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As political identities become more fragmented and individualised, how can we best understand the shifting linkages between citizens and parties? A new paper by our Insitute researchers Jozef Michal Mintal<\/strong>, Robert Vancel<\/strong> and Kamila Borsekova<\/strong> jointly with Felix Butzlaff<\/strong> and Bence Hamrak<\/strong> from Central European University, published in the\u00a0European Journal of Political Research<\/em>, addresses this question by proposing a novel conceptual and methodological framework: multi-point congruence, that integrates insights from social theory with empirical approaches in political science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Existing research has typically measured voter\u2013party congruence along a single dimension, focusing on ideological proximity or issue salience as defined either by parties or by voters, and usually in relation to a voter’s single preferred party. The paper argues that these approaches are ill-suited to capturing the layered and sometimes contradictory nature of contemporary voter\u2013party relations. In response, it conceptualises alignment through three complementary mechanisms drawn from social theory diagnoses of modern societies: fragmentation (operationalised via aggregate issue congruence), alienation (operationalised via party-defined issue salience), and individualization (operationalised via voter-defined issue salience). Crucially, the framework evaluates alignment across all voter group\u2013party combinations, not just the chosen party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The empirical analysis draws on data from Volebn\u00fd Kompas<\/em>, a voting advice application deployed in Slovakia’s 2023 parliamentary elections, covering 134,699 respondents across 39 policy statements with expert-coded party positions and information on both party- and voter-defined issue salience. Slovakia’s highly fragmented and volatile party system makes it a particularly illustrative case of broader trends across post-industrial and post-communist European democracies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The findings identify a central paradox of contemporary representation: when alignment is assessed on voters’ own priority issues, citizens appear most closely represented by their chosen party, yet this individualised fit simultaneously fosters electoral fragmentation and potentialy leads to volatility. When alignment is assessed through the issues parties strategically emphasise, partisan differences become clearer, but at the cost of greater distance from voters’ own concerns. More broadly, as representation becomes more precise for individuals, it grows less stable at the systemic level.
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