Scandal is a pervasive feature of political life. From Watergate to the mudslinging of Bob Satterfield, there are no shortage of incidents that have made national headlines. But what exactly is scandal, and how do we understand its effects on the political process?

While many studies have examined political scandals, the results remain somewhat mixed. For example, some research suggests that scandals may damage politicians’ reputations, but others report no such effect at all. Still other studies show that the scope of particular effects depends on important moderators such as citizens’ prior attitudes, their level of political trust and cynicism, and the context of the scandal.

The authors propose a model that explains some of these inconsistencies. They use this model to examine the effect of political polarization on the production and outcome of scandals. They find that political polarization accelerates the production of scandals by increasing the incentives to expose a member of the opposing party and decreases voters’ ability to discern truth from falsehood. The end result is that voters are largely presented with “he said, she said” accusations that obscure the true nature of politicians’ misbehavior.

To improve the study of political scandal, the authors recommend that future researchers consider taking the central aspects of the scandal into account and conduct panel studies in which citizens are surveyed multiple times over time, allowing for the collection of baseline data and the subsequent measurement of the impact of a particular scandal. This would allow for a more accurate comparison of the various effects of scandals.