Civic Involvement and Party Membership in New Democracies: Natural Experimental Evidence from Indonesia

Who joins parties in new democracies? Answering this question is crucial given that parties with strong membership are one of the key pillars on which democratic stability rests on. Yet we know little about the factors explaining party membership enrollment in new democracies. This article argues that party membership is strongly affected by individual participation in civic associations. Parties prefer to recruit from civic associations because their members possess larger social networks and the organizational capability to mobilize partisan support. Civic organizational members, in turn, are predisposed to join due to their heightened sense of political efficacy and desire to improve their communities. I find support for this argument through a series of quantitative studies using data from the World Values Survey. By highlighting the edifying effects of civic organizations, the findings have important implications for the role of civil society in promoting political participation and representation in new democracies.