Whether they involve sex, drugs, bribery or just misplaced loyalty or trust, political scandal can be a powerful force in politics. It can ruin reputations, end careers, and even destroy the lives of individuals. The most famous examples include Watergate, Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump. But it is important to distinguish between actual misconduct and the partisan accusations that turn misbehavior into political scandal. The latter is a powerful feature of modern politics that voters must factor into their assessment of politicians, but it may not tell them anything useful about the politician’s character.
This article uses a new statistical approach to measure misconduct and scandal and provides evidence that the political calculus that leads to scandal is profoundly influenced by the ideological disagreement between parties. The greater the polarization between two parties, the more an aligned party will want to shelter its politician from scandal, and the more the opposing party will want to expose it to public scrutiny. As a result, information about politicians’ misbehavior is suppressed and baseless accusations are made, making it harder for voters to evaluate their politicians’ honesty and integrity.
For this study, we define a “scandal” as the exposition of the occurrence of an infraction that is not criminally investigated. This is not intended to be a comprehensive definition of misconduct, but it allows us to compare the incidence of scandals with the incidence of corruption. We also use a dummy variable for whether a particular infraction is criminal, as it is likely to have an effect on the likelihood of being exposed to a scandal.
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