| dc.description.abstract | Politicians at times abuse their office for private gain, flout campaign finance rules, engage in moral transgressions, and are involved in other types of wrongdoing. Although such politicians may attempt to conceal their misdeeds from the public, the news media sometimes reports on them, generating scandals or publicized wrongdoing. Prior research on scandals and wrongdoing has predominately investigated the implications for accountability with a narrow focus on how misconduct affects the incumbent herself (e.g. approval ratings, electoral performance or perceptions of personal traits). This dissertation makes a distinct contribution by investigating how politicians’ misbehavior can have broader effects on public opinion and elections. First, I show how information regarding hypocritical scandals involving U.S. congressional representatives affects party evaluations. I find that Republicans feel better about their party when reading about a congressman’s resignation following a scandal marked by hypocrisy compared to merely reading about the hypocritical scandal itself. Next, I use a novel dataset of publicized wrongdoing involving presidents in the Latin American region to assess how those acts shape party systems and voter engagement. I find that not only does the incumbent party lose support in a subsequent election, but electoral volatility and party fragmentation also increase when incumbents are implicated in misconduct compared to when they are clean. Furthermore, I find that there is an increase in invalid voting in compulsory voting systems in elections following malfeasant versus clean incumbents. This dissertation calls on scholars to continue research into the consequences of wrongdoing not only for incumbents but more broadly on parties, party systems, and electoral behavior. | |
