Where do France and Germany sit in the world of participatory political communities? This book sets out an impressive historical, theoretical and institutional framework for a comprehensive, comparative and empirical analysis of the forms, patterns, trends and determinants of citizen participation in France and Germany. This study starts with an outline of the participatory traditions of the two respective countries. Thereafter, the focus turns to the theoretical foundations of empirical research regarding the role of political participation in modern democracies, and gives an overview as to how the perception of political participation has changed over the years. Furthermore, the forms of conventional participation, particularly with regard to electoral participation, and unconventional participation like protest and other new forms of citizen involvement, are analysed in detail. Following the new approaches in participation research, social participation is not only supposed to correlate with political participation, but is a specific form of civic engagement in itself. Therefore, this aspect is included in the analysis. The volume not only discusses national trends and patterns, but also local ones where elementary differences can be noticed, depending, amongst others, on the level of centralisation of the state structure.