Who's Here for Whom: Party Elites in Younger Democracies

The aim of this contribution is to discuss the way electoral democracy and choices work in younger, post-socialist democracies when the selection of political elite’s' is at stake. Doing so the main research focus will be put to the selection and nominations of the political elites': do the voters have the possibility to select the best possible candidate at the elections, or are political parties carefully calculating whom and where to 'offer' to the voters to maximise their selfish gains? In the contribution a special party elite model will be presented, consisting of the characteristics of electoral system, volatility and party nomination influence on a final election result, while the contemporary image of post-election democracy and elected political elite will be discussed as the outcome of such determinants. What kind of democracy and political elite do we have if the selected representatives are already in-advanced pre-determined by a deliberate party selection calcultions? in searching he answers to the stated fundamental democratic Gordian knot electoral data and public polls data will be analysed, together with the data on procedural specifics of electoral systems and nomination procedures. For the purposes of this contribution, a model will be tested on a selected case study of authors' domestic voters-parliamentary and ministerial elite’ congruence in Slovenia, from 1992 onwards.