In conclusion, more open primaries can lead to greater participation in primary elections, but it is an uphill battle for candidates who choose to appeal to non party members. And whether this increased participation leads to greater participation in the electoral process in general is still an open issue. Your question raises matters that are important to the other questions as well. So I will provide some more background that I consider useful in thinking about the issue of participation. In any of these organizations, a group of people that is relatively small compared to the total membership almost always runs the organization unless there is a system of mandatory rotation requiring virtually everyone to take a turn in office.
Parties are both the blessing and the curse of political liberty.
In democratic countries, we take for granted the ability to create new and to alter existing parties. Nevertheless, democracy always produces a certain dissatisfaction with parties because they reflect and often foster division in society. That is to say, a party reflects the political preferences of a group of like-minded people who are seeking to implement their policies by electing their members to office. If everyone agreed on the same policies, parties would not exist. Since the beginning of the nation, one view of democracy has assumed it was desirable and possible to reach a high degree of consensus among the citizens at large and avoid divisions into parties.