The recent controversies surrounding Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s affair with a nightclub bellydancer who was also his paramour, his involvement in an unsolved murder case, and his connections to organized crime highlight a number of scandalous behavior patterns that are gaining increased public attention. These trends reflect several forces that have contributed to the rise of political scandal: harmful Supreme Court decisions, cynical public discourse, and a hostility to checks and balances by the Trump administration.
In response, scholars have conducted a wide variety of political scandal research, from exploring the causes of scandal (e.g., corruption, ethical violations) to examining how scandals are framed and mediated (Entman & Stonbely, 2018). Most scandal studies have taken a topical approach—that is, they study one specific scandal(s).
This article explores the role of polarization in the political arena’s tendency to produce scandal, which is often exacerbated by ideological differences. The authors use a model of two political parties and one elected official to examine how the alignment of the politician’s party with its voters influences her vulnerability to being caught up in a scandal. They find that the more polarized a voting electorate is, the greater the aligned party’s incentive to shield its member from a scandal and the opposing party’s incentive to make false accusations. This reduces the value of political discourse and diminishes voters’ ability to determine the truth about their politicians.
Moreover, the authors show that political polarization increases the likelihood of early government dissolutions by both parties involved in a scandal. They conclude that this increase in dissolutions is a result of politicians strategically withdrawing support from the scandal-hit party and the opposing party, as well as a decrease in the perceived credibility of the scandal-hit politician among voters.