Neo-Bonapartism? A parallel between Nicolas Sarkozy and ...

Senior Capstone for International Studies 

Neo-Bonapartism? 

A parallel between Nicolas Sarkozy and Napoleon III 

Capstone report 

First complete draft 

Yasmina Assaoui 

December 1st, 2010 

Supervisor: Dr. Nicolas Migliorino 

Second reader: Dr. Bouziane Zaid

Table of contents 

Prologue 

Neo-Bonapartism? A parallel between Nicolas Sarkozy and Napoleon III 

I. Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 8 

II. Chapter I: Strong political governance whose oligarchic regime relies upon popular 

plebiscites and promotes conservatism .................................................................................... 14 

1. Legitimacy: a combination of both the Universal Suffrage System and populism ............ 14 

2. An oligarchic political regime: the centralization of powers relying on two main allies 

(religion and army/police). .................................................................................................... 21 

3. A revival of conservatism: authoritarianism, nationalism, and order ................................ 32 

III. Chapter II: An economic policy aiming at modernizing the country via advocating a neomercantilist 

liberal approach...................................................................................................... 37 

1. A selectively dirigist state relying on a neo-liberal mercantilist approach ........................ 37 

2. The closeness vis a vis the business milieu and a magnanimous relation to money. ....... 49 

IV. Chapter III: A lively and dirigiste political communication sustained by interest ties with 

the media owners ........................................................................................................................ 53 

1. A lively and squared monitoring of the media ................................................................... 53 

2. A purposefully-designed communication strategy. ........................................................... 62 

3. Beyond Bonapartism: Sarkozy’s own contribution in shaping a new political 

communication in France ..................................................................................................... 69 

V. Chapter IV: A hyperactive foreign policy dedicated to France’s glory and oscillating 

between humanistic and Realpolitik considerations ............................................................... 78 

1. A Grands Plans policy extending the geopolitical space of France’s influence ................ 78 

2. A double-level standard: Humanist discourses versus Realpolitik moves ........................ 95 

VI. Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 99 

VII. References .................................................................................................................................110 

VI. Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................128 

A website dedicated to this project is available starting Dec 7 th 2010 at: http://www.aui.ma/personal/~Y.Assaoui/ 

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Prologue 


The early years… Or the long and uneven path toward supreme power 

“Probably the most profound insight of the post-1960s women’s movement has been its 

recognition that "the personal is political": this well-known quotation of the Australian-born 

British activist Peter Tatchell, initially referring to the post-WWII feminist movements in 

Europe, was abundantly quoted at the service of the personal/political equation. In fact, this 

very quote served as the contemporary standard of the Lockean tradition of the theory of 

mind which outlined not only the correlation but also the causation between the personal 

experiences and the emergence of a given political consciousness. It is from this very 

theoretical lens that both Louis Napoleon Bonaparte’s and Nicolas Sarkozy’s respective 

journeys toward the highest position in French politics will be examined via three main 

parallelisms rooted in their personal backgrounds. 

The first battle to be fought for these two politicians started from the cradle, yet for 

different reasons. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte endured until his last breathe the accusations of 

illegitimacy related to his supposedly non-belonging to the Bonapartes’ bloodline. In fact, his 

mother’s - Hortense De Beauharnais (Napoleon’s stepdaughter) – libertarian way of life 

reinforced the rumors of romantic and extra-marital liaisons; even in official reports and 

correspondence 1 . The lack of physical resemblances between the little Louis Charles and his 

imperial uncle and their extreme dissemblance in terms of temperament and character (a fact 

1 Confer the French ambassador at The Hague’s report dated of April 21 st , 1808, as cited by 

Thompson, 1967. 


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even more amplified by the striking air de famille of the Bonapartes) sustained during his 

childhood and adolescence the redundancy of the “bastard” nickname that resonated within 

the French politics closed salons of this epoch and reinforced later on his opponents’ 

accusations of illegitimacy vis à vis the power. In addition, his obtaining of the Swiss nationality 

in 1832 raised even further the fingers pointing at his illegitimacy to the French throne. “The 

only Swiss who ruled France » (Roux, 1969) and Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa 

(the full name of Sarkozy as registered in the French Etat Civil) are companion of misfortune at 

this regard since the current French head of state is being reproached as well his origins, being 

“pas assez Français” (not French enough) for Le Pen for instance (2006). As a matter of fact, 

Sarkozy is of Hungarian descent from his father, who belonged to the petite bourgeoisie which 

was ennobled in the 17 th century by the Emperor Ferdinand II of Habsbourg. In parallel, his 

mother Andrée Mallah was of Greek-Judeo descent; her grandfather, Mordechai Mallah, was 

one of “the eight sons of Aaron Mallah, founder of the Rabbinical school of Salonika” (Bayron, 

2004). Are those personal paths of any incidence over the firmness of their respective 

immigration and nationality policies? No academically sound answer seems accurate at this 

regard, even though this question is reasonable to raise. 

Another political dislike, shared by both politicians, was cultivated in their early years. 

