This paper examines the visions of citizens’ ideal practices regarding technoscientific affairs in a democratic society, namely “normative imaginaries of citizens”, that underlie three science & public initiatives: public understanding of science (PUS), public engagement in science (PES), and citizen science (CS). While imaginaries of citizens are necessary and performative to these initiatives, they are seldom sufficiently revealed or clarified but often resolved into the background. Through a critical review of existing literature on the theories and practices for each initiative, as well as relevant documents such as policies and reports, I argue that these initiatives demonstrate distinct patterns in imagining the role of citizens in matters of science and technology, which all comply with democratic values. More specifically, the normative imaginary of a model citizen in PUS is a literate one who should know science sufficiently, use it in daily life, and support science; in PES a responsible one who should engage in the governance of technoscientific issues; and in CS a contributive one who should contribute to and enjoy creating scientific knowledge. All three initiatives have incorporated a democratic ideal, but at different levels and with different forms. While PUS presumes electoral democracy at the upstream of scientific activities, where citizens vote for the funding of science, PES is based on deliberative democracy at the midstream, where citizen representatives deliberate on the planning or agenda-setting of science. And for CS, participatory democracy is being implemented downstream, where citizens participate in the execution of science. It is the combination of perceptions on the role of democracy in scientific activities, the level and form of “democratizing” science, as well as the nature of science that has shaped the diverging imaginaries in each initiative. Such imaginaries are neither entirely exclusive to the initiative in question; nor are they mutually exclusive but complementary or even augmentative to each other.