The main focus of the presented paper is to investigate whether the concept of bonding and bridging social capital can be reasonably specified by categorizing voluntary associations according to their constitutive goods, i.e. purposes, and whether this conceptualization will also hold for empirical analysis in the realm of political participation. The empirical findings show that memberships of voluntary associations which are conducive either to bonding or bridging social capital indeed affect generalized trust, norms and some forms of political participation differently. Underlying structures are revealed and by applying this concept to empirical research one might better be able to answer systematically which associations account for which effects on different aspects of social capital and on political participation. Besides, empirical analyses reveal that norms, as another component of social capital, exert comparable deviating effects, thus stressing the need for further differentiation, too. Moreover, an impressive linkage of political trust to some components of social capital can be disclosed.
