A political scandal occurs when a politician violates the norms of public life and the values of democracy. The abuse of power for private gain can be as brazen as a president bribing foreign politicians to talk up his country’s human rights record or as subtle as a government contractor rigging a bidding process. In either case, corruption erodes democracy and leads to misbehavior, whether it is the kind of rampant graft seen in the Gilded Age or the more recent kleptocracy revealed by the Panama and Paradise papers.

Scandals can damage a politician’s credibility and make citizens lose faith in their institutions, but they can also inspire reforms and remind people that politicians are not above the law. In this special issue, scholars from a variety of disciplines—including political science, communication science, and public policy—examine how scandals occur and how they affect people and politics.

The focus is on the “scandal calculus,” which determines a politician’s decision whether to engage in misconduct. This involves weighing the costs and benefits of the behavior, such as the likelihood that it will be exposed to voters, the amount of repercussions, and the benefit of the resulting political payoffs. We consider how political polarization influences this calculus, leading some aligned parties to shelter their politicians from scandal and opposing parties to fabricate false accusations. When this happens, the value of political discourse is diminished and voters are the losers. In the long term, partisanship breeds dishonesty and undermines the integrity of the democratic system.