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Misconduct by Voters' Own Representatives Does Not Affect Voters' Generalized Political Trust

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Abstract

One reason given for declining levels of trust in politicians and institutions is the incidence of scandals involving voters' representatives. Politicians implicated in scandals, especially financial scandals, typically see their constituents' support for them decrease. It has been suggested that these specific negative judgements about a representative's misconduct spill over onto diffuse political trust in the system as a whole. We argue that the 2009 Parliamentary expenses scandal in the United Kingdom is a strong test of these scandal spillover effects in a non-experimental context. Yet, using a multilevel analysis of survey and representative implication data, we find no evidence for these effects. This is despite voters being aware of their MP's scandal implication, and this awareness affecting voters' support for their own MP. We conclude that voters' judgements about their constituency representatives are unlikely to affect their diffuse political trust.
LETTER
Misconduct by VotersOwn Representatives Does Not
Affect VotersGeneralized Political Trust
Edmund Kelly and James Tilley
Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Corresponding author: Edmund Kelly; Email: edmund.kelly@politics.ox.ac.uk
(Received 27 November 2023; revised 4 April 2024; accepted 3 September 2024)
Abstract
One reason given for declining levels of trust in politicians and institutions is the incidence of scandals
involving votersrepresentatives. Politicians implicated in scandals, especially financial scandals, typically
see their constituentssupport for them decrease. It has been suggested that these specific negative judge-
ments about a representatives misconduct spill over onto diffuse political trust in the system as a whole.
We argue that the 2009 Parliamentary expenses scandal in the United Kingdom is a strong test of these
scandal spillover effects in a non-experimental context. Yet, using a multilevel analysis of survey and rep-
resentative implication data, we find no evidence for these effects. This is despite voters being aware of
their MPs scandal implication, and this awareness affecting voterssupport for their own MP. We con-
clude that votersjudgements about their constituency representatives are unlikely to affect their diffuse
political trust.
Keywords: Political trust; scandal; public opinion; United Kingdom
In many democracies, political trust is at a low ebb. Echoing concerns stretching back to the
1970s (Miller 1974), there have been large falls in political trust across almost all advanced indus-
trial democracies over the last fifty years (Citrin and Stoker 2018). For example, in the United
Kingdom (UK) trust has been in decline since the mid-twentieth century (Jennings et al.
2017). Why has this happened? One explanation focuses on the prevalence of intensively reported
political scandals that implicate votersconstituency representatives and reduce wider levels of
trust (Rose and Wessels 2019). Unsurprisingly, when a politician is implicated in a scandal, sup-
port for that politician tends to fall (Ferraz and Finan 2008). Many have argued that there is also a
spillover effect. That is, constituents of an implicated politician also reduce their diffuse support
for all politicians and national institutions (Bowler and Karp 2004; van Elsas et al. 2020;von
Sikorski et al. 2020). In essence, a voters judgement of the specific misconduct of their represen-
tative becomes a judgement on the system as a whole.
In this article, we test that spillover effect. We investigate the three necessary steps that link
misconduct by a voters own representative to diffuse political trust. First, are voters aware that
their representative is implicated? Second, do the constituents of scandal-implicated representa-
tives become less supportive of their representative? Third, do votersspecific attitudes about an
implicated representative spill over and reduce their diffuse political trust?
We argue that while there is evidence for the first two steps, there is little support for the third
step of spillover. Rather than relying on experimental evidence, which limits partisan biases and
exposes voters to (often hypothetical) information which they would otherwise not receive, we
use a real scandal: the 2009 Parliamentary expenses scandal in the UK (Heath 2011;
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction,
provided the original article is properly cited.
British Journal of Political Science (2024), 54, 14961505
doi:10.1017/S0007123424000383
van Heerde-Hudson 2011; Vivyan et al. 2012). Moreover, unlike existing work that operationa-
lizes scandal implication with voter perceptions (Lee 2018), self-reported scandal news consump-
tion (von Sikorski et al. 2020) or simple yes/no measures (Bowler and Karp 2004), we precisely
quantify the degree to which each representative was financially implicated in the scandal and the
degree to which that implication was visible in the media. We use this variation in representative
implication to accurately assess the consequences of scandals for political trust. Building on exist-
ing work that considers a single form of political trust (von Sikorski et al. 2020), we are also able
to differentiate between the effects on trust in different institutions and groups.