Bonaparte’s life-lasting aversion for and oppression of the Communist Carbonari and Sarkozy’s 

same vision regarding Communism in general, are startling of resemblance. This latter distilled 

during his entire political curriculum several verbal raids against Communism; “the threshold 

being crossed” according to a communiqué of the French Communist Party issued in February 

2008 which denounced the president’s saying during the annual diner of the CRIF (Council of 


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the Judaic institutions in France) that “Communism and Nazism are alike” (at this point, it is 

interesting to underline the President of the European Parliament’s assimilation of “the Nazi 

genocide with the Communist brutal oppression” (Liphshiz, 2010). Again, the familial historical 

backstage of both of the Emperor and the President (and what it implies in terms of early - that 

is strong - socialization) is one (among many other likely) source of causality. Napoleon III is at 

this regard simply shared the Bonapartist ideological standpoint which was transmitted to him 

by his tutor Phillipe Le Bas (Thompson, 1955) according to whom Communism meant the end of 

the Napoleonic tradition, being therefore in complete contradiction with his family’s – in 

extenso his own– interests. Sarkozy as well inherited of a familial burden he still carries on 

(since this affair is still not resolved in Hungary). In point of fact, Sarkozy’s biographers recently 

unveiled the fact that the Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa family was driven out of the country bloodily 

by the Red Army in 1944 and expropriated of all of its possessions (either their chateaux or 

agricultural lands near Budapest). The Communists thus exiled the Sarkozys from Hungary; 

France welcomed in the 1950s the father of their soon-to-become 23 rd President. 

Finally both of the 21 st century President and the 19 th century Emperor elbowed in and 

evolved toward supreme power through disturbed waters. Their respective pre-power paths 

were not straight and narrow but rather full of disturbances and miscellaneous obstacles which 

stood in their ways, to the extent that at some times the success of their undertaking seemed 

thoughtfully endangered. In fact, and to start with, Napoleon III is a case of rare occurrence in 

the history of French politics. His childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood were spent in 

exile; because of the state-ban imposed on his family. Starting from January 1816, he was 

buffeted throughout Europe (Italy, Switzerland, Germany, United Kingdom…) for an extended 


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period; he even escaped (briefly) to the United States in the late 1830s. His successive and 

aborted early coups (first in Strasbourg in October 1836 and second in Boulogne in August 

1840) precipitated his fate. He was consequently imprisoned during eight years by Louis 

Phillipe’s regime to expurgate his misdemeanors. These desert-crossing periods, identified by 

Thompson (1955) as “the pretender”s (1831-1840) and “the outlaw”s (1840-1848) periods were 

not without consequence in the shaping of his soon-to-be-applied ideology. As a matter of fact, 

these years were devoted to both the refining and the maturing of his political thought; Louis 

Napoleon was never as prolific in writings, either books (a dozen in total) or newspaper’s 

columns and articles, as during his struggling years. His most achieved work was by the way the 

famous Des Idées Napoléoniennes written in jail but published in 1860, more than a decade 

after his accession to power. 

The young lawyer Sarkozy was as well far from imagining the turn of events his sudden 

involvement in politics will hold. Actually, and after a rather « typical » initial political career 

accelerated by fortuitous yet fruitful encounters, he made a series of political miscalculations 

that could have costed him presidential horizons. As a matter of fact, and during the 

presidential election of 1995, he took position for Balladur against his early days’ protector 

Chirac. He resigned his position of spokesperson of the government in the favor of campaign 

director of Balladur. The (unexpected- all the polls predicted a comfortable score) defeat of this 

latter was going to plunge him into a disgrace not only from the newly elected President (who 

showed by the past a contagious and long-lasting resentment toward his betrayers) but also 

from the French Right in its entirety who blamed him for both his political treason and his lack 

of loyalty toward Chirac. This desert-crossing period lasted until the last months of 1998 when 


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the rise of internal divisions within the Right (consequent to the Left victory in the latest 

regional elections) put him in the political front scene again. This honeymoon was not going to 

last since in June 1999 his defeat in the European elections sealed a denial from the very voters 

he was relying on to recover some of his lost legitimacy within the RPR’s (Rassemblement pour 

la République, ancestor of the UMP dissolved in 2002) ranks. Sarkozy took this defeat 

personally: during the summer 1999 he officially announced his resignation from French 

politics. While returning back to his original vocation (lawyer), he launched an incisive era of 

political writings where, like Napoleon III, he envisaged the headlines of his political thought 

with hindsight and capitalized upon the lessons he so costly learned to bring into being an 

enhanced vision of politics. The publication of his book Libre in 2001 and the flattering 

appraisals it generated, either from his yesterday’s allies within the Right or from the 

traditionally hostile Left revived his undertaking. The voting-machine Sarkozy was launched; 

three ministries and five years later, he was to be elected President. 

To what extent are these cross-centuries interlaced personal settings and accession’s 

paths responsible in the shaping of this Bonapartist ideology Napoleon III took on to power and 

Sarkozy is accused of reinstating in modern French politics? If truth been told, and even if the 

answer to the latter proved that the correlation established did not lead to causation, the real 

stake remains to academically establish that Sarkozism is in line with the Bonapartist tradition. 

***** 


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Introduction 


“We need to break up with Victor Hugo’s tradition, and like Philippe Séguin, we should 

rehabilitate Napoleon III’s memoire, substituting to the caricatured character described by 

Badinguet the vision of a modern Emperor who was careful about the highness of France” 

Bernard Accoyer, president of the French National Assembly 

Philippe Séguin’s funeral homage, 12 th January 2010, Paris. 

“If we want to restore hope to the French people, great changes are essential”: these 

were the first words of the candidate Sarkozy after the official announcement of his winning of 

the French presidential election, the 6 th of May 2007. As a matter of fact, the up-to-now years 

of his presidency were effectively rich in “changes”, to the extent that the substantial wind of 

reforms and restructuring that blew over France was quickly summarized into a nickname that 

follows Sarkozy until nowadays: the “hyper-president” (a nickname comprising other aspects of 

his governance’s style, such as his extreme activism and his omnipresence in the media). 

Observers of French politics, political analysts, and even journalists and editorialists tried thus 

to define the Sarkozysme in many successive attempts that found their roots either in French 

history or in contemporary (and supposedly) inspiring political leaderships. Many comparative 

paths were followed either within Europe (UK, and Italy principally) or overseas (mainly the US). 

