Here's where to find some of my latest thoughts on how people can start to
take part in running their own common, public affairs. The audience was
mainly people involved in local and regional government in eastern and
western Europe, plus some academics and journalists. The talk went down
quite well. After my lecture (in the video) comes the scottish parliament,
with queen.

Lecture at the pre-congress seminar of the December 2000 Assembly of the
European Regions,Seinäjoki, Etelä-Pohjanmaa, Finland. It's in english with
some short sections in german.

        The main theme of the congress was "The new forms of the
        European governance".

        Lecture title: "The possibilities of information technology
        to improve and develop democracy and democratic processes".

        Lecture notes with references and links to on-line projects will be
made
        available at the website of PSAMRA/Integral Studies. A video
recording of
        the seminar which contains this lecture (in Part 2) may be found
via the
        (mirrored) AER home page http://www.netpres.com/
        or directly              http://www.netpres.com/aer/sali.ram

        After an account of public feeling about politicians and
        government, backed by some sociological evidence from
        Britain and FR Germany, I mention examples of citizens'
        participation in governance, naming some deficiencies. I
        argue that participation must be meaningful, not only
        symbolic or educative, for instance that it must have a
        reasonable chance of producing an effect. I illustrate a
        model of direct democratic governance which complements but
        does not replace the parliamentary system, and show how an
        open-forum system backed by digital technology could be
        combined with current ideas of electronic "open government"
        and "one-stop-government". Finally some examples of
        ICT-assisted democracy are shown, for instance in cities
        and towns of old and new german Laender.


See lecture summary plus links to background material at
http://home.snafu.de/mjm/seinajoki.html

Sincerely,
Michael Macpherson

Citizens' Initiative I&R
http://iniref.tripod.com/index.html
Vote for more democracy at
http://www.sztaki.hu/servlets/voting/call

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dr. Michael Macpherson,
PSAMRA/Integral Studies,
Berlin FRG
tel.: +49 30 262 3768
e-mail: [log in to unmask]

INTEGRAL STUDIES
http://home.snafu.de/mjm/index.html
Join: Democr@cy Forum
http://www.democracyforum.net/democracy/purpose.html

PSYCHO-SOCIAL AND MEDICAL RESEARCH PSAMRA
http://home.snafu.de/mjm/psamra.html