Garrett 5
versus scandals. As my data show, political professionals view a range of circumstances beyond
the scholarly scandal confines as crisis situations. Even when narrowly defining campaign crises
as scandals, however, the substantial impact from these events is clear.
Crises and Broader Campaigns and Elections Theory
Due to incumbency advantage, specific campaign tactics often make little electoral
difference (Herrnson 2000a, 201). However, campaign scandals are one of the main reasons that
incumbents are forced from office (ibid.). Therefore, by studying strategic response to campaign
crises—scandals and otherwise—I offer an analysis of the critical situations in which campaign
decisions, tactics and strategy really matter.
Existing work on campaign scandals usually take root in strategic campaign decision-
making, especially Jacobson and Kernell’s (1983) classic work on the topic. In addition to
Jacobson and Kernell, campaign strategy and decision-making work usually approaches the topic
from one of two perspectives, either the stereotypical “no rules” view, or through rational-choice
structures that restrict strategic options to a closed set of theoretically based decisions. Many
works lamenting the gap between theory and practice adopt what I call the “no rules”
perspective. Burton and Shea (2003) offer one of the most recent and thoroughly articulated
versions of that argument. The authors—both political consultants-turned-academics—contend
that hierarchical decision structures and rational-choice applications simply do not reflect actual
campaign behavior, although they do not discount the idea that rules in the form of general
wisdom sometimes emerge in the campaign industry. Followers of the “no rules” perspective
almost never mean that campaign behavior is inherently unethical. But, “no rules” proponents
do contend that political context varies too much to establish hard-and-fast rules for campaign
Convention