Sarkozy was then designated as the French Tony Blair, following his own saying in the news 

broadcast of France 2 the 27 th of June 2007: “I did my Tony Blair”, and this latter’s appraisals, 

and mainly his flattering article published in The Time: “Sarkozy, person of the year 2008” (Blair, 

2008). Another European comparative trend emerged as well, launched by the French thinker’s 

– Pierre Mussot - book “The Sarkoberlusconism” (2008), and labeled by the latest editorial of 


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The Post as the “Male Axis” (“Sarkozy-Berlusconi: l’Axe du Male”). Finally, an Obama- 

comparison was regularly evoked in various French political blogs and talk-shows. None of 

these comparisons being satisfactory while trying to analyze comprehensively the Sarkozism, a 

turnover was taken that ended up in a historical comparative perspective. The 23 rd president of 

the French Republic and 6 th president under the Fifth Republic Regime seems to resemble Louis 

Napoleon Bonaparte in his conception of politics. Newspaper articles filled with caricatures of 

Sarkozy wearing a Second Empire’s helmet or riding a Napoleonian horse multiplied in the 

French and even international press. An isolated event launched the turning of the analysis 

downward in French politics: the 10 th of December 2007, Christian Estrosi, minister of Overseas 

Territories and mayor of Nice, travelled to the United Kingdom to accomplish a mission he was 

entrusted with by Sarkozy in person: to ask for the ashes of Napoleon III still in London (it is 

worth here reminding that Napoleon III died in exile there after the collapse of his regime in 

1870-71). From the latter, this historic-political rehabilitation raised many questions among 

which the one (legitimately) brought up by Robert: “are the current French authorities seeing in 

an authoritarian regime, yet very liberal at the economic level, a model to be followed?” (2007). 

The goal of this capstone research is therefore to examine this quickly-made correlation 

through critically evaluating the resemblances and dissimilarities between the 19 th century 

emperor and the contemporary French head of state. Doing so requires an analysis of both of 

Napoleon III’s and Sarkozy’s politics at four levels: their attributes, mechanisms, and key 

concepts of political governance, their respective political economy (and acquaintances with 

the economic affairs milieu), their relationship with and reliance on the media, and finally their 

foreign policy. This capstone’s feuille de route will then legitimize or deny Sarkozy’s affiliation to 


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the Bonapartism’s legacy of the French Right Wing family. At this very point, this research sails 

for an interesting destination: defining the Sarkozist political thought via the examination of the 

improvements and alterations brought to the original Bonapartism. Such a query leads to the 

inspection of the Neo-Bonapartist framework via the answering of the following research 

question: Is it legitimate and academically sound to establish a parallel between Nicolas Sarkozy 

and Louis Napoleon Bonaparte? If yes, what is Neo-Bonapartism in contemporary French 

politics? 

***** 

Bonapartism (or Napoleonism) to start with, has a long history in the tradition of French 

politics. As a matter of fact, and according to Richter, this term is a 19 th century neologism 

inspired by the long tradition of authoritarian forms of government in the Old Continent such as 

“Caesarism, imperialism, as well as the other terms: usurpation, and dictatorship” (2005). Citing 

Benjamin Constant and Mme De Stael, Richter (2005) places the historical roots of this form of 

authoritarian political governance in the successive empires of the two Napoleons, the First and 

his nephew the Third. This historical perspective puts the lights on the first level of 

understanding of Bonapartism: the following and support of the Corsican-rooted Napoleonist 

regimes (by opposition to the counter-revolutionary Legitimists and the Liberal Orleanists, as 

explained in the classification of the French broad-centrist and center-right wings by the 

historian René Rémond in 1954). Such a state of affairs exploded after the final exile of 

Napoleon I and his death: a broad movement of allegiance and support toward his son, the 

Duke of Reichstadt (also known as Napoleon II), united several politics under the banner of 


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Bonapartism. With his accession to power, Napoleon III himself coined the term Bonapartism as 

a label for his ideology, defining it in his earlier correspondence with Laity in date of July 1838, 

quoted by D’Alembert in his Napoleonian Political Dictionary in 1849 as “a system which is not 

the pale imitation of the English or American constitutions, but rather the governmental 

formulation of the principles of the revolution: the hierarchy within democracy, the equality in 

front of the Law, the recompense of the patriotic merit (…)” (1838). 

The death of Napoleon III and the consecutive ending of the Napoleonic empires in France did 

not affect the development of Bonapartism. On the contrary, and as a matter of fact, the 

interest aroused by this ideology sustained a discontinuous redefinition of its dynamics and 

components. Answering the question – what is Bonapartism after the end of the imperial 

experience in France – Bluche asserted that it is “a new form of political power, allying the 

(passive) democracy to (active) authority; a centrist formula relying on a composite legitimacy; 

in sum a form of authoritarian governance and centralizing administration” (1980). The chain of 

realignments to Bonapartism expanded even supplementary with the observations of Karl Marx 

and Friedrich Engels who successively developed “the earliest and most fruitful model of 

Bonapartism” (Dulffer, 1976). Dulffer presents an even further developed vision of the 

Bonapartist framework by stating that : “plebiscitarian approval, censorship, centralism, finance 

capitalism, the terror of the state as well as the appeal to workers and peasants along with the 

simultaneous extension of the army as an instrument of power are among his topics” (1976). 

Sequentially presented as a political model relying on the “monopoly of all state powers” 

(Richter, 2005), and as an instrument of class domination by Marx, Bonapartism is today 

perceived as a centuries-crosser political model based on a “political movement associated 


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chiefly with authoritarian rule usually by a military leader ostensibly supported by a popular 

mandate” (Merriam Webster Dictionary, 2010). From the latter, notions such as centralized 

state, strong leadership, and popular support are central to the examination of the 

contemporary understanding of Napoleonism in French politics. 

