Political scandals and vertical contagion in multilevel systems

Abstract

Can a scandal in one political sphere tarnish—or unexpectedly polish—the reputation of leaders and politicians in another? This study investigates the impact of political scandals in multi-level political systems and explores three possibilities: contagion, where trust erodes across all political levels; containment, where evaluations are limited to the specific institutions involved; and contrast, where actors at other levels appear more trustworthy in comparison. This paper presents the first experimental test of vertical contagion, containment, and contrast effects following real-world scandals in UK and Scottish politics: Partygate and Campervangate. We find weak evidence of contagion in the Scottish-level ‘Campervangate’ scandal, although trust reductions were generally small and often not statistically significant. However, the ‘Partygate’ scandal reveals a distinct contrast effect: trust decreased in UK political actors but increased at the Scottish level. These results suggest that scandals in multi-level polities can influence evaluations of otherwise ‘innocent’ political actors with troubling consequences for democratic accountability mechanisms.

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ORCID for Robert Johns: orcid.org/0000-0002-4543-7463

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