Two popular ManaBalss ideas — that Parliament should be obliged to consider ManaBalss-type citizens’ initiatives supported by online signatures and that the state should know the names of the beneficiaries of offshore holdings — have been enacted into law by Parliament. Two more ManaBalss initiatives, one about traffic law and another about who should pay for hepatitis C treatment, are under consideration in Parliament.

Image Credit... The New York Times

Of course, some suggestions, like “I just want to lead a good life” and “Let’s sack the president,” never make it past ManaBalss’s initial hurdles. “Latvia should petition the U.S. to become the 51st state,” on the other hand, would probably meet the requirements to go public, according to Kristofs Blaus, one of the site’s founders. “Then we see what the people say,” he said, with a shrug.

Governments usually take charge of setting up these online infrastructures, but Latvia followed a different route. The Web site, which is private, is the brainchild of Mr. Blaus, 24, an Internet entrepreneur, and Janis Erts, 25, a former employee of an advertising agency who helped stage a fake Latvian meteorite landing in 2009.

The meteorite ruse — which involved shovels, pyrotechnics and a sprinkling of old-fashioned Soviet photographic film that Mr. Erts believed had been treated with a uranium salt solution, “to give scientists something to think about” — made its way into news reports around the world before a Swedish telecommunications company announced that it had underwritten the whole thing as a publicity stunt. But the experience prompted Mr. Erts to turn his mind to politics.

“After the meteor, I understood I could do stuff,” said Mr. Erts, who began to wonder why people would go to great lengths for, say, the newest Apple product but were left cold by the political process. “I started to think, ‘Can I do this not just for selling, but for government, too?'”

Mr. Blaus said: “We realized that you can’t change anything sitting around and talking to your friends. You need your ideas to be heard by someone in power.”

ManaBalss made its debut in 2011, at a giant outdoor summer party called the Cemetery Feast for the Oligarchs. “We wanted to thank the oligarchs for helping us to realize we need to do something for ourselves,” said Viesturs Dule, a former television host for a political satire program, who helped plan the event. “They were the mouse at the table, showing us there was a problem.”