The Sole Effect of Double Standards: How Public Scandalization of Political Hypocrisy Influences Citizens' Democratic Trust and Engagement

Political hypocrisy is popularly understood as the discrepancy between what an individual says they believe one ought to do, and what they themselves actually do. Political hypocrisy is thus often linked to the study of political scandals, in which politicians who do not practice as they preach are exposed and their transgressions are amplified by extensive media coverage. Studies suggest that political hypocrisy might affect voters negatively and ultimately lead to a less healthy democracy. In this study we focus on how political hypocrisy affects the perceived functioning of democracy, understood as both a measure of the perceived health of democratic culture and voters' willingness to engage in democratic elections. We focus on the least likely case of Denmark and conduct a split-sample experiment based on novel data from a representative sample of 1038 Danish adults. We find that citizens' exposure to stories about hypocritical politicians leads to disillusionment with democratic culture, but not to disengagement. This means that citizens seem to be able to separate their negative perceptions of the political system and democratic culture from their personal responsibility to participate in elections. This reaction is most likely linked to Denmark's strong democratic culture, but also to a more generic and fundamental trait of most liberal democracies: what we call “the contract paradox.” We therefore question whether hypocritical politicians are the real threat to democracy, or whether it is rather the media's scandalization of their behavior and our collective intolerance towards it that poses a threat.