Neo-Bonapartism for its part is not a political ideology per se; but rather a neologism 

coined by the post-Second-Empire political analysts and thinkers to designate the more 

contemporary forms of governance that seemed inspired by the Napoleons’ ancestry. 

Variations of several degrees and a lack of consensus around the exact definition of this 

wording allowed the spectrum of comparison to be larger than what academe can agree upon. 

As a matter of fact, Fascism in general and Hitler’s Nazism in particular were labeled in 1935 by 

Leon Trotsky in his Journal d’Exil as the new forms of Neo-Bonapartism. Even Mao Tse Tung’s 

China was categorized as a Bonaparte-inspired political model along with some post-colonial 

African or South American governments (Grant, 1989).. However, this theoretical controversy is 

counter-balanced by some commonly agreed upon features of Neo-Bonapartist-like regimes, 

and mostly: the dictatorship of the Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism coupled with the defense 

of a patriotic economic policy, a conservative low-intensity democracy at the political level, the 

appraisal of the religious discourse, and finally a love-hate relationship with the medias 

(cherished when conveying the populist discourse of the leader and hated when questioning 

his/her methods of governance). The above mentioned components are useless if not anchored 

to the strong personality of an enlightened leader. In the context of contemporary French 

politics, Neo-Bonapartisme represents a breakdown in the moderate Gaullist-inspired way of 

governance of Sarkozy’s predecessors under the Fifth Republic Regime. The Petainism – “the 


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label Alain Badiou prefers to others that have been applied to describe Sarkozy’s rule such as 

Bonapartism or Neo-Fascism” (Bickerton, 2009)-, characterized by both the exacerbation of 

populist fears and the reliance on an over-reactionary and authoritarian form of political 

leadership which supreme aim is to exterminate the May 68’s spirit as explained by Badiou 

(2009) who described this phenomenon as a form of “collective disorientation”, is for its part a 

guiding theoretical framework for the contemporary understandings of Neo-Bonapartism in the 

French political scene. Citing Badiou, Bickerton explains that “an expression of this 

disorientation, Pétainism paints servility as moral regeneration, defines national decline as a 

moral crisis and identifies foreign blueprints (like the Anglo-Saxon model) as solutions” (2009). 

At this regard, the contemporary French philosopher and economist Viveret’s analysis is 

interesting to highlight: “France is a scary laboratory, with the rise of an authoritarian Neo- 

Bonapartism: increased damages tackling civil liberties, reinforced control of migration flows, 

enhanced computer surveillance, toughened recentralization through territorial reforms… 

everything is involved” (2009). 

Finally, two additional theoretical sub-components should be discussed to fully encircle the 

present-day revival of Bonapartism: RealPolitik for all foreign policy related-matters (as initially 

coined by the German-Austrian politician Metternich and developed later on by Henri Kissinger) 

and finally the post-2000 theories of political communication (based mainly on the revival of 

new forms of soft propaganda servicing the leaders’ agenda within the current democratic 

systems and the impact of the digital revolution over the political game). 

***** 


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Chapter I: Strong political governance whose oligarchic regime relies upon 

popular plebiscites and promotes conservatism 

When « liberté, égalité, fraternité » is slowly yet firmly replaced by « autorité, sécurité, 

identité » 

I- Legitimacy: a combination of both the Universal Suffrage System and populism 

After his first aborted Coup d’état in Strasbourg, and fully aware that this failure was 

caused by the inexistence of a coordinated Bonapartist political party as such, Napoleon III 

started envisaging the popular support of the masses as an efficient tool for legitimizing his 

rule. As a matter of fact, and since 1838, he started an insightful campaign whose main goal 

was to praise state-populism with chosen and careful words. He stated in his “Des Idées 

Napoléoniennes” that “the Napoleonic conception (of power) awaits everything from the 

people, she is not flattering it; she despises the democratic “chambellanism” with which the 

masses are caressed for petty purposes”. His election to the French presidency the 2 nd of 

December 1848 with almost 75% of the expressed votes comforted him in looking for popular 

plebiscite for the rest of his political career. As explained by Garrigou, « this plebiscite conferred 

him a democratic legitimacy, with seven millions four hundred thousand « yes » and only six 

hundred fifty thousand “no” (2008). Accordingly, the universal suffrage was the solution to all 

the problems he was to encounter. While confronted to the non-reelection issue, he asked the 

popular voice in a double-aimed attempt: first to seat his rule upon a popular legitimacy and 

second to overcome and oversteps the lack of support he suffered from as far as political 

parties and factions of his time are concerned. As explained by Gildea, « Napoleon III wanted to 

restore universal suffrage, the authentic voice of the people, to submerge political faction in a 


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national consensus” (2003). The same mechanism was used after his Coup d’Etat, when he 

envisaged transforming his regime into an empire. It is therefore via a popular plebiscite that 

the title of Emperor of the French was awarded to him after the November 1852’s plebiscite. It 

is from this very perspective that Nicolas Sarkozy’s obsession with popular support establishes 

some bridges with the Emperor’s conception of legitimacy. Alain Duhamel highlighted Sarkozy’s 

thirst of popularity when he described him as “a republican, respectful of the universal suffrage; 

but also a plebiscitary, greedy of supports and popular consecrations” (2009). Duhamel labeled 

therefore Sarkozy’s conception of legitimacy as a “Bonapartism of the 21 st century” since this 

model seems to rely on both the French republic as an institutional framework and the 

“supremacy of the power of a leader legitimized by the universal suffrage” (2009). As a matter 

of fact, this mechanism is highly valued in the French conception of democratic governance: in 

a system where the two criteria that matter are formally the elections’ results (at all levels, 

even in the regional ballot vote) and informally the satisfactions’ polls, a popular sanction is 

generally assorted with a resignation from political matters (it was the case recently for Lionel 

Jospin) or an unquestionable decrease of legitimacy. On the contrary, being chosen by the 

people allows the elected president to benefit from a legitimacy no one is able to question. 

