Foresight as a New Form of Political Participation and Deliberate Democracy?

The age of "Reflexive Modernity" (Beck) describes the transition from a science-based society trusting the knowledge of scientific experts to a "post-modern" society where the blessings of science and technology are questioned and where experts´ opinions are challenged by other experts´ opinion. At the same time, new emerging technologies are getting more and more complex and civil society is demanding to participate in the shaping of the future. Several approaches like TA have been brought to the fore during the last three decades, mostly dedicated to technologies that are already artifacts. Foresight (FS) takes a different approach. It gives us a chance to ask: What technologies do we want and how can we shape them in the most feasible and preferable way? In this paper, we want to discuss 1. what the actual participatory input of FS is and 2. what the actual impact of this approach is with regard to policy making. Both are questions all participatory approaches especially in the field of science and technology have to deal with. This paper will make the point that the democratic and participatory aspects of FS are generally overrated but that nonetheless FS has some noteworthy potential of inclusion of wider civil society if certain conditions are met. Some of these conditions are linked to the institutional arrangements of a FS context. In order to differentiate FS initiatives more precisely, we introduce and discuss the legitimacy of input, throughput and output factors.