The Parliamentary expenses scandal is a case in which one would expect large spillovers onto
political trust. It was a financial scandal in which politicians from all the major parties were
implicated and the media coverage was largely free of partisan bias (Larcinese and Sircar
2017). Many voters could identify whether their particular MP was implicated, reflecting the
importance of MPsconstituency ties for British voters (Vivyan et al. 2012; Vivyan and
Wagner 2015). We might, therefore, expect that voters generalize the behaviour of their represen-
tative onto diffuse groups and institutions. Yet, in practice, we detect little evidence of this.
Rather, using British Election Study survey data and an MP-level implication dataset, we find
that while constituents were aware of their representatives implication, and this affected their atti-
tudes toward their representative, these specific judgements did not measurably spill over
onto their diffuse political trust of institutions, politicians, or democracy itself.
In what follows, we first explain why we might expect a spillover effect. We then discuss the data
we use to measure voter attitudes, MP behaviour and media coverage before detailing the results of
our analyses. We conclude by suggesting that our findings cast doubt on the practical applicability of
the spillover mechanism. Our evidence suggests that, at least for the type of scandal we consider, scan-
dalous behaviour by a voters local representative is unlikely to affect their generalized political trust.
Scandals and Political Trust
How could misconduct by a local representative affect political trust? Von Sikorski et al. (2020)
differentiate between the eroding and spillover effects of scandals. The former is the effect upon
my specific support for my local representative and the latter is the effect on my diffuse political
trust. This follows Eastons(1975) division between specific support for individual political actors
and diffuse support for institutions and principles.
Intuitively, a scandal should affect specific support for implicated representatives: the eroding
effect. It is almost a truism that scandals are associated with negative candidate evaluations and
lower vote shares for implicated politicians (von Sikorski et al. 2020; Welch and Hibbing 1997;
although see Keele 2007). The media is crucial, however. For representative misconduct to influ-
ence a voters view of the representative, the voter must know about the politicians involvement
in the scandal. Voters should, therefore, respond more to scandals that are intensively covered
and we tend to see this in studies of electoral accountability. For example, Ferraz and Finan
(2008) find that the effect of random corruption audits on anti-incumbent voting is strengthened
in communities with more radio coverage.
Overall, there is clear evidence that financial scandals negatively affect support for politicians
caught with their hands in the till. Why might this translate to a generalized distrust of politi-
cians, institutions and democracy? Norris (2011) suggests that different types of political trust
are arranged hierarchically from the most diffuse (trust in democracy) to the most specific
(trust in my particular representative) and voters draw upon their specific attitudes when forming
more diffuse attitudes. This means that a voters negative evaluation of a corrupt politician will
spill overand reduce the voters diffuse political trust (Schwarz and Bles 1992): the bad apple
infects the rest of the barrel. And the effect of that bad apple could be substantial. Since voters
prioritize integrity when deciding to trust (Valgarðsson et al. 2021), and corruption undermines
both procedural fairness and integrity, spillover effects could be large.
British Journal of Political Science 1497
In support of this argument, experiments using single-politician scandals find spillovers onto
trust in politicians (Maier 2011), and observational studies find that people who receive informa-
tion about a single-politician scandal subsequently reduce their trust in politicians and institu-
tions (van Elsas et al. 2020; von Sikorski et al. 2018). In addition, Bowler and Karp (2004)
find that during two multi-politician scandals (the House Banking Scandal in the USA and
the series of sleazescandals involving UK Conservative MPs in the 1990s) those who thought
their representative was implicated exhibited lower political trust.
The spillover by assimilation mechanism is straightforward, but perhaps not completely real-
istic. There is another option for voters when their local representative is involved in a scandal.
People may revise their opinion of the politician, but not revise their opinion of politicians or
institutions as a whole: their politician is a bad apple, but the rest of the barrel remains untainted.
