Corruption is a problem that politicians and their institutions have struggled with throughout history. When government officials use their positions for undue private gain, public goods like infrastructure, education, and health care suffer. During the Gilded Age of the late-19th century, for example, industrial conglomerates could manipulate policy and gobble up resources on favorable terms while workers were left to struggle with overcrowded housing, poor sanitation, and inadequate wages and benefits.
Scandal is a common term used to describe political misconduct, but research on scandals has had inconclusive results and inconsistent findings about electoral consequences. This Special Section aims to illuminate some of these inconsistencies by exploring five central moderators: candidate characteristics and behaviors, prior attitudes, context, and scandal type.
The most well-known form of political scandal is financial self-enrichment, for instance through bribery and kickbacks. However, scandals also occur when politicians violate personal behavioral norms and thereby provoke discussion about their trustworthiness. A good example of this is the “-gate” phenomenon: when an alleged incident becomes so salacious that it gains media attention.
A controversial theory is that political scandals serve a function for democracy by signaling to voters that a politician is not of the “type” they publicly pretend to be. However, other research has found that corruption incidents do not change voting behavior because voters are already sensitive to these kinds of signals. This implies that the effect of scandals may be diminished, or even reversed, by reducing the frequency and intensity of their mediation by the news media.
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