Democracy (IfD) attended the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) General Conference in Dublin, which took place from August 12th to 15th, 2024. The ECPR General Conference is a major international event in political science, bringing together scholars from around the world to discuss and present their latest research.
Dr. Mintal presented a paper titled Fragmented Identities, Contradictory Choices and Voting which is a joint collaboration with colleagues from CEU, the paper tries to tackle the question of how voters of different parties are congruent in their value and item choices compared to their parties; how and on what basis, in the case of contracting or diverging value preferences, voters determined their choices at the voting booth, and how the downstream effects of party choice on issue salience perceptions and issue positions after the elections. As part of the Contemporary Political Mobilisation panel, Dr. Vancel presented his paper titled When two do the same, it is never the same: identification of the causes of the fragmentation of the civil society mobilization campaign before the parliamentary snap elections in Slovakia 2023; The paper focused on the deep divisions within Slovak civil society, which, despite a shared concern for values and democratic participation, failed to unite behind a single mobilization campaign.
The study´s preliminary findings highlighted how civil society organizations in the periphery rejected the centralized model proposed by those in the capital, instead pursuing their own strategies for increasing electoral participation.
As part of the conference both Dr. Mintal and Vancel also joined the ECPR VAA section and participated in the relaunch of its business meeting.