Abstract
The article discusses the way how Political Science literature has been defining the new parties. Through this debate, it aims to improve the construction of this category, in order to make it methodologically apt to classify the different institutional conformations that the parties present and, consequently, to be able to size the results that it produces in the national party systems. It approaches specifically with the way in which they should be considered: parties arising from transformation and / or succession from an already existing party, those arising from a split by established legend or a merger between parties, as well as those with no ties with any current party. The investigation is based on the contribution of different international analysts who look at the issue since the late 1970s, when the phenomenon became recurrent.
Keywords:
new parties; merger; split; transformation; successor