Political scandals and vertical contagion in multilevel systems

Larner, Jac ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5171-8851, Johns, Robert, Henderson, Ailsa, McMillan, Fraser and Carman, Christopher 2025. Political scandals and vertical contagion in multilevel systems. British Journal of Political Science 10.1017/S0007123425000043

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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.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Schools > Cardiff Law & Politics Schools > Department of Politics and International Relations (POLIR) Research Institutes & Centres > Wales Governance Centre (WGCES)
Subjects:	J Political Science > JA Political science (General)
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
ISSN:	0007-1234
Funders:	ESRC
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	16 January 2025
Date of Acceptance:	13 January 2025
Last Modified:	23 Oct 2025 16:04
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/175327

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