This volume examines the growing presence of populism, partisanship, and polarization and analyzes what this means for scandalization processes. While politics appears to have entered a mode of perpetual crisis and growing dysfunctionality, the rapid succession of scandals may be a symptom of this crisis and its catalyst at the same time. The book provides a better definition of political scandals and discusses from an interdisciplinary and critical scientific perspective how such scandals are relevant to political developments and how they impact public discourse and media practices. International experts from various subfields of communication studies, political communication research as well as related disciplines contribute to the volume with conceptual, empirical, and methodological approaches which reflect on political scandals and the role of media and/or communication. 
Presenting a unique perspective and providing a first in-depth insight into the relationship between polarization, partisanship, populist communication, and scandalization, the book will appeal to students, researchers, and scholars from different disciplines, as well as practitioners and policy-makers interested in a better understanding of political scandals, their impact on public discourse and political developments, and their catalyzation through media and communication.

André Haller is a Professor of Marketing, Communication Management, and Digital Marketing at the FH Kufstein Tirol, Austria. His academic career has taken him to the University of Bamberg, Germany, the Universidad CEU San Pablo in Madrid, Spain, the Linné University Kalmar, Sweden, and other places where he has been involved in research and teaching. Since 2019, he has been Vice-Chair of the Political Communication Research Section of the IAMCR. His research focuses on strategic and political communication, the digitization of campaigns, and crisis and scandal communication. Since 2016, he has been co-organizing the International Conferences in Scandalogy, where researchers from around the world meet to discuss current research findings.
Hendrik Michael is a Research Assistant at the Institute of Communication Studies at the University of Bamberg, Germany. He holds a PhD from the University of Bamberg. Apart from journalism history, hisresearch focuses on political journalism, scandals and mass media, and the evolution of media genres. Since 2016 he hosts the International Conferences on Scandalogy in Bamberg.

Chapter 1. Introduction.- Part 1: Populism and Political Scandals.- Chapter 2. Performance, Celebrity Populism, Fiction and Democracy.- Chapter 3. Two Faces of Zoran Milanovic.- Chapter 4. But Some Scandals Are More Scandalous Than Others.- Part 2: Outrage, Lionization, and Resistance in a Polarized Public.- Chapter 5. Scandal or Lionization.- Chapter 6. Inappropriateness as the Ultimate Resistance.- Chapter 7. Holding Out for a Hero.- Chapter 8. The Many Deaths of Domitian.- Part 3: Partisanship, Scandals, and Political Culture.- Chapter 9. Americas First Sex Scandal.- Chapter 10. Leader Prototypicality in Party Punishment.- Chapter 11. Forty Years of Political Scandals in Germany.