Political scandals are real or conjectured norm violations of political actors and institutions that are repeatedly reported on and framed as such by news media and other social actors. They can be triggered by a range of strategies and purposes, such as to shape the political agenda, smear competitors, or mobilize a particular ideology. They can also be staged by the political elite, as illustrated by the case of Bo Xilai in China. Moreover, those in power can even trigger scandals themselves through provocative slogans and remarks that are then interpreted by the media as scandalous.
As a consequence of their negative effect on public opinion, political scandals can have substantial ramifications for politicians themselves. For example, if voters perceive that politicians are not of the type they publicly pretend to be, scandals can cause citizens to withdraw their support from those politicians. Thus, political scandals can undermine the integrity of democratic institutions (von Sikorski, Knoll & Matthes, 2019).
While previous research has shown that knowledge of a scandal leads to lower candidate evaluations and weakens political trust, several important limitations persist. Most studies used experimental designs with fictitious scandal cases and candidates, and they did not account for preexisting candidate evaluations. This research may therefore be biased by a number of uncontrolled confounding factors. Further, research informed by the motivated reasoning perspective suggests that specific prior candidate evaluations may buffer against incongruent and negative incoming information (e.g., a scandal) because partisans tend to mentally argue against it.
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