After Power - How and under which circumstances post-presidential power is applied

Abstract: The President of the United States of America wields executive power like few other heads of state, in being commander-in-chief of the sole military and economic superpower within the international system. Yet after presidency, that hard power dissipates and is instead replaced by the ability to project soft power. In our paper we seek to understand this post-presidential power, the means through which a post-presidential actor can enact influence over others through their position as a former president. The actors in our study are former U.S. presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, whose power projections are contextualised by another previous head of state, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. We conclude that the link between the post-presidency and soft power in our cases relies heavily on the pretexts in which the specific actor had as leader and which avenues they pursued to instigate power.