ABSTRACT
This study analyses the relationship between the participation in different kinds of voluntary associations and three qualities of citizenship that are conceived advantageous for political participation. These qualities are trust in politics, interest in politics, and political knowledge. On both theoretical and empirical grounds, one may expect that trust, interest, and knowledge are positively related to each other, and that this cluster of qualities is affected by the level of education, occupational status, gender, and age of citizens (Wittebrood 1992; Maddens and Dewachter 1993), but why should membership of voluntary associations have an additional impact on these political variables? This expectation is derived from theoretical reflections and empirical findings in recent studies of social capital.
