Beyond the Labels: Rethinking ‘Liberal’ and ‘Conservative’ in Central Europe

Are standard self-reported measures of political ideology reliable indicators of individuals’ operational ideology? Prior research suggests otherwise, pointing to issues such as differential item functioning, ambiguous ideological labels, and social desirability bias that may systematically distort survey responses. Yet direct evidence of these measurement challenges, particularly outside the U.S., remains limited. Building on and extending the experimental design of Yeung and Quek (2024), I conducted a large-scale study in Slovakia (N = 8,535) to investigate how “liberal” and “conservative” labels are understood and applied in a Central European (CE) context and whether self-reported ideology functions as a valid proxy for operational ideology across different settings. Respondents were randomly assigned to one of three survey conditions that varied the availability of definitions for “liberal” and “conservative” and/or the presence of ideological labels. The design allowed for both between-subjects comparisons across experimental conditions and within-subjects analyses for those exposed to multiple measures of ideology. In addition, various policy-preference items and political knowledge measures were included. The results reveal that partisan priors, personal attributes, and linguistic nuances in interpreting “liberal” and “conservative” can substantially influence how respondents place themselves on the ideological spectrum. By comparing respondents’ symbolic ideological placements with their policy-based (operational) ideologies—and by assessing their ability to accurately define ideological terms—I show that individuals’ symbolic self-identification often diverges from their policy preferences. Moreover, while both liberals and conservatives are relatively adept at defining “conservative,” both groups struggle with “liberal,” with conservatives exhibiting the greatest difficulty overall. These findings contribute to ongoing debates about the measurement of self-reported ideology by demonstrating the substantial impact of definitional ambiguity, partisan predispositions, and broader societal cleavages on measurement equivalence. By examining respondents’ abilities to define and interpret “liberal” and “conservative,” this research highlights how such labels do not always map onto shared conceptual anchors. Consequently, standard self-reported ideology measures may mask important variations and lead to misinterpretations of respondents’ true operational ideologies. Scholars of CE politics should therefore exercise caution when employing these widely used self-identification measures and remain attentive to the biases that may distort the relationship between symbolic and operational ideology positions.