Under this interpretation, peoples diffuse political trust is less responsive to local events than
their opinions about specific politicians. And while there is evidence of spillovers, as just dis-
cussed, there are problems with that evidence.
These problems fall into three categories. First is the nature of the scandal itself. Existing work
focuses on single-politician scandals (von Sikorski 2018). This limits the sample size and compli-
cates comparisons across cases. Equally, for many scandals, there are no objective measures of
implication. This means that existing research often operationalizes scandal implication using
either constituentsperceptions of their representatives involvement or self-reported scandal
news consumption. Since these are endogenous to votersunderlying political trust and cynicism,
the causal relationship remains unclear. The second problem is that the scandals investigated are
often not real. Many studies are experimental, precisely to get around the problem of endogenous
trust and perceptions of implication. This brings its own problems, as researchers are exposing
voters to information about (often hypothetical) scandals that they would not usually receive.
This inevitably limits the activation of cognitive biases that may dampen scandal effects and
leads to potentially greater spillover effects than would be seen in reality. Third, there is the meas-
urement of the spillover itself. Most observational research measures only very short-term effects
immediately after the scandal, and the operationalization of political trust is typically done using a
single indicator (even though voters are likely to differentiate their trust between different institu-
tions and categories (van Elsas et al. 2020)).
We improve upon this existing evidence by testing whether there was spillover onto different
types of diffuse political trust in a most likely case of a spillover scandal: the UK Parliamentary
expenses scandal of 2009. This case is particularly suitable because it was a financial and non-
partisan scandal (see Appendix A for an overview). In addition, expenses misconduct was over-
whelmingly seen as extremely serious by both the public and the media. The initial revelations in
The Daily Telegraph prompted a rolling barrage of negative coverage from all major outlets
(Larcinese and Sircar 2014), with The Times describing the scandal as Parliaments darkest
day(Webster 2009). In addition, voters almost uniformly believed the scandal to be important
and damaging. In the 2010 British Election Study Internet Panel, 90 per cent of respondents
agreed that The way some MPs have claimed expenses makes me very angry, while only 7
per cent of respondents agreed that Despite all the press coverage, what MPs claim for expenses
really isnt that important. Given the depth of public anger, we would expect a strong spillover
onto diffuse political attitudes.
Using this most likely case of scandal spillover, we comprehensively test for spillovers by using
both financial and media measures of scandal implication and by using multiple indicators of
diffuse political trust. We also precisely track each stage of the spillover process: whether voters
perceived their representative to be implicated, whether they then changed their attitudes about
their MP, and then whether they changed their diffuse political trust.
1498 Edmund Kelly and James Tilley
Hypotheses
Our hypotheses are based on the expectations built into the spillover model. First, we hypothesize
that the more heavily implicated the representative, by their conduct or the media, the more likely
voters are to think that that representative is involved in the scandal.
H1: Scandal implication influences attribution of misconduct.
Second, we hypothesize that scandal implication erodes a voters support for their own repre-
sentative. The more heavily implicated the representative, whether by their conduct or the media,
the greater this erosion of support for the representative.
H2: Scandal implication influences specific political trust (eroding effect).
Finally, we hypothesize that the voters evaluations of their own representative will spill over
onto diffuse political trust if the spillover model is correct. Thus, the more heavily implicated
the representative, again by their conduct or the media, the more likely voters are to assimilate
this specific case into their general view of politicians, political institutions, and democracy.
H3: Scandal implication influences diffuse political trust (spillover effect).
Data and measures
We use an individual-level British Election Study (BES) survey and an MP-level implication data-
set. The former is the BES 2010 general election Rolling Thunder Campaign Panel. The survey is
representative and gives us a much larger sample than previous studies of spillover effects,
that either use small experimental samples (von Sikorski et al. 2020) or much smaller panels
(Bowler and Karp 2004). Our data covers 16,429 survey respondents who live in 608 of the
646 parliamentary constituencies. The dependent variable for Hypothesis 1 is constituentsscan-
dal attribution to their own MP. For Hypothesis 2, the dependent variable is constituentsspecific
trust in their MP, which is operationalized using approval of their MP. While this is not exactly
the same as trust in the MP, the two tend to be very highly correlated. For example, in waves 4
and 16 of the 2014 to 2023 BES panel, both MP approval and MP trust are included simultan-
eously: the correlation between the two is 0.78. For Hypothesis 3, we measure spillover onto dif-
fuse political trust in four ways: trust in the UK parliament; trust in politicians as a group;
satisfaction with democracy; and agreement that the reports on MPsexpense claims prove
that most MPs are corrupt. In our main analysis, we recode our dependent variables to run
from 0-1.
