Political parties and multi-party systems are constituent elements of contemporary representative democracy. Moreover, the political parties play a pivotal role by mobilizing citizens to participate in the political process and are the linkage-making institutions between political leadership and voters, political elite and civil society, the rulers and the ruled in all representative democracies. Contemporary transitions from authoritarian rule to democracy in many ways represent institutionalization and consolidation of parties. However, the post-communist polities are characterized as taking an anti-party stance, political parties as lacking responsiveness and accountability, party systems as being unconsolidated. The article tries to analyze the problem of the institutionalization of the political parties in new democracies. The authors examine the criteria to determine levels of parties institutionalization and indicate the impact of the degree of parties institutionalization on democratic consolidation. Their attention is paid on some of such important aspects of process of institutionalization. The tendencies that have been manifested in the contemporary party systems and their way of evolution that are shaping up, can stand for a starting point in the process of evaluation regarding the place and the role of the political parties in the contemporary society. Along each listed indicator there are negative and positive examples. The party making phenomena as the expression of the political and democratic pluralism is studying with changing the accent from the everyday reality to the perspectives.