Political Scandals Research Articles

Political Scandal and Public Figure

Indonesian society is familiar with the terms 'public figures' and 'celebrities', but the distinction is often not understood properly. The public's interest in content that focuses on entertainment, lifestyles, and gossip, as well as the presence of a media that facilitates such content, makes the process of 'celebrating' common. This process has resulted in the private space of public figures being transformed into objects of public consumption.Scandals are often quite popularly discussed among the public, especially when their subject is a public figure. However, studies of how scandals affect the public and its political behaviour have not been widely documented. In 2018, Indonesian news media began widely covering the divorce of well-known politician Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (BTP/Ahok) from his ex-wife Veronica Tan, and this brought questions of extramarital affairs to the surface in the midst of a heated local election atmosphere. This situation was divisive, and received various public responses. Previous studies have shown that scandals tend to negatively affect popular attitudes towards the politicians involved in them. In Indonesia, scandals have been common, widely recognised by the public, but their effects are never discussed in depth. Therefore, this study, which involved around 400 respondents, seeks to provide an overview of how the Indonesian public responds to politicians involved in scandals and how such scandals affect politicians' electability. The results of this study show that scandals do affect the public's political attitude, but not in the ways suggested by existing studies.

Scandal and Malay Politics: A Question of Dignity Against Anwar Ibrahim and Azmin Ali

Political scandal has become very common in a democratic country as political rivals bid to discredit one another. An open and free media allows politicians from different sides to publicize alleged wrongdoings by their opponents. There are different scandals ranging from financial, political to moral scandals. Using dignity as a framework, this paper argues that moral or sex scandals are most effective to defeat a Malay politician in Malaysia because a section of the Malay population looks upon virtuous conduct to evaluate the capability of a leader. Specifically, this paper uses homosexual accusations against Anwar Ibrahim and Azmin Ali to show that this is the type of scandal that is convenient to bring into question their dignity. The paper concludes that after the same tactic is used over the decades, it appears that voters are reaching a saturation point, especially among middle-class Malays.

Scandal, Hypocrisy, and Resignation: How Partisanship Shapes Evaluations of Politicians’ Transgressions

AbstractHypocrisy is a common feature of political scandal. Yet, it is unclear how individuals evaluate hypocritical misconduct differently based on a transgressing politician’s partisan identity. Using survey experiments, this article assesses how exposure to different frames of wrong doing involving actual members of congress spill over on to the evaluation of parties distinctly among co-partisans and out-partisans. I find that Republicans feel more positive towards their party after reading about the resignation of a hypocritical co-partisan politician compared to merely reading about the politician’s hypocrisy. In addition, Republicans feel warmer about their party when reading about a hypocritical versus non-hypocritical out-party transgression. However, Democrats do not change their party evaluations after being exposed to different scandal frames involving co-partisan and out-partisan politicians. This suggests that Republicans and Democrats have different attitudes towards hypocrisy and/or differently apply information about individuals when evaluating parties.

A prominent spy: Mehdi Ben Barka, Czechoslovak intelligence, and Eastern Bloc espionage in the Third World during the Cold War

ABSTRACT The 1965 disappearance of Mehdi Ben Barka in Paris, the catalyst of one of the greatest political scandals in the history of post-war France, is still shrouded in mystery several decades later. Newly declassified documents from Czech archives have shed light on the final years of the Moroccan politician’s life, revealing that Ben Barka had cooperated with Czechoslovak intelligence from 1961 until his abduction. The aim of this study is to assess the nature of this partnership and demonstrate the activities, methods, and aims of Czechoslovak intelligence in the Third World during the 1960s.

