The Participation Trap

The paper presents a new model for explaining interest group behavior in the context of deliberative political conflict solving. The point of departure is the erosion of representative democracy over the last decades, which generated a growing need for additional democratic legitimacy. Opening up the system by installing instruments of direct and deliberative democracy is usually supposed to ease this pressure in general as well as in specific contexts of political conflict. In a second step, the model focusses on how certain political groups act under these circumstances. In the focus are small, politically effective groups carried by well-educated and politically skilled activists who are deeply dissatisfied with the functioning of democracy. The main thesis of the model is that the legitimacy gap offers those political groups a leverage to open political processes for their demands. The key is to hinder the production of additional legitimacy by 1) simply not joining the arenas of negotiation and 2) constantly accusing representative politics of undemocratic behavior. Thus there is no moderation of demands by inclusion. This leaves representative actors no other choice than to react with concessions, either by further opening up or by meeting demands. They try everything to not further aggravate the legitimacy gap. Like in a spiral, every denial is followed by another round of opening or concessions. So, contrary to the broad empirical and normative endorsement, instruments of deliberative democracy may not be in any case the adequate cure for the erosion of current representative democracy. In case of the model the result is an imbalance of power. This model will be elaborated by a case study of the recent protests against the expansion of Frankfurt Airport in Germany.