1 Who Is Here for Whom: Party Elites in Younger Democracies Simona Kustec, Samo Kropivnik and Gregor Čehovin Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Paper, presented for the ECPR General Conference, Warsaw, 4-7 September 2019, Panel Electoral System, Party System and Society Abstract The aim of this contribution is to discuss how the ways of and choices available in an electoral democracy work in younger, post-socialist democracies when the selection of representative political elites is at stake. What is the election cycle logic of choice that exists on the line between the candidates as individuals, political parties, and voters about who is going to form the political representative elite of a country? Or, stated in theoretical terms, how do representative democratic elitist theories work in the electoral choice processes of political elites? To examine this issue, this research focuses on structures of elected representatives, along with the party strategies and voters’ choices behind their individual successes. Who is selecting whom? What ‘choices’ do the voters have, how do they respond to them, and how is this congruent with political parties’ 'offers' to maximise their gains? In this regard a special representative democratic elite model is developed, with consideration of the following: a) electoral system and political trust data; b) electoral results and turnout data; c) political parties (re)nomination data; and d) data related to socio-demographic structure of the (re)elected representative elite. This special model is tested on a selected case study of authors' domestic “voters–party–party candidates” congruence of the European Union parliamentary elite from the first Slovenian elections to the European Parliament in 2004 and after. Introduction Elite theories, including political elite theories, have been classified among constitutive and traditional scientific theories for almost a century. They are deeply rooted in classical sociology and political science. Until now we could roughly differentiate between the so-called classical elite theories that treat elites as a sum of negative power games among a handful of internally selected individuals from various sub-systems (Parry, 2005) and the new democratic elite paradigm that sees elites as a positive phenomenon, as a result of the ‘let the best win’ competition (Higley, 2008). In the world of political science, this illustration would range from autocratic through clientelistic towards democratic patterns for establishing a system for political leadership positions (Iversen, 1994; Helms, ed., 2012) in which election processes and behavioural patterns are at the core of the research interest (Strom, 1990; Katz and Mair, 1994; Blondell et al., 2007). A wide range of various aspects of understanding political elites can be found in the related studies conducted thus far (Parry, 2005; Viola, ed., 2015; Best and Higley, eds., 2018). Elites can be defined and understood either broadly, from the individual to the group level