Science and technology has introduced us to a previously unimaginable world of wealth, health, comfort, education, recreation, convenience and many more benefits. It has also brought with it many unwelcome guests and visitors. The guests are those intended outcomes of our deployment of technology; the visitors are often unexpected or unforeseen outcomes. Much of the current debate around the impacts of science and technology concerns fears about unwanted consequences. The end of the Cold War allowed us to conceive, rightly or wrongly, of a safer military climate. But it did not mean a significantly less contingent world, as the Chernobyl disaster and the events of 9/11 and a general rise in global terror graphically reminded us. A great deal has been written and spoken about the risk society. It is not important here to deal in depth with that term, but whatever label we place on it, we live in a planet of new and emerging contingencies, which we need to manage, harness or contain if we are to prosper. We need to develop new ways in which to assess and make decisions about the deployment of new and existing technologies. This is a key problem now because science and technology are transforming our world. In this contingent contemporary reality we need to make decisions about technologies very few understand. We need to balance progress with risk, caution with lost opportunity. Decisions need to be made at global, supranational, national, regional and local levels across a complex web of often-interconnected issues. Most theorist, decision-makers and ordinary citizens see democracy as the preferred model for decision-making. There is a high degree of consensus that any institutional arrangements to deal with the new technological and scientific concerns need to be democratic ones. Unanimity dissipates though when it comes to either framing ways to deploy democracy or reaching common understandings of what it means. The contemporary period is one in which science and technology is playing a significant role in shaping everyday lives. As citizens this challenges us to address issues around the decision-making process at the level of political participation, regulation and control of science and technology. Increasingly ordinary citizens are called upon to make difficult private and public decisions about science and technology. The climate in which those decisions, discussions and debates take place has changed considerably in recent decades - civil society and the public sphere have undergone major shifts. The meaning of democracy is contested at a time when democracy is seen as the panacea for all issues of governance. On one side the influence of Neo-Liberalism places greater emphasis on what are seen as the characteristics of classical liberalism, where the autonomous free acting individual sits at the centre of things. This actor is rational and market-oriented. Decisions are made in terms of rational choice, each individual acts to maximize his or her wealth, health and happiness. It transfers the emphasis from the collective to the individual or we might say from the public sphere to the private sphere. This derives from an interpretation of early economic thinkers like Adam Smith. The assumption is that society works best when governments allow individuals express their preferences as rational actors and allow a de-regulated market respond to these preferences through the laws of supply and demand. On the other side civic republicanism and much of liberal thinking from John Stuart Mill in the 19th century to J. M. Keynes and T. H. Marshall in the 20th century present a case for understanding citizens not just as formally equally, but also as factually equal. From that perspective notions like society, solidarity and the common good have a higher premium. While Neo-Liberalism was pushing that agenda to the background in most developed countries from the 1970s, there were countervailing forces changing the political landscape. These include an erosion of the position, power and even legitimacy of some of the main pillars of liberal representative democracy. Less people vote, national parliaments concede power both upwards to international bodies and downwards to regional and local ones. We see a dynamic and fluid web of social movements engage around all the issues of the day from local to global. The media, including the Internet, facilitates public awareness, discussion and debate around issues and facilitates the formation of public opinion in a process that Strydom (1999b) calls triple contingency. Issues like responsibility and risk emerge as serious concerns. It is in this context that I wish to propose a model for democratic engagement with issues around science and technology. In designing my model of political participation I am hoping to address both opinion and policy formation on science and technology issues.