Accordingly, rallying the masses at any cost from such an obsessive perspective presupposes 

other underlying mechanisms, among which a populist discourse likely to be adopted by the 

population. At this regard, Napoleon III and Sarkozy’s approaches are a case in point regarding 

the overall physiognomy of their electorate, though they dealt with different societal 

expectations. While Napoleon III relied heavily on the prestige of his imperial uncle within the 

popular classes and capitalized upon it to forge political alliances with his main opponents, 


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Sarkozy relied on his accomplishments during his ministerial years, and gathered around him 

France’s main political parties in a strategic calculation aiming at being consensual, then 

representative of the people. As a matter of fact, startling resemblances are to be found 

between the two leaders electorates. As explained by Milza, Napoleon III’s electorate is “the 

fusion of a natural electorate, the one of the Orleanists, of the Right Wing which needed to 

establish order in troubled times, and of popular classes” (2009). For his part, Sarkozy extended 

his “natural electorate” to the extreme wings and Center’ voters during the second round of 

the 2007’s presidential election to reach his score of 53%: “according to TNS SOFRES polls, 60% 

of Le Pen voters supported Sarkozy, along with about 40% of the Bayrou supporters, and the 

quasi-totality of De Villiers and Nihous voters” (Cautrès & Cole, 2007). As stated above, 

Napoleon III was highly plebiscited in rural zones, and highly contested in big urban centers: 

Sarkozy, still quoting Cautrès and Cole, “obtained his best scores mainly in rural or semi-rural 

zones, in Alsace and the Mediterranean in particular, (…) and was very dominant in older 

segments, and particularly a significant segment of Le Pen voters” (2007). A final criteria needs 

to be outlined here to have a comprehensive physiognomy of Sarkozy’s voters: the wealthiest 

classes supported him heavily with more than 85% of the expressed suffrages, just like 

Napoleon III’s natural support of the privileged who feared the revolutionary will of the 

Legitimists. 

The social circumstances of the societies that elected Napoleon’s nephew and Sarkozy are here 

important to compare. As stated by Garrigou, Louis Napoleon “rallied to him a peasantry that 

was distressed by the social crisis of the Second Republic” just like what Sarkozy did when he 

called upon the wealthiest, oldest, and mostly-rural profound France; the very “Vieille France” 


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that expressed her discontent with the traditional Right/Left duality during the previous 

presidential election. In fact, this electorate has already converted its vote into a Front 

National’s few years before one in a desperate attempt to reinstate order and to arouse 

changes. “The weakening of the social solidarity accentuated the propensity of relying on a 

charismatic leader, even if he is mediocre, yet not being sparing of reassuring certitudes for the 

future” (Garrigou, 2008). 

In both cases, Louis Napoleon and Nicolas Sarkozy followed a mathematical approach to 

politics: the support of their mainstream allies was not enough to attain a comfortable electoral 

consecration. Both of their tactics at this regard were based on calculations: the masses were to 

be rallied via a populist discourse while the remaining voters were to be gained through 

political alliances with the other parties and actors of importance. Populism here is a 

convenient tool for achieving legitimacy: its primary vocation is to gather different social 

expectations under the same banner that is by nature a crossing-classes one. Louis Napoleon 

had to reconcile the interests of the working class with those of the bourgeoisie (and what 

remained of the aristocracy) via a powerful leitmotiv: the necessity of escaping from anarchy. 

Accordingly, and as explained by Baillet, « to reach such a consensus, he used all the tools at his 

disposal, starting from his prefects, and ending with an alliance of the throne with the Church, in 

order to fight the revolutionary propaganda” (2007). Sarkozy as well followed a consensual 

approach during the presidential race: he rallied the working class (“France that wake up 

early”), the middle class (shopkeepers, small firms owners), and both the big business owners 

(CAC 40 firms) and the media owners without omitting to include communitarian votes, and 


17


mainly the Muslim community (via the creation of the CFCM: French Council of the Muslim 

Cult) as detailed by Baillet (2007). 

From the latter, it seems difficult (not to say impossible) to find a populist ground between such 

different stakeholders. Neither Napoleon III nor Sarkozy had to create such a conciliatory 

approach: it was France itself who undertook it. As a matter of fact, France in both cases 

dreamed of escaping a “fatal period: Terror and Directory for the 19 th century France, and 

threats of the economic globalization and exasperation of the social tensions for the 21 st century 

one: with a two-centuries interval, the stake is to know how and with whom to face a world that 

seems menacing” (Duhamel, 2009). France in both cases is thorn by its internal divisions, and is 

consequently eager to the lead of an authoritarian leader whose guidance is likely to erase 

decades of disenchantments and political disappointments. The France Sarkozy inherited from 

the successive double mandates of both Mitterand and Chirac was in need of big changes at the 

governance level: it awaited a “president personifying a youthful and winning authority, an 

unpredictable head of state, with strengths and weaknesses, but still a lively, unusual, and bold 

charismatic president” (Duhamel, 2009). 

From this perspective, the Bonapartist winning recipe requires the answering to such 

expectations via ambitious political discourses emphasizing even further the societal malaise. 

