Standard approaches to defining and evaluating environmental risk tend to reflect technocratic rather than democratic values. One consequence is that institutional mechanisms for achieving citizen participation in risk decisions rarely are studied or evaluated. This article presents a survey of five institutional mechanisms for allowing the lay public to influence environmental risk decisions: public hearings, initiatives, public surveys, negotiated rule making, and citizens review panels. It also defines democratic process criteria for assessing these and other participatory mechanisms.

On 18 June 2003, just before the first strand of the UK government’s three‐strand (scientific, economic and social) inquiry into genetically modified (GM) foods was to publish its conclusions,1 The...