Conclusion

Abstract

‘Oui, nous sommes tous morts’ (‘Yes, we are dead all right’), Metternich reportedly said on being dismissed in 1848. After Bismarck fell from power in 1890, an array of dignitaries, a guard of honour and a military band were at the railway station to see off the train on which he left Berlin to go into retirement. ‘Ah’, the great man said, ‘a state-funeral with full honours’ (Taylor 1995, 254–5). Many modern former leaders would recognize the continuing validity of these comments. Whether or not the famous claim that all political lives end in failure (Powell 1977, 151) is true or needs qualification, the question of what comes next after high political and governmental office — whether there is life, and what sort of life, after political death — is worth asking and investigating. It is undoubtedly the case that exits can be brutal and that ‘the adaptation is tough from life at the top’ (Jack 2007). Finding a new role is not easy for former leaders, something that helps to explain why, to take the example of just one country, ‘the United States has had many great presidents, but few great ex-presidents’ (Chambers 1998, 405). There is no established role or official job description, and the experience of predecessors in the role can be of mixed or ambiguous value as precedents, meaning that the role of former leader has been well described as ‘impossibly awkward’ (Richards 2011).