This article argues that the widespread hypothesis, stating that intra-party democracy has declined since the glory days of the mass party is too sweeping and, largely, empirically groundless. In order to test it, the article draws on a comparison between two internal policy-making processes within the Swedish social democratic party (SAP), one concerning an expansion of welfare benefits, in the 1950s, and the other concerning a retrenchment in the 1990s. If intra-party democracy is in a state of decline, the results of the comparison most likely should confirm this tendency. Yet, the article concludes that party leaders exercised considerably less control, while activists were much more influential, in the 1990s than in the days of mass party mobilization, in the 1950s. Therefore, drawing on a single case study, the article casts doubts over the influential decline hypothesis and proposes new venues for research on the fate of intra-party democracy.