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It is widely lamented that lame-duck presidents are do-nothing presidents. But systematic studies of these periods focus almost exclusively on domestic policy, ignoring the implications for foreign affairs. In this article, I argue that presidents are no less ambitious at the end of their time in office and the desire to cement their historical legacies can even make them more so. However, this ambition is checked by a substantial increase in the constraints imposed by other political actors-most notably Congress. This mismatch between incentives and opportunity pushes presidents toward foreign policy, where meaningful achievements are still possible due to greater presidential autonomy. The result is an increase in diplomacy, and international agreements, and use of force.
Keywords: lame duck, foreign policy, diplomacy, use of force, bilateral investment
Since the ratification of the Twenty-Second Amendment, term limits have put predictable "sunsets" on the administrations of presidents who manage to earn a second term in office. The inadvertent consequence was the expansion of the lame-duck problem that the Twentieth Amendment, ratified just 18 years prior, had attempted to alleviate.1 While the span of time between a new president's election and actually taking office is now just 10 weeks, long before that point the outgoing administration begins a gradual slide into political isolation. As remaining time in office recedes, the incentives for the opposition to wait out the sitting president increase and the loyalty of co-partisans in Congress diminishes. This leads to waning support for the president's policy preferences. Making matters worse, as the length of the presidential campaign increases this process seems to begin earlier every cycle-so much so that the lame-duck period is now popularly understood to begin shortly after that the midterm elections of a president's second term.
These final years of presidential administrations are commonly derided as ones in which relatively little is accomplished. In this article, I offer a counter argument: though this period is characterized by weakness, it tends to generate high levels of foreign policy activity. As the sun sets on an administration, the president faces incentives to secure their historical legacy. But mounting constraints on their preferences, meaning that their desire for meaningful action coincides with the absence of nearly all opportunities for substantial domestic accomplishments. This dearth of...