Try to imagine a government interested in encouraging local online citizen activism. In fact, not just saying they will receive the output from online campaigns, but going so far as to support the online infrastructure for citizens trying to organise other citizens to solve a problem or asking government to change its priorities. Pretty radical.

For site visitors from Japan or at least reading Japanese, here is a series of articles inspired by the International Symposium on Local E-Democracy that I organized in July with the UK Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.
Interview
電子自治体ポータル : 第5回　e-デモクラシーを無視できなくなった地方議会
You can get the gist in with the Google translation into English.
Here are links to [...]

Over the last decade Scotland has been a hot-bed of democratic renewal. Recently, funding for the “active citizenship” building Scottish Civic Forum has been cut by the Scottish Executive. In past years you’ve heard me praise the Scottish Parliament for their online activities and e-petitioning. For those interested in e-petitioning within -formal- representative [...]

I would argue that the races to watch for online campaigning innovations or qualitative impacts of internet-enhanced campaigns in 2006 is with state legislative primaries in open seats. The margins can be razor thin and candidates are close enough to the ground to measure the real-time impact of online campaigning. As they say, [...]

This is a great way to compare leading blogs in different languages.
The BOBs – BEST OF THE BLOGS – Deutsche Welle International Weblog Awards 2005
From the voting page you can click on a blog name, read about it in English, then click on the image to access the blog. Try the Google translator [...]