Georgia’s post-soviet experience of democracy continues to shape the dominant model of party formation to the present day, with most new entrants to the party system lacking deep roots in civil society and typically being led by individual ‘entrepreneurs’. In his study, Joseph Alexander Smith finds that first the origin of a political party and second the choices party leaders make over the course of the first years determines the parties’ chance to survive on the political scene in the medium- and long-term. Party leaders’ choice to institutionalize the party and build extra-parliamentary structures, linkage to civil society movements, and programmatic distinctiveness, rather than focusing on keeping the power within the leadership, can help the party to overcome change in leadership, internal disputes, or electoral decline. Entrepreneurial parties that fail to institutionalize are most likely to be condemned to ephemerality after a few electoral cycles.