[10][11] SMC was spearheaded by Miro Cerar, a law professor and legal advisor to parliament,[12] and the son of a famous Yugoslav Slovene athlete.

[12] Only six weeks after its establishment, on 13 July 2014, the party received 34.6% of the vote in the 2014 parliamentary election, winning a plurality of 36 seats in the National Assembly,[14] the most parliamentary seats of any party in the independent nation's history.

Following the negotiation to form a 14th Government under premiership of Janez Janša, which SMC would join, founder and former president Miro Cerar left the party saying that it no longer "pursued its founding values" and called on other party members to do the same.

[29] The party's initial focus was the "rule of law, liberalising the economy and improving the efficiency of the public sector".

[12] Cerar also voiced support for "liberalising the economy and labour market rules, cutting red tape and selling off smaller state firms", but offered few policy details before the party's premiere election.