How Do Personal Continuity and Novelty Affect the Party's Chances of Survival?

One of the most crucial factors that influence the survival of new parties is their genesis (Haughton & Deegan-Krause 2020). Genuinely new parties have worse survival chances than rooted newcomers (Bolleyer & Bytzek 2017). Being aware of the multiplicity of definitions (for an overview see Chiaramonte & Emanuele 2015), we consider as new these parties that compete in elections for the first time (Hug 2002; Tavits 2006, 2008). However, even if the parties have new labels, frequently they place on their electoral list politicians that took part in previous elections as candidates of other parties. The hypothesis is that parties with candidates without prior experience in politics cannot survive in a long-term perspective. The greater the continuity in the list of candidates, the better the chances of survival. We propose the candidate continuity index to test the congruence and change of candidates participating in subsequent elections. It can be used to assess the level of party novelty when a party entered the parliament for the first time, but also to evaluate whether the party changed then in terms of candidates. To answer the question about party survival, we assume that party stability can be gradual. We perceived as stable or institutionalised parties that are able to compete alone in at least three subsequent elections; however, we also distinguish as less stable parties that took part in the second or third elections as components of broader coalitions and consider whether they served as main components within these coalitions (measured by the share of the candidates). Data from Poland are used to verify the hypothesis.