From Watergate to Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton’s sex scandal to President Joe Biden’s son’s gun and drug charges, political history is littered with episodes of alleged corruption, ethical breaches and immoral misdeeds. While politicians are not immune to such incidents, some are more vulnerable to them than others and face a greater risk of being ousted from office as a result. To understand why this is the case, University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus looked at presidential, gubernatorial and congressional scandals from 1972 to 2021.
He found that the most common form of political corruption involves the politician giving public funds to companies that are not competitively bid on, a practice known as kickbacks. The company pays a sum to the official, a portion of which is considered a “kickback.” When this occurs, the public suffers as the government allocates money that it could have spent on other projects.
In his analysis, Rottinghaus also found that scandals are more prevalent in countries with looser democratic institutions and a more fragmented news media system. This is because the democratization of media systems increases the likelihood that real or conjectured norm transgressions are reported on and framed as scandalous by journalists. In turn, these acts may be amplified by competing power groups and competitors seeking to influence public perceptions of a political actor or institution’s moral standing.
While research on the effects of scandals has accumulated, findings are inconsistent and have not been fully explained. To close this gap, this article focuses on five central moderators—candidate characteristics and behaviors, prior attitudes, context, scandal type, and media coverage intensity—and identifies avenues for future research.