Going it Alone: The Adverse Effect of Executive Term Limits on Bargaining

It is widely accepted that executive term limits provide a check on executive power. I challenge this assumption by arguing that executive term limits pose an obstacle to inter-branch bargaining because they both limit tenure potential and force an executive from office precisely when she is most prone to bargain. While previous research has assumed that an executive’s tenure potential remains constant throughout his time in office, I argue that the tenure potential of a term-limited executive varies with time left in office. The perfect correlation between time served (experience) and maximum remaining time in office (tenure potential) among U.S. presidents precludes empirical analysis about the effects of tenure potential and experience. Accordingly, I turn to the American states for analysis, and find strong empirical support for my theory.