Successful ground-up governance

We hear a lot about how the networked society will bring political decision making closer to individuals, but finding concrete examples of this trend in action is tough. However, a week ago, the British government backed down over a proposal to expand its internet monitoring programme to allow more agencies access to traffic data. The proposal was due to become law after a mere 90 minutes of debate, but the UK internet community began campaigning and soon the government's plans were postponed and, days later, shelved. The BBC has credited those behind Stand and FaxYourMP with making the difference (also on a TV report (Real file)) by alerting a wider audience and then giving people the means to quickly and simply contact their representatives. If a handful of people with some technical know-how can empower the public to achieve a government u-turn now, where will we be in 10 years? I hesitated in posting this as I have a vested interest (as Stand's hastily copied-and-pasted design testifies), and it's hard for me to be objective.