Socio-Mediated Scandals: Theorizing Political Scandals in a Digital Media Environment

AbstractPolitical scandals are a conspicuous characteristic of American democracy, and yet they have received little theoretical attention that might nuance our understanding of their nature and form. One key context yet to be extensively explored is digital technology and the enabling of vernacular discourses in the scandal narrative. Thus, this article develops a theoretical framework for studying political scandals in the digital age. I discuss this as a transformation from mediated scandals to socio-mediated scandals. Socio-mediated scandals: (a) reflect a more collaborative process, (b) are increasingly personalized, (c) are subject to amplified partisanship, and (d) are characterized by liveness, wherein scandals are quick, explosive, and then dissipate. The implications of this framework and opportunities for future research are discussed.

Muck, brass and smoke: Policy post-exceptionalism in the agri-food sector.

Governance is well recognized as shifting boundaries of responsibilities for doing things among key partners. What is less clear is how exactly power relations are altered and where power is concentrated as new forms of governance emerge. In our article we use the concept of policy post-exceptionalism to critically assess ‘Going for Growth’, a strategic action plan that, until the recent past, underpinned the Northern Ireland agri-food industry. The agri-food sector has an important and prominent role in the Northern Ireland economy. The Going for Growth strategy illustrates how particular interests within the sector are supported by government, as demonstrated through the Renewable Heat Initiative and a scheme promoting anaerobic digestors. Using policy post-exceptionalism to scrutinize the strategy, our research shows what can go wrong when a transition to post-exceptionalism occurs. While Going for Growth purported to represent the wider interests that one might expect to find in a post-exceptionalist approach to agri-food governance, in fact the concentration of power with corporate actors left little space for the inclusion of wider interests. We conclude that this strategy represented a move towards tense post-exceptionalism, creating at least one political scandal, raising questions of legitimacy and transparency and fundamentally undermining political viability of wider government. It is an extreme case of what can happen when post-exceptionalist policymaking goes wrong.

The Impact of Political Scandals on Trust in State Institutions: Lithuanian Case Analysis

This article raises the question of whether the political scandals that take place in Lithuania have an effect on public trust in Lithuania’s state institutions and, if so, what kind of an effect can be perceived. The following institutions of the Republic of Lithuania were selected for analysis: the Government, the Parliament, the Institution of the President, the Special Investigation Service, and the State Security Department. The analysis covers the 2004–2016 years (inclusive) period. The links between political scandals and trust in state institutions are analyzed based on an institutional approach to changes in governmental trust, as well as a non-functional approach to political scandals and the results of empirical studies analyzing political scandals and their relation to governmental trust. In order to determine links between political scandals and trust in state institutions, a dynamic linear regression with time series data was performed. The analysis suggests that political scandals that took place in Lithuania during the period of 2004–2016 had a substantial impact on changes in public trust in state institutions. In the case of all institutions, a negative short-term impact of political scandals on trust in these institutions has been identified. The results of the analysis also reveal that the extent of the negative impact of political scandals may depend on the level of intensity of the escalation of political scandals in the media and the type of political scandal.

Influence of a political scandal on voting in a simple model

A simple computer model describing the influence of a political scandal on a voting process in a two-party society, is presented. We discuss the role of three parameters charactering a scandal — its magnitude (volume of coverage in the media), time it occupies place in the media and the openness of the society. We show that the dependence of the magnitude of a scandal needed for the opposition to take power on the parameters of the model exhibits two regimes — fast and slow changes. Increasing presence of a scandal in the media for a very long time, as well as increasing the openness of the society might not produce a noticeably different effects than a shorter one. Comparison of the model with the data for president Nixon support during the Watergate affair, shows reasonably good agreement.

Corruption and Democratic Transition in Eastern Europe. The Role of Political Scandals in Post-Milošević Serbia

Article Corruption and Democratic Transition in Eastern Europe. The Role of Political Scandals in Post-Milošević Serbia was published on June 1, 2020 in the journal Comparative Southeast European Studies (volume 68, issue 2).

