ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the literature on the legacy and impact of political scandals and underscore the ways in which scandals have a potentially positive effect on institutional accountability and voter attentiveness. It discusses a series of future research questions, outlining an agenda for renewing our study of political scandals as an instrument of media and institutional systemic recalibration. Political scandals are frequently treated as a stain on the political system, resulting from poor personal judgment, lax rule enforcement, or bald political corruption. Media coverage treats these as unwelcome hiccups in an otherwise routine series of events. The American public is notoriously inattentive to politics, often even being unable to answer basic questions about the players, politics, or the process. Scandals may change that. Scandals may also help to change public discourse about issues and candidates. Scandals are argued to increase the quality of discourse in the media about issues or about the role of citizens.