Several existing datasets measure MP-level scandal implication. We use a supplemented version of
the Graffin et al. (2013) data and distinguish between media and financial implication. This distinc-
tion is important since repayments made due to technical matters which did not seem to concern
the public(Eggers and Fisher 2011, 13) may have received little coverage. For financial implication,
we compare illegitimate, technically legitimate, and legitimate claims. Illegitimate claims are the
repayments demanded by the Legg Report. Technically legitimate claims are second home claims
(the practice of flippingsecond home claims was a key source of public anger). Legitimate claims
are the residual claims made in the previous two parliamentary sittings.
1
We measure media impli-
cation using Eggers(2014) formula for coverage intensity and include controls at the MP and voter
levels. In our main analysis, we standardize our MP implication measures in terms of standard devi-
ation changes. Our effects can, therefore, be interpreted as the effect of a one standard deviation
1
Following Graffin et al. (2013), we log the financial measures due to their left-skewed distributions.
British Journal of Political Science 1499
change in MP implication upon each 01 outcome variable. See Appendices B and C for a detailed
discussion of dataset choice, question wordings, control variables and descriptive statistics.
Analysis
To test Hypothesis 1, we use multilevel regression models with random effects in the MP-level
intercepts to predict whether people agreed that their MP was implicated in the scandal. This
allows us to account for both MP- and voter-level variation while estimating the effect of the
MP-level independent variables (Gelman and Hill 2006). We show the results of multilevel linear
models with the continuous dependent variable recording the extent to which respondents
believed their MP had been implicated. Figure 1 plots the standardized coefficient estimates
for these models along with their 95 per cent confidence intervals. The two key measures of
implication are statistically significantly associated with votersawareness of implication and
are invariant to the inclusion of controls at the MP or voter level. Moreover, these effects are
quite large, especially for the media score. An average constituent of the heavily scandal impli-
cated Sir Peter Viggers, whose media score was 2.95 standard deviations above the mean, is pre-
dicted to score 0.30 on the 0-1 implication scale. An average constituent of the more frugal Ann
Widdecombe, with a media score of 0.11, is predicted to score only 0.12. This effect is clearly
quite large and supports Vivyan et al. (2012), who use a more permissive operationalization of
implication. We thus find strong support for Hypothesis 1.
We next consider whether MP-level implication influenced votersspecific support for their
MP. Figure 2 plots the standardized coefficient estimates and 95 per cent confidence intervals
from multilevel linear models predicting specific MP support. Both media implication and finan-
cial implication exert a statistically significant and negative effect on constituentsapproval of
their MP. Again, these effects are not altered by the inclusion of any control variables.
2
And,
again, the effects of media implication are the largest. A one standard deviation increase in
media implication is associated with a reduction of 0.02 on the 0-1 scale for specific support:
moving from the least implicated to the most implicated MP decreases support by 0.10. Voters
not only took notice of their MPs behaviour, but implication matters, at least a little, for their
support of their local MP. This supports Hypothesis 2 and is consistent with the negative electoral
Figure 1. Votersscandal attributions reflect financial and media implications.
Note:Linear estimates and 95 per cent confidence intervals from Appendix Table D1. The coefficients are the population average fixed
effects, measured on a 0-1 scale, for a one standard deviation change in the independent variable.
2
Partisans were much less likely to implicate or express low approval of MPs from their own party and consistent with
Vivyan et al. (2012) we find some evidence of an interaction between co-partisanship and implication in predicting attribu-
tion (see Appendix E).
1500 Edmund Kelly and James Tilley
effect for implicated MPs of around 1.5 per cent (Eggers and Fisher 2011). Although the effect is
small, it is similar to the estimated incumbency advantage in Westminster elections of around 2
per cent (Gaines 1998).