The pornified presidency: hyper-masculinity and the pornographic style in U.S. political rhetoric

ABSTRACT Donald Trump’s success in the 2016 election, despite allegations of sexual assault and sexual harassment, raises questions about how he survived the type of political scandal that traditionally sinks a campaign. We argue that Trump and his behavior were largely framed in a pornographic light, forming an image that emphasized the hypermasculine nature of the U.S. presidency. We suggest that while women candidates are contained and disadvantaged by the pornification frame, some men may benefit from appearing sexist but dominant, disgusting but authentic, and authorized to violate taboos.

Defensive Partisanship? Evidence that In‐Party Scandals Increase Out‐Party Hostility

AbstractContemporary U.S. politics is characterized by polarization and interpartisan antipathy. This is accompanied by a media landscape saturated with coverage of political scandals. Applying a social identity perspective, we examined whether exposure to scandals that threaten partisan's moral group image (i.e., in‐party scandals), may motivate defensive hostility against opposing partisans. Across three experiments we exposed U.S. partisans to scandals attributed to either in‐party or out‐party politicians. We then assessed partisan hostility using a variety of operationalizations, including anger at a real outgroup politician (Study 1), judgments about the alleged misdeeds of a fabricated outgroup politician (Study 2), and negative perceptions of opposing party members (Study 3). Strength of partisan identity was assessed as a predicted moderator (Study 3). As expected in‐ (vs. out‐) party scandals, were perceived as group‐image threats and elicited greater hostility towards opposing partisans, independent of partisans' ideological extremity or prior affective polarization.

Food Risks on the Web: Analysis of the 2017 Fipronil Alert in the Italian Online Information Sources.

In the summer of 2017, several European Union Member States were involved in a food alert caused by the presence of fipronil pesticide residues in chicken eggs. The food alert became a major news and received wide coverage both in the mass media and on the Internet. This article describes a study that analyzed how the Italian online information sources represented the fipronil alert, using web monitoring techniques and both manual and automatic content analysis methods. The results indicate that the alert was amplified because general news media could represent the alert within the frame of a political scandal, and because different social actors exploited the case. However, online information sources correctly communicated that the risks for consumers were low, reporting mainly what was officially communicated by the Italian health authorities. The study provides empirical evidence on how the online information sources represent food risks and food alerts and offers useful indications for health authorities in charge of the public communication of food risks.

More guilty if woman: The role of gender and causal attribution in political scandals’ impact

ABSTRACT Political scandals can have a great impact for the perpetrator, but negative consequences may vary considerably depending on such factors as personal characteristics of the involved political actors or citizens’ expectations. The present study investigated the effect of the gender of the politician involved in different kinds of scandals deriving from the transgression of gender role-based expectations and the role of participants’ attribution of responsibility (internal vs. external) on their evaluation of the perpetrator. Results showed that participants did not express different evaluations of the female versus male politician when their behavior testified to a lack of qualities stereotypically associated to men and women. But when participants attributed the responsibility of the scandal to the perpetrator, women were punished more severely than their male colleagues. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Municipal Bond Trading and Political Scandals

We study municipal bond trading activity before, during, and after announcements of government officials’ misconduct. Using a sample of over 39,000,000 bond trades from January 2006 to December 2013 in nearly 500,000 bonds, we find that spreads are higher on initial news announcement, indictment announcement, and trial verdict announcement days than other trading days. Spreads remain elevated for 5 trading days following these announcements. We also find that large bond trades account for the majority of price discovery on announcement days. Overall, our results establish a link between government officials’ misconduct and municipal bond markets. TOPIC:Financial crises and financial market history Key Findings • This article examines how municipal bond traders react to news regarding potential wrongdoing by government officials. • We examine news announcements regarding the misconduct of state officials and the effect that might have on municipal bond trading. We find that when there is a news announcement related to the misconduct or wrongdoing of a government official, the average municipal bond trade size increases. • We find that municipal bond spreads increase on news related to potential miscount of state officials. • We find that price discovery in municipal bonds occurs more in larger-size trades when news related to potential miscount of state officials is revealed.