As rightly predicted by Grant few weeks before the presidential race of 2007: “if the French 

choose Sarkozy, they will be acknowledging that France is in a hell of a mess, and that they need 

an unusual sort of leader - in this case, a populist with a bit of a Napoleon complex (like the 

Corsican, he is a hyper-active, rather authoritarian, diminutive outsider) - to sort it out” (2007). 


18


The consequent redundancy of themes like change, reforming (cf the French wording “rupture” 

being the most pronounced by the candidate Sarkozy as stated by the INSEE) brings a 

conquest-like character to the Bonapartist approach of seduction of the electorate. The leader 

emphasizes his abilities of being the one through whom the change will occur; Louis Napoleon 

constantly referred to his uncle’s performances in that domain in an identification-approach 

which excluded all his opponents since he was the sole of Bonapartist descent, while Sarkozy 

argued with his lawyer rhetoric that he was personifying the “rupture” none of his opponents 

had the courage of examining or carrying upon. His electoral speeches were thus significantly 

sprinkled with personal commitment phrasings like “I commit myself personally (….)”. By this 

way, and as legitimately observed by Bickerton, “If Barack Obama’s slogan has been “yes, we 

can”, Sarkozy’s is simply “yes, I can” (2009). This glorification of a strong leadership able to carry 

on its own shoulders all the burdens of a country was for both Napoleon III and Sarkozy a 

powerful consensual leitmotiv in dragging the masses toward the ideal of a national dream 

coming true. It is worth mentioning their respective standpoints regarding the collective dream 

myth. In fact, Louis Napoleon’s declaration “you lead the people only by showing them a future: 

a leader is a hope and dream merchant”, echoes strangely with Sarkozy’s “do not be afraid of 

having big dreams” in his concluding statement addressed to the French at the end of the 

presidential debate with Segolene Royal one week before the second round of the presidential 

election. 

At this point, the clearly Bonapartist-inspired populism of Sarkozy was more developed than 

Louis Napoleon’s. The French philosopher Alain Badiou develops even further the reverberation 

of Sarkozy’s political governance. As a matter of fact, Badiou identifies what he called a revival 


19


of Petainism in Sarkozy’s political discourse through the exacerbation of a “collective 

disorientation; an expression of this disorientation, Pétainism, paints servility as moral 

regeneration, defines national decline as a moral crisis and identifies foreign blueprints (like the 

Anglo-Saxon model) as solutions” (Bickerton, 2009). This political derive relies mainly on the 

following scheme: a kind of melancholy toward the glorious past of a country, which needs to 

be reinstated to avoid the chaos consequent from the detachment vis a vis the noble values of 

the ancestors. Add to this the exacerbation of the threats brought to the nation by external 

factors (and here for instance via immigration), and you end up with a society paralyzed by a 

state of collective fear. Cited by Bickerton, Badiou identified the components of this “grandiose 

claim: the nostalgia of the old world, of social order, of civil servants solidly organized, teachers 

in the secular school, and finally the French countryside, its villages, of the ‘quiet force’” (2009). 

Still according to Badiou, Petainism is an exacerbated form of populism that is supported by the 

“provincialisation of French thoughts” (2009) based upon a highly personalized leadership 

which legitimacy is supported by a consensual approach toward the masses. Sarkozy’s 

supposed inclination toward Petainism was recently even more outlined after his expulsion of 

10 177 Romanians and 889 Bulgarians, mostly Roms from the French territory last summer 

after his muscled Grenoble’s speech which was dotted with fear innuendo. Being the only 

European leader who explicitly supported Sarkozy’s deportations policy as he openly declared 

the 15 th of September, Silvio Berlusconi ended up along with Sarkozy on the cover of the Leftist 

Italian publication Il Manifesto under a significant cover title “Figli di Pétain” (literally sons of 

Petain) as quoted by Tronche (2010). 


20


II- An oligarchic political regime: the centralization of powers relying on two main allies 

(religion and army/police) 

Oligarchy here is to be understood both from its classical meaning (the holding of power 

within a limited club of happy few), and the more elaborated definition coined by the German 

sociologist Robert Michels in 1911. As explained by the International Encyclopedia of the Social 

Sciences, Michels’ Iron Law of Oligarchy “refers to the inbuilt tendency of all complex social 

organizations to turn bureaucratic and highly undemocratic” (2008). From the latter, oligarchy 

is to be considered as a spillover effect of the democratic governance as such, rather than its 

founding principle. In addition, Michel identified several sub-components of this oligarchy and 

mainly popular participation (1911). This latter being already defined in the Napoleon 

III/Sarkozy parallel as their primal legitimizing attribute of political governance, other 

mechanisms need to be covered. 

First of all, and to start with, Louis Napoleon gradually proceeded to a centralization of powers 

via playing the constitutional reform card. At this regard, two periods are to be identified: the 

initial strong hold over the political counter-balances and in the late 1860s the liberalization 

era. The constitution Napoleon III was relying on was based on a bicameral legislature: a Senate 

whose members are nominated directly by the Executive (that is the Emperor himself) and a 

Legislative chamber whose representatives are elected via the universal suffrage system. The 

emperor maneuvered tactfully in order to strongly influence the votes, and thus to minimize 

the threat of an opposition plebiscited by the population. As explained by Gildea while 

describing the outcomes of the Legislative Chamber’s election of March 1852, “the election 

returned a very docile chamber, in which a quarter of the deputies were industrialists, non- 


21


political animals who were indebted to the government for the restoration of order and 

currently on the wave of an economic boom” (2003). As a result, with a weak Senate and 

Chamber, Napoleon III centralized almost all of the legislative and executive powers via 

constitutional reforms which were all approved by popular plebiscite. However, the emperor 

gradually shifted toward a more parliamentary system starting from the decrees issued in 

November 1860. The concessions he made gave more influence to the parliamentary 

opposition via the granting of more prerogatives. Yet this reforming was still hesitant; for 

example “ministers were deemed responsible, but it was not clear whether they were 

responsible to parliament or to the emperor” (Gildea, 2003). His path of constitutional 

reforming was thus considered as very limited. This Bonapartist-oligarchic mode of governance 

was to some extent revived by Sarkozy. 

