Reputation-based Governance

eBay offers a good example of how the Internet has changed the way that we use information about reputation. It would be easy to cheat someone on eBay. However, an essential characteristic of the site prevents this from happening: buyer and seller reviews form what amounts to an "index of reputation." The availability of such an index provides a strong incentive to be an honest trader. Reputation-Based Governancemelds concepts from businesses like eBay with politics. The book uses interdisciplinary tools to argue that the intelligent use of widely available Internet technologies can strengthen reputational mechanisms and significantly improve public governance. Based on this notion, this book proposes a governance model that leans on the concept of reputational incentives while discussing the pivotal role of reputation in governance today. Author Lucio Picci argues that a continuous, distributed process of assessing policy outcomes, enabled by an appropriate information system, would contribute to a governance model characterized by effectiveness, efficiency, and a minimum amount of rent-seeking activity. Moreover, if candidates' policies were recorded before elections occurred, it would be possible to develop advanced forms of popular participation in public governance.