The normalization of the populist radical right in news interviews: a study of journalistic reporting on the Swedish democrats

ABSTRACT Focusing on the salient case of news interviewing, this paper investigates the role of journalism in the normalization of radical right-wing politics and the discourses of nationalism and nativism. Normalization is related to transformations in the socio-political landscape, the discursive strategies of political actors, the professional norms of journalism, and the discursive positioning of political views in news reporting. Data include news interviews with the leaders of the Swedish right-wing populist party, the Swedish Democrats. A discourse- and conversation analytical approach is applied to analyze the discursive representations and positioning of political views in four different contexts of interviewing: routine news events, political scandals, live two-party interviews, and set piece interviews. The study shows an overall tendency to normalize and legitimize the political views and language of the radical right. Distinctive practices and mechanisms are identified. The study highlights the challenges of journalism, related to the normalizing implications of the restricted forms of impartiality applied in news journalism.

Racializing Apparatuses and Embodiment Performance

In April 2014, a ship named Sewol, carrying 476 passengers on its way to Jeju Island, sank into the Yellow Sea, near South Korea. The shipwreck exposed the Park administration’s incapacity to save civilians and ignited a huge political scandal that eventually impeached and imprisoned the President. In this paper, I centrally discuss two ways of performance art’s embodiment of the actual/imagined body of its subjects through stage devices (the prosthetic) and reconstruction of the audience’s sense of temporality (the stage as temporal indicator), by examining a South Korean performance piece’s engagement with the navigational failure and the systematic racialization of Southeast Asian immigrants by multiculturalist art policies and apparatuses.

UK begins to open up.

Parts of the UK are set to further lift lockdown restrictions, but a political scandal could put public health at risk, says Penny Sarchet

Discursive construction of sexual assault: A qualitative analysis of news media reporting of ‘the Kavanaugh Case’

Media coverage of sexual violence in political contexts has previously been shown to sensationalise the events by focusing on the impact ‘the scandal’ may have on a politician’s reputation and career rather than on the narrative of the victim. In late 2018, another political scandal appeared in newspapers worldwide, covering Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assault on Christine Blasey Ford. This paper aims to explore how Blasey Ford’s allegations and the subsequent hearing which came to be known as ‘the Kavanaugh case’ were discursively constructed in UK national newspapers between 13 September 2018 and 24 October 2018. A feminist post-structuralist discourse analysis of 94 articles from UK’s 10 top-circulating national newspapers was employed to explore how heteropatriarchal power relations are continuously perpetuated within UK newspapers through instances of humanising of the perpetrator and framing allegations of sexual misconduct as (only) political game-playing.

Sontaku and political scandals in Japan

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explain a new scandal ingredient in Japanese politics called sontaku. This word refers to cases when officials grant special treatment to a project because they believe they are acting in accordance with the wishes of an associated powerful person.Design/methodology/approachThis paper describes the specific construction of major scandals involving sontaku from 2017 based primarily on newspaper accounts, examines the consequences of these scandals for politicians and bureaucrats, and discusses their implications for combating corruption in Japan.FindingsThe scandals after 2017 damaged to some extent the public support for the current Japanese administration and influenced the prime minister's decision to call a snap election. The scandals also highlighted systematic problems in the bureaucracy and motivated the government to reform laws concerning the management of public documents.Originality/valueThis paper will be useful to scholars and policy makers interested in studying the causes and consequences of scandals and political corruption in Japan.

South Korea in 2019: Unfulfilled Ambitions, Debilitating Troubles

This article provides a comprehensive review of important events in South Korea in 2019. What began as an audacious year for the Moon Jae-in administration had seen its foreign policy goals unfulfilled and domestic situation increasingly mired in political scandals and socio-economic problems. The Moon administration needs to re-examine its policies, face up to its failures and reassess its policy options for the second half of Moon’s presidency to produce concrete results.