The confrontation between the Democratic Party candidates for the U.S. presidency, which YouTube and CNN broadcast last month, was an impressive example of the power of technology in the service of direct democracy. It consisted of just the candidates and voters without the intervention of the party's central committee or its communications staff (www.youtube.com/democraticdebate).

In Israel, too, there is no dearth of initiatives to use the Internet to encourage direct and more involved democracy. Knesset member Shelly Yachimovich, for example, very quickly published the draft of the Economic Arrangements Law for 2008 on the net. This was part of an effort to gain the support of the masses in the struggle waged against Treasury officials over the 219 pages of economic edicts, which are generally brought before the government for swift approval and which serve as a tool for circumventing the legislators. Yachimovich's request to transfer the document from its clumsy PDF format to Word drew an immediate response from a number of Internet surfers.

The Knesset2 Web site (www.knesset2.co.il) is another new and highly interesting initiative. The site, which is not owned by the Israeli parliament, is a kind of shadow Knesset where surfers can propose their own bills, and in the spirit of the times, their proposals are evaluated by other surfers. The aim, of course, is to influence the Knesset by flooding the site with proposed legislation that will catch the lawmakers' attention.