What Structures Left and Right? The Cognitive Content of Ideological Labels in Czechia and Slovakia

Across Central and Eastern Europe, the left–right scale frequently functions only weakly as a guide to political reasoning. Many citizens struggle to place themselves, and even among those who do, left–right identification often shows limited associations with economic preferences, cultural attitudes, or electoral choices. These patterns suggest that the cognitive content people attach to “left” and “right” is unevenly structured. Yet little empirical evidence exists on what citizens understand these ideological labels to mean, how symmetrical their concepts of the two poles are, and how this shapes their political judgments. We examine the cognitive content of left–right ideology in Czechia and Slovakia using a preregistered survey experiment (N = 1,700 per country). The study employs a paired-comparison design in which respondents evaluate political statements drawn from two mirrored sets: a left-wing set and a right-wing set, where each statement has an opposite-position counterpart on the same underlying issue. Respondents complete two separate blocks—one in which they judge which of two statements is “more left-wing,” and one in which they judge which is “more right-wing.” A subsequent rating task assesses how respondents place individual items on a left–right scale. This design enables direct measurement of (a) which issue domains anchor ideological classifications within each pole, (b) whether the left and right poles exhibit symmetrical or asymmetrical internal structure, and (c) whether these patterns differ across the two national contexts. The analysis tests whether economic issues serve as a stronger anchor for ideological classification than cultural issues, whether the two poles display systematic asymmetry in their internal content, and whether Czechia and Slovakia differ in the domains that give ideological labels their meaning. We estimate the relative strength of association between specific issues and each ideological pole using Bradley-Terry paired comparison models. At the individual level, we assess whether respondents with clearer and more symmetrical conceptual structures rely on the left–right scale in a more meaningful way, reflected in stronger associations between self-placement and their domain-specific attitudes. By directly mapping the cognitive content of ideological labels rather than relying on self-placement alone, this study reveals why left–right reasoning remains unevenly functional in post-communist democracies and identifies the specific domains through which citizens organize political conflict.