ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses efforts in established democracies to reverse downward trends in political participation through participatory engineering. This concept indicates purposive attempts on the part of political elites to affect political participation positively via the reform of the institutions of democracy. German politics provides one recent example for this kind of democracy policy. In 2002 the Red-Green government coalition introduced a bill to change the country’s constitution, allowing for measures of direct democracy at the federal level. This bill was explicitly promoted as a means of revitalizing the waning interest of German citizens in political affairs.
