Political scandal reflects the breakdown of political norms and raises suspicions about the integrity of public institutions. The shady dealings that have plagued Congress since the Gilded Age, from bribes and favoritism to pay-for-play, are one example of this. President Trump’s openly transactional approach to power echoes and amplifies the trends, further undermining trust in government.
In modern society, scandal requires that real or conjectured norm transgressions of politicians and other powerful actors be reported on and framed as such (Esser & Hartung, 2004). Scandal studies have focused on the media’s role in this mediation process and have found that partisan politics, the nature of the scandal, and how it is framed may influence perceptions and responses to the scandal.
These studies have analyzed a variety of dependent variables, including political trust (Birch & Allen, 2010), perceived legitimacy of democracy (Allern & Pollack, 2012), acceptance of the scandalous behavior of politicians and other public figures (Sarmiento-Mirwaldt, Allen, & Birch, 2014), and news source-dependent scandal effects (Botero, Cornejo, Liuzza, Minio-Paluello, & Caprara, 2015).
A major aim of this Special Section is to highlight the need for future research on the causes, consequences, and responses to political scandal, particularly with respect to a more nuanced understanding of what constitutes a corruption scandal, and how norm violations are influenced by political landscape and cultural context. One important methodological advance would be to design panel studies that collect data before a scandal emerges and then follow participants as the scandal is unfolding, allowing for comparison of evaluations made during and after a scandal.