Established literature on democratic party politics has shown the progressive disempowerment of party membership. Opposed to this, authoritarian political parties need members to populate their organizational structure, establish a solid party-society relationship, and secure stability for survival. Nonetheless, comparative authoritarian literature neglects the complex varieties of authoritarian party membership recruitment strategies, leaving a gap on party organizations in autocracies. I first review the concepts of party access barriers and penetration in society to understand how membership recruitment strategy is formed. Then, I define four membership recruitment strategies: democratic, elitist, sanctioned, and coercive. Democratic recruitment strategy is only present in democratic regimes, allowing to unveil the possible divergent strategies implemented by authoritarian political parties. I characterize an elitist strategy with high access barriers; a sanctioned strategy with propensity to expand within society; and a coercive strategy leveraging on violence to gain support. I conclude by introducing possible applications of the theory to test these strategies empirically.