The behavior of political decision makers can be outrageous. But the transformation of such misbehavior into scandal is not inevitable. It depends largely on how the misbehavior is framed and mediated by the media.
Scandalization can happen when a politician violates public values, when their actions or inactions are in violation of the law, or when they make controversial utterances that inflame political sentiments. Economic scandals like bribery, sex, or tax evasion also can trigger scandalization. And some forms of scandal, such as lying or obscene utterances can denigrate politicians’ character, thus undermining the public’s trust in them.
These factors may explain why there seem to be more scandals today than in previous eras. However, the underlying causes are deeper than simply more bad behavior by decision makers. The recent uptick in scandals is fueled by a combination of forces, including harmful Supreme Court decisions that have whittled down campaign finance regulations and cynical public discourse that has allowed politicians to flaunt their transactional approach to power.
In the end, all of this is bad news for voters. Corruption warps policy making, and public goods such as education, health care, and infrastructure lose out. Moreover, voters pay the price for these scandals through welfare costs that reflect the embezzled funds (de Vries and Solaz, 2017). Fortunately, research across many disciplines, including political psychology, communication science, and political science, has found some good news: the ubiquity of scandalization does not necessarily mean that corruption is rampant in modern democracies.
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