In the context of the Fifth Republic, the weakening of the Parliament and the dwindling of the 

government are recurrent issue not really created by Sarkozy. However, and as explained by 

Garrigou, “the concentration of power in the Elysée was never as pushed: the administrative 

and financial reform which put some order within the status of the staff assigned to the 

presidency, somehow erased by the increase of the president’s remuneration, realized the 

formula of a presidential government” (2008). As a matter of fact, Sarkozy inherited of the 

semi-presidential system established by the Fifth Republic, with its benefits and limitations 

regarding presidential prerogatives. He followed at this regard the powerfully built example 

provided by the General De Gaulle, and in particular this declaration issued during a press 

conference in January 1964 as cited by Le Figaro (2009) which remained significant at this 

regard: “the indivisible authority of the state is entrusted with the president by the people who 


22


elected him, there shall be no other (authority), neither ministerial nor civilian, military, or 

judiciary (….) finally, he can adjust the supreme domain that is his own with those he is 

attributing the management to others”. Nicolas Sarkozy thus expanded a Gaullist hyper- 

presidentialism but with an unspoken-of Bonapartist centralization of powers. The model of 

governance he established is assimilated to “a return to a kind of presidentialism, or what we 

might call a presidentialization of the semi-presidential model; this model implies: tremendous 

government activism, an opening to the opposition, and a shift from the government and 

parliament toward the close advisors of the Elysee” (Lévy & Skach, 2007). The return to a strong 

presidency was visible since the early weeks/months of Sarkozy’s mandate: the head of state 

multiplied the interventions and speeches in an overflow of activism that left no space for the 

members of the government. The hierarchical and rather well-established prioritization of the 

French political life was disturbed by this President cumulating his own mandate with the one 

of the Prime minister, not to say with the ones of all the members of his government. As 

pointed out by Rieff, “rather than according serious room for decision-making to his Prime 

Minister, François Fillon, or to Fillon’s cabinet, Sarkozy has arrogated almost every lever of 

power to himself and his advisers within the Élysée Palace” (2009). Like Napoleon III, Sarkozy 

wanted to head on every decision, to comment all the events and issues of the French life, to 

initiate and appose his supreme stamp on all decrees and laws, even if such a state of affairs 

ended up more than once in grotesque situations. This was the case for instance in November 

2008 when Sarkozy had a 4 hours flight from Paris to a rural zone in Southern France in order to 

reassure an aged lady who was rubbed by her neighbor that “the French state will do its best to 

get rid of such petty crimes”. 


23


On the constitutional reform chapter, Sarkozy followed the same path as Napoleon III; he 

engaged a process of reforming of the constitution to counter the “crisis of representation” he 

so strongly denounced in his presidential program, before finally backing up. As a matter of 

fact, and as explained by Lévy and Skach in 2007, Sarkozy “appointed 13 sages to a committee 

headed by former Prime Minister Edouard Balladur and entrusted with undertaking the task of 

reflecting on the modernization of the Fifth Republic”. After this committee’s presentation of its 

recommendations, Sarkozy realized that the application of such reforming will endanger his 

quasi-monopoly of power (since it proposed some amendments relative to the executive 

branch). Accordingly, this committee was “thanked for its enlightened remarks” (Sarkozy’s 

speech in date of 15 th December 2008), but the constitutional reform stopped there, with no 

prospect of being enacted anytime soon, at least under Sarkozy’s presidency. 

From the latter, Sarkozy and Napoleon III are very resembling in their court-like approach: both 

preferred short-circuiting their traditional partners (mainly the government, parliament, and 

senate) and delegated (relatively) their power to a very close circle of collaborators. This 

mechanism of governance, described by the French Leftist publication Marianne as the “archaic 

monarchization of the mode of governance” (2010), ends up with a problematic democratic 

deficit; obvious for Napoleon III, yet more insidious for Sarkozy. As stated by Derbyshire, “the 

appointments of Le Douaron and Lambert show the importance that Sarkozy attaches to having 

advisers and collaborators who "owe him everything", and in whom he places the kind of trust 

he rarely, if ever, shows to his ministers; in this arrangement, the adviser plays courtier to 

Sarkozy's prince” (2010). As a matter of fact, Eric Le Douaron and Christian Lambert are both 

former high police officers (the first for instance was the chief of the RAID unit of intervention) 


24


to key positions within the territorial administration. The French tradition in this regard 

explicitly imposed the appointment of civilians to counter-balance the power of the police. 

Records proved that Sarkozy was personally in touch with them since he was Minister of the 

Interior. This patronage’s derive endangers the republican character of Sarkozy’s overall policy: 

in a court-like configuration, voices opposing the supreme “prince” decisions are silenced by a 

Damocles sword since the person who hired is also the one likely to fire. Such a situation 

applies to almost all of Sarkozy’s appointments, and especially those dealing with his 

presidential team of advisors. The Elysée team is by this way growingly occulting the space 

normally reserved to Ministers: at more than one occasion, Sarkozy’s collaborators 

contradicted openly some ministers in issues that were of their exclusive domain of 

competency. 

