There are many reasons why Civil Society’s Democratic Potential is a highly interesting book that speaks to a broad community of researchers. Importantly, Nicole Bolleyer, Head of Chair of Comparative Political Science at the Geschwister Scholl Institute of Political Science, Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany, explicitly zooms on “membership organizations” as a special feature of civil society. This means that her approach purposely steps out of the disciplinary container. Membership organizations—titled CSOs in the study—were at the beginning of modernity. They were pivotal for the emergence of parties, unions, professional, and business associations, as well as for voluntary associations, active in sports or leisure, and finally they were and still are at the roots of many nonprofit service providers. To focus on membership as the core concept of this organizational universe is unconventional, since it stands against the current trend of the departmentalization of the social sciences. Also, Nicole Bolleyer’s approach is courageous, because irrespective of their mission and vision, today’s membership organizations are perceived as being in a state of crises. To safeguard resources and hence their survival in today’s individualized societies, it is assumed that they apply strategies, which are detrimental to membership as a mode of governance. According to the current rhetoric, increased managerialism with its focus on efficiency, top-down-decision making, and resource acquisition beyond membership dues results into societal detachment of CSOs as membership organizations. In a nutshell: Their current strategies and governance structures are “considered unfavorable to internal participation, as well as to interest representation that is responsive to societal interests and concerns” (p.5). Against this background, Nicole Bolleyer’s research, whose results are summarized in the book, addresses the question whether and to what extent membership organizations as CSOs are still important for the flourishing and stability of democracy. With the aim of operationalizing membership organizations’ contributions to democracy three “yardsticks” are introduced: (a) “intra-organizational participation” that indicates how and to what extent members are involved in the governance of the organization by participating in decision-making, (b) interest representation in a classical political science sense (e.g., lobbying or protests), and (c) societal responsiveness that translates into societally responsive behavior toward the constituency of the specific organization. Applying a mixed methods design, membership organizations in four European countries with a solid democratic tradition were scrutinized as regards the three yardsticks: (a) democracy within the organization, (b) interest representation as a classical feature of democracy, and (c) social responsiveness as a driving force for democracy. The countries covered by the study are Germany, Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom that differ with respect to their nonprofit/voluntary sector regimes, their regulatory environments for CSOs, and specific macro features such as size, social structure, and degree of federalism. In each country, the most inclusive sources, such as the Register of British Associations, were used for the sampling of the organizations; furthermore, all parties were taken into account. The questionnaire of the survey encompassed 36 questions, related to, for example, organizational activities, members, resources, internal processes, and external challenges. All in all, the dataset consists of more than 3,200 observations encompassing information from 828 CSOs in the United Kingdom, 351 in Norway, 666 in Switzerland, and 1,420 in Germany. Since the results of the survey provide a multifaceted picture but just a snapshot of the current state of the art of membership organizations, in order to go after and investigate the long-term development of CSOs, the survey was complemented by three in-depth case studies of membership organizations, active in the United Kingdom, among those a party (the Green Party of Wales and England/GPEW), a service provider (National Activity Providers Association/NAPA), and an interest group/advocacy organization (Surfers Against Sewage/SAS). The results of the investigations, both of the survey and the case studies, are highly provocative in the sense that they are contradictory to the current mainstream in the social sciences as regards the concept of membership and its relevance for democracy. In essence, membership organizations continue to be a vital ingredient of democracy, albeit not in the traditional associational form that does not acknowledge the differentiation of roles and functional tasks. The membership organization for the future is a professionalized entity, run by managers and governed by leaders, that provides its members with a spectrum of options of how and to what extent they want to be actively involved in the organization. The results of the survey and the case studies clearly indicate that professionalization and bureaucratization of membership organizations in the sense of role differentiation and introduction of organizational routines impact member involvement positively. Moreover, these two trends are very beneficial as regards CSO’s political engagement. For sure, professionalization does not lead to a downsizing or moderating of the political activities of the organizations (see p. 251). As already well documented by former studies, what impacts negatively on political engagement are the size of the organizations and its age. The bigger and older the organization, its political engagement is the less likely. In her last chapter, the author provides a view into the future by depicting the story of the “Last Generation” as recently founded and politically highly active CSO. Again, it becomes clear that the social sciences have to step out of the “disciplinary container,” if they want to be able to understand and analyze the most current social and organizational developments. Particularly, organizational studies, nonprofit and social movement research, as well as party studies should join forces instead of setting-up sub-disciplinary frontiers with the aim of researching as how civic embeddedness of democracy actually works today. In this regard, Nicole Bolleyer’s book is highly relevant and should become a required reading across the social sciences.