Most established democracies experience efforts to reform representative institutions aiming to introduce more participatory forms of democracy. How can we explain these developments towards re-designing representative democracy as we know it today? How can we explain the readiness of political representatives to dismiss representative democracy and to open up decision-making processes to any citizen who cares to participate? This paper perceives preferences for reform measures as strategic reactions to electoral hazards in intra- and inter-party contests. Legislators more likely to face electoral defeat will be more likely to prefer participatory forms of democracy and to support related reform proposals. In this paper, we test this argument on the basis of data resulting from various German candidate studies conducted ate the federal and state level.