Finally, we consider Hypothesis 3. We know that media and financial implication affected
whether voters identified their MPs as involved in the scandal and media and financial impli-
cation affected votersapproval of their MP, but did any of this spill over? We use multilevel
linear models to predict all four of our dependent variables.
3
Figure 3 reports the standardized
coefficient estimates from these models with all controls and their 95 per cent confidence inter-
vals. None of the implication measures exert a statistically significant effect upon any measure
of diffuse political trust. Indeed, while the spillover model would suggest a negative effect of
implication on trust, the coefficients are inconsistently signed, and in all cases, they are very
close to zero. Despite having the strongest effect on inclusion attributions and specific support,
a one standard deviation increase in media implication can, at most, be associated with a
decrease of 0.007 in diffuse political trust on a 0-1 scale, and its estimated effect on trust in
politicians and parliament is positive. Meanwhile, the estimated effect of Legg repayments is
positive for satisfaction with democracy, and its largest plausible negative effect on diffuse pol-
itical trust is 0.006 on the 0-1 scale.
4
We, therefore, find no support for Hypothesis 3. If my
representative is involved in a scandal, I am likely to be aware of this, but I do not become less
trusting of politicians, institutions, or democracy.
Robustness
We report robustness tests in Appendix F and show that our results are robust in several different
ways. This includes ruling out spillovers among those with the highest political knowledge and
running separate models for each implication measure. We also account for dont know
responses, scandal fatigue, potentially endogenous controls and boundary changes between the
2005 and 2010 general elections.
One specific concern we might have is that because many MPs were implicated in the expenses
scandal, peoples diffuse support may have responded only to the national scandal context. That
is, trust might have fallen so low that people had no room to further update their trust in response
Figure 2. Scandal implication influenced support for specific representatives.
Note: Linear estimates and 95 per cent confidence intervals from Appendix Table D2. The coefficients are the population average fixed
effects, measured on a 0-1 scale, for a one standard deviation change in the independent variable.
3
In Appendix F, we also replicate the satisfaction with democracy and spillover perception models using ordered logit
specifications.
4
The largest plausible negative effect is the lower bound of the 95 per cent confidence interval.
British Journal of Political Science 1501
to their local MPs behaviour. But this does not seem to have been the case. While cross-sectional
surveys show that the national average of political trust fell after the scandal, the drop was not
especially large and it occurred in a context of long-term decline. Accordingly, Curtice and
Park (2010, 17) summarize the public response to the scandal by stating that trust was clearly
in decline long before the MPsexpenses scandal broke nevertheless, the expenses scandal
appears to have helped erode trust yet further. Although the proportion of people who thought
that British governments of any party could be trusted most of the timefell by 13 points between
2007 and 2009, nearly 60 per cent of those surveyed in 2009 still thought that the British govern-
ment could be trusted at least some of the time(Curtice and Park 2010). It, therefore, appears
unlikely that the post-scandal drop in trust was so large as to prevent people from also consider-
ing their local MP when forming their political trust.
To illustrate this, in Fig. 4, we track satisfaction with democracy
5
using the 2005 to 2010 BES panel.
By using panel data, we ensure that diffuse support levels are calculatedusing responses from the same
people in each wave, and we can compare the change in diffuse support following the scandal among
those who believed that their MP was implicated with that, among those who did not.
6
We plot mean
levels ofsatisfaction over time for those two groups. This allows us to contextualize any constituency-
level spillover within the broader national scandal by comparing the change in diffuse support among
those who believed their MP was implicated compared with those who did not.
Figure 3. Their own MPs implication did not influence voterspolitical trust.
Note:Linear estimates and 95 per cent confidence intervals from Appendix Table D3. The coefficients are the population average fixed
effects, measured on a 0-1 scale, for a one standard deviation change in the independent variable.
5
Satisfaction with democracy is not a perfect measure of diffuse support, as Valgarðsson and Devine (2022) demonstrate.
Nonetheless, it is the only relevant variable available in all waves of the panel. We re-scaled the satisfaction measure onto a 0-
1 scale.
