No Sex Scandals Please, We’re French: French Attitudes towards Politicians’ Public and Private Conduct

Abstract

Enlighten-Research publications by members of the University of Glasgow http://eprints.gla.ac.uk No sex scandals please, we're French: French attitudes towards politicians' public and private conduct

Politicians and Scandals that Damage the Party Brand

“…On the other hand, we create three sets of vignettes differing in the scandal type (again using random assignment with equal probability): (1) an unspecified scandal without example or additional information (our baseline), (2) a financial scandal, and (3) a sex scandal. The choice of scandal types was driven by research indicating that financial and sex scandals are the most common types of scandals (Basinger 2012; Doherty, Dowling, and Miller 2011; Sarmiento‐Mirwaldt et al 2014). Random assignment of the resulting six vignettes allows us to assess the potential moderating roles of partisanship and scandal type on politicians’ preferred response strategies.…”

“…The type of scandal is a second potential moderating factor for uninvolved politicians’ scandal response strategy. Two main scandal types are identified in the foregoing literature: that is, sex scandals (e.g., sexual misconduct or extramarital affairs) and financial scandals (e.g., tax evasion or accepting payment for political access) (Doherty, Dowling, and Miller 2011; Hamel and Miller 2019; Sarmiento‐Mirwaldt et al 2014). Importantly, voters perceive these two types of scandals very differently.…”

“…This between‐subjects experimental design allows investigating whether and how politicians’ response strategies are affected by the type of scandal (e.g., a financial versus a sex scandal) and where a scandal takes place (e.g., in their own party or another party). From a theoretical perspective, we argue that the type of scandal matters because voters respond in distinct ways to, say, financial scandals and sex scandals (Doherty, Dowling, and Miller 2011; Sarmiento‐Mirwaldt et al 2014). This affects the likely electoral costs of specific scandal types, which, in turn, may impact upon politicians’ preferred response strategies.…”

Partisan bias in politicians’ perception of scandals

“…a generic scandal (our ‘baseline’ treatment), a financial scandal, and a moral scandal. These scandal types are commonly differentiated in the literature (Sarmiento-Mirwaldt et al, 2014), and are most frequently observed in reality (Basinger, 2012). We introduce this variation in scandal types for two reasons.…”

The British party funding regime at a critical juncture? Applying new institutional analysis

“…Much of the methodological controversy surrounding the measurement of corruption rests on the very notion of how one can create a generalisable definition of corruption (for a neat summary of definitional debates, see Hough, 2013: 2–5). In the European context, sex scandals are a good example – in France, politicians can remain relatively unpunished when they are caught in flagrante with someone ‘inappropriate’, whereas in Britain it can cause anything from huge embarrassment, to the end of a glittering career (Sarmiento-Mirwaldt et al, 2014). Therefore, we could easily conflate a discursive institutional strand with the historico-normative institutional understanding forwarded in the literature (Clift and Fisher, 2004, 2005; Fisher, 2009, 2011, 2015a).…”