Political scandal is an unavoidable part of politics, as evidenced by the numerous and varied transgressions of public figures that spark outrage, indignation and amusement. Politicians may get caught up in a scandal for many reasons, including greed, lust, moral bankruptcy, hubris or naivete. In some cases, the consequences of these missteps are dire and destructive while others are trivial or short-lived. Regardless of the motivations, scandals often have a profound impact on the nation.
Much of the previous research on political scandal focuses on the negative effects that are observed when a single politician is involved in a scandal (e.g., Bless, Igou, Schwarz & Wanke, 2000; Puente-Diaz, 2015; Regner & Le Floch, 2005). However, research has also shown that scandals can have broader second-order effects by affecting citizens’ perceptions of politicians who are not directly implicated in the scandal if they know about it or have access to negative information.
In this article, we build on this existing research to examine the mediation of scandals. We present a new model of the processes that lead to scandalization, and then test its predictions in a real-world setting.
We find that political parties have strong incentives to foment scandal against their rivals. This enables them to undermine their opponents’ reputations while generating media interest. In turn, this media attention fuels the amplification of a scandal. This can be the case, for example, when the President of the United States is accused of being involved in a covert arms-for-hostages program. In addition, partisanship can play a critical role. Specifically, divided government increases the likelihood of the press to pursue a story by quoting opposition party members.
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