6
We use the question in the 2010 pre-campaign wave: Now, thinking about the MP in your local constituency, has he or
she claimed expense money to which they are not entitled?
1502 Edmund Kelly and James Tilley
The change between 2008 and 2009 for both groups is essentially zero and there is little dif-
ference in the change between those who believed their MP was implicated and those whose MP
was not implicated. In fact, those who believed their MP to have been involved in the scandal had
long been less satisfied with British democracy, suggesting that diffuse support is to some extent
dispositional. Overall, therefore, we find little evidence here that the national average in political
trust fell after the expenses scandal, and even if it did in fact fall, there appears plenty of room for
people to incorporate their views about their local MPs involvement into their trust.
Conclusion
The expenses scandal is a strong non-experimental test of whether scandalous behaviour by a
voters constituency representative affects their diffuse political trust. What did we find? First,
votersattributions of MPsinvolvement respond to both media and financial implication, and
implication affects votersspecific support for their MP. Second, media implication is much
more strongly associated with votersattitudinal responses than financial implication.
This suggests that the media substantially shapes votersperceptions of political scandals.
Third, and most importantly, for the type of scandal considered in this study, scandalous behav-
iour by a voters own representative did not affect their diffuse trust. This null finding is robust to
various operationalizations of trust and implication and we also find little evidence of a national-
level effect.
Overall, our findings suggest that the spillover mechanism did not act at the constituency level
during the expenses scandal. This is despite voters being aware of their local MPs behaviour. One
explanation for this might be that voters anticipated being able to punish highly implicated MPs,
as indeed they later did (Eggers 2014).
7
Future research could, therefore, test whether misconduct
by ones constituency representative has a larger effect on diffuse trust in electoral systems with
little direct constituency representation, in which voters may be less confident in their ability to
punish their representative. In addition, our results speak to a financial scandal implicating the
majority of the political class. While we believe that the expenses scandal is a most likely case
for spillover, further research could test whether our results also hold for other types of scandal.
Another explanation for the lack of spillover is that any effect might be concentrated among
the most politically knowledgeable (von Sikorski et al. 2020). Although we found no evidence of
spillovers onto diffuse political trust among the highly knowledgeable, informed partisan oppo-
nents of implicated MPs may assimilate perceived malpractice into their evaluation of the oppos-
ing party rather than diffuse categories such as politicians. It is, therefore, possible that spillover
effects are concentrated in partisan spillover about opposing political parties even during a
Figure 4. The effect of the national scandal context on diffuse political support is small.
Note:Sample means with 95 per cent confidence intervals from the BES 20052010 nine-wave panel survey. Respondents split based on
their perception of whether their MP was involved in the expenses scandal when asked in the 2010 pre-campaign wave.
7
We use data collected prior to the general election, so voters could not have already known with certainty whether highly
implicated MPs would be punished.
British Journal of Political Science 1503
relatively nonpartisan scandal. Further research could build on this by testing whether
constituency-level scandal spillovers are minimized by partisan blame-shifting and assimilation
among those with sufficient knowledge.
These thoughts aside, our findings imply that while voters may be aware of their MPs bad
behaviour, and this affects votersattitudes toward their MP (especially if their MP is implicated
in a scandal by the media), the type of scandalous behaviour considered in this study did not
influence votersdiffuse political trust. It appears, therefore, that if similar scandals affect political
trust, this is unlikely to occur via votersjudgements about their own representatives.
Supplementary material. The supplementary material for this article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1017/
S0007123424000383.
Data availability statement. Replication data for this article can be found in Harvard Dataverse at: https://doi.org/10.7910/
DVN/MJDFG8.
Acknowledgements. We are grateful to Andy Eggers and Scott Graffin for sharing their data. We would also like to thank
Karina Cendon Boveda, Nick Vivyan, and Markus Wagner for their comments on earlier versions of this work. Finally, we are
grateful to the anonymous reviewers and the editorial team for their constructive feedback and guidance. Any remaining
errors are our own.
Financial support. None.
Competing interests. None.
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Political Trust. British Journal of Political Science 54, 14961505. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123424000383
British Journal of Political Science 1505
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