What problem are you solving?:

Estonia has one of the lowest levels of overall political involvement among young persons in Europe (EU Youth Report, 2009). This is concerning in terms of raising future leaders and democratic empowerment. Youth’s political alienation is worrying from the aspect of social cohesion and development.
Estonian youth’s motivation to participate and interest in politics is present but the attractive form of political participation for young people is absent. The increasingly populist election campaigns, signs of non-transparent and non-participatory practice of public policy-making contribute to young citizens’ alienation of politics. The conventional practice of mass media is to report on politicians selectively and without constant tracking of their political behavior which diffuses accountability and transparency in public policy making. Missing dialogue between the politicians and citizens creates the communication divide resulting in a gap between those “two worlds”.

Describe your idea:

The attractive, dynamic and informative web environment is created/maintained by youth to function as a platform for dialogue while observing the actions of politicians and interacting with them.

As the use of ICT is natural for young Estonians, the innovative web-community is easily accessible and allows creative solutions for posting ideas in various forms of multimedia, including text, still images, audio, animation, simulation, video content forms. It allows micro-blogging, while conveying policy-making as an excitingly challenging process.

The Eye on Politics (EP) includes: chronological profiles of Parliament representatives; info on political views, ethics and policy making procedures; modules enabling interaction between the youth and politicians.

The Eye on Politics empowers democracy by interactive new form of democracy in Estonia; increased accountability through collective political memory and advanced feeling of inclusion and trust towards policy-making.

What country will this operate in?: Estonia

Who are you?:

PRAXIS Center for Policy Studies was founded in 2000 as the first independent non-profit think tank in Estonia. Initiative to found PRAXIS came from Open Society Institute which is run by George Soros.

The mission of PRAXIS is to improve and contribute to the policy-making process in Estonia by conducting independent research, providing strategic counsel to policy makers and fostering public debate.

PRAXIS has been active in general public policy areas, such as governance and participation. Recent research topics include measuring the actual improvement of the strategic role of civil society; measuring the improvement of the fiscal and legal environment for non-governmental organizations; analyzing the application of The Good Engagement Practices; training stakeholders’ analytic capacity and enhancing the quality of stakeholder consultation; developing regulatory impact assessment.