The Decline of Party Membership and its Consequences for the Linkage between Citizens and the State

Political parties play an essential role in linking citizens with the political system. However, there is a wealth of literature demonstrating that party membership and party activism are declining across a wide range of highly developed democracies. This long-term decline has raised concerns regarding the parties’ capacities to sustain this linkage, i.e. to generate and to sustain social and political integration and legitimacy (Dalton and Wattenberg, 2000; Scarrow, 2000, 1996; Whiteley, 2011). Despite this wide range of literature, we know little about the consequences of declining levels of party membership for the linkage between citizens and the state. We thus examine the effect of party membership on political trust and whether and how this effect has changed over time.