After 1989 the "Round table" developed a high symbolic attractiveness as a model for coping with processes of transformation, not only in Central and Eastern Europe but also in the search for new forms and institutions dealing with complex problems in Western industrial societies. Against this background, various concepts for new participatory and discursive forms of political mediation have been designed and tested experimentally. One of these concepts, the "cooperative discourse" of Ortwin Renn and Thomas Webler, is analyzed in its rationale and the way this three-step model has been implemented in participatory projects on biotechnology and genetic engineering organized by the Academy of Technology Assessment in Baden-Wuerttemberg. Some fundamental problems of sequential models of participation become apparent.