Lame‑duck Presidents Invite Risk

When an incumbent president is publicly repudiated and becomes a lame duck, domestic elites may double down on confrontational policies while adversaries interpret the reduced domestic constraints as an opportunity to act recklessly; personnel moves toward ideological hardliners amplify the signal and raise short‑term escalation risk. This is a testable causal claim about how electoral repudiation + staffing shifts change both domestic policy posture and adversary calculations. — It reframes post‑election periods as geopolitical risk windows, directing attention to personnel choices and adversary incentives rather than only to domestic succession mechanics.