Breeding Ground: When presidents are more vulnerable to political scandal

Little is known about the underlying causes of political scandal, which is often portrayed as the result of misbehavior by public officials. I argue that scandals are socially constructed events whose occurrence can be influ- enced by political context. As a result, many potentially scandalous events do not become scandals, while other events do become scandals despite shaky evidence. The decisive factor is often whether the political environ- ment is favorable for opposition legislators to promote scandal allegations. I develop a formal model of presidential and executive branch scandal, which have become pervasive in contemporary American politics, and test its key predictions on data from Washington Post and New York Times news reports. I find that the president becomes more vulnerable to the onset of scandal as his approval rating among opposition party identifiers in the public declines. Scandal frequency has also seemingly increased over time as the parties have become more polarized. Divided government, however, is not found to have an effect on scandal incidence.