Representative democracy is unlikely to persist for long in its present state of instability. Unless we move forward into a more participatory democracy we may find our government increasingly bland and manipulative, brutish and tyrannical. The fundamental question about television is how it can help the growth of participatory democracy. We need to devise new kinds of programing and new relations with the audience and other institutions, including other communications media. Fortunately relevant experience has already been accumulated in West Germany where televised documentary and discussion have been combined with techniques of phone-in and electronic opinion polls, in Sweden where radio and television have been used jointly to educate the public about pollution and to solicit response, and in the U.S. where several experiments have shown that the mass media can lead to greater public participation in local decisions. By helping to create a more participatory democracy, television itself will change and develop, finding a long-sought reprieve from premature middle-age. (MG)