ABSTRACT

Although much has been written about the scale of corruption and the proliferation of scandal in Italy, France and Spain, no work to date has investigated conceptually the reasons for the explosion of public indignation at the time it occurred: why the late 1980s and early 1990s and not before? The aim of this chapter is not to chronicle these scandals or describe the institutional contexts from which they originated, but rather to provide a conceptual analysis of the nature of scandal and the conditions under which it emerges. Scandals are the result of conflicts of legitimacy involving three major elements of the democratic polity: the representation of the electorate, the legality of political behaviour and the mobilisation of public opinion. Understanding the emergence of these conflicts requires an investigation of the tensions or ‘strains’ occurring within and between the three arenas of democratic polities that embody these key elements: politics, the judiciary and the media. 1 Only by analysing this complex process of interaction can we understand why scandal has emerged on such a wide scale in these countries since the late 1980s and why its implications for the future of these democracies are so important.