Another graver yet revealing event that happened last year revealed to the public what could 

lead to think to a dynastic aspiration of the Sarkozy family, as a natural extension of the above 

mentioned court-like approach. In fact, the official announcement of the very son of Nicolas 

Sarkozy, Jean, of his will of leading the EPAD launched an over-mediated wave of indignation 

not only within France but also from foreign observers. As a matter of fact, the EPAD – 

L’Etablissement Public pour l’Aménagement de la région de la Défense- is the public 

administration in charge of managing the first business platform in Europe: the Defense. Jean 

Sarkozy being degree-less (at that time he had validated only two semesters of Law studies), 

such an appointment to a billion-managing institution was scandalous to the extent that the 

presidency had to present officially its “excuses for the inconsideration of this decision” after an 

initial official support of Sarkozy and his political front that lasted two weeks. The international 


25


press review presented by Equy and Mouillard for the Liberation publication is interesting to 

cite: the British Guardian accused of nepotism the Sarkozy Dynasty, the German Focus resumed 

the situation as following: a young man of 23 is to become the chief of an institution that 

manages billions, his name: Jean Sarkozy, his qualification: two law’s semesters, and finally the 

Italian Il Corriere Della Sera asserted that the candidacy of Sarkozy II, the Young, represents a 

dynastic continuity in Neuilly (2009). At this point, the matching with Napoleon III is almost 

pointless since this latter was in a proper dynastic and imperial dynamic that is somehow 

legitimated by his very status. 

In parallel, the Sarkozy’s method of handling the different political factions of the country since 

his accession to power resembled strangely Napoleon III’s. As explained before, Louis Napoleon 

had to deal with the inexistence of Bonapartism as a political party per say: he federated all the 

diverging political circles of influence under his banner in order to strengthen his power. Such 

reasoning was curious since the Emperor established his authority so firmly, especially in the 

first decade of his rule, that he could have afforded the luxury of bypassing this maneuver. 

Sarkozy followed the Emperor’s steps at this regard, though for different reasons. Being the 

“President of all the French” following his own saying, Sarkozy estimated that he was beyond 

the party’s restrictions so rooted in the French practice of politics. This Bonapartist’s conception 

according to which the supreme leader’s has not only the primacy over but also the profound 

desire of erasing all the political cleavages under his rule is central to the two leaders. As 

explained by Duhamel, “they (Louis Napoleon Bonaparte and Nicolas Sarkozy) give a careful 

attention to consolidate their power through seducing their adversaries and convincing them to 

rally their troupes: it is one of their common specialties. Used to been obeyed and admired, they 


26


do not save their efforts to affirm even further their dominion and ascendancy over the 

politicians they lust for” (2009). Sarkozy at this regard undertook a redefinition of the French 

traditional cleavages via the “ouverture” policy he followed. Lévy and Skach considered the 

latter as a “blurring of the political boundaries” deeply rooted in Napoleon III’s tradition (2007). 

The French president actually proceeded to several cross-spectrums appointments within the 

government he formed after his accession to power. A panel of Leftist politicians was thus 

poached including: Bernard Kouchner as a Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Pierre Jouyet as 

State Secretary for European Affairs, Eric Besson as State Secretary of Forecasting and the 

Evaluation of Public Policy, Jean-Marie Boeckel as State Secretary for Cooperation and 

Francophone Relations, and even Martin Hirsh as High Commissioner of Solidarity. 

As a result, many observers noticed a double-strata phenomenon: the decline of the party 

identification coupled to the rise of personalization. This “unprecendented personalization of 

the Presidency in the history of the Fifth Republic” (Rieff, 2009) is severely judged by Bickerton 

who considered it as “a product of the emptiness of French political life, the death of ideas 

giving way to the dominance of personalities” (2009). Louis Napoleon’s own political 

circumstances, and again the inexistence of Bonapartism as a political party, explain partly the 

strong personalization approach he developed. 

Sarkozy at this regard detached himself from the UMP as a careful political tactic. He used his 

party almost as a control stick to achieve his presidential undertaking, and simply turned his 

back afterwards. To put things simply: if the UMP membership had exploded under Sarkozy’s 

lead and reinforced both the position of the party as the wealthiest in France regarding its 


27


share of public finance and in extenso the legitimacy of the pretender it projected into the 

2007’s presidential race, the newly elected president did not “wish to see a strong UMP leader 

in his stead: there would be no new party president; Sarkozy was replaced (pending a party 

congress in autumn 2007) by an interim leadership consisting of Pierre Méhaignerie and Jean- 

Claude Gaudin (each too old to pose a significant problem) and his personal henchman Brice 

Hortefeux” (Knapp & Sawicki, 2007). At this point, Sarkozy’s previously described federative 

approach toward all political factions coupled to his disengagement vis a vis his own party is a 

suitable state of affairs in a hyper-presidency, but could cost him the running for a second 

mandate. Unlike Napoleon III the Emperor, the 21 st century President still has to undergo the 

burden of presidential elections (traditionally dominated by the duality Left/Right in France). 

Back to the personalization of politics, if some features needed to be entrenched to it, those 

identified by Duhamel are interesting to underline: “voluntarism, ascendancy, eloquence, 

rhetoric of change, bubbling vitality, risky passion of initiatives, but insurance of a strong 

character, a determination of brass, a bulimia of activism and a taste of command, here are the 

components of this XXI century Bonapartism” (2009). In fewer words, the oligarchic conception 

of power proper to Napoleon III and Sarkozy is hermetical not to say reluctant to any party 

identification as such. 

In parallel, two strong allies are common to the two leaders’ conception of political governance: 

religion and either the army or the police (both being instruments of the state’s monopoly of 

use of force). Religion to start with is the pedestal of any form of Bonapartism since it is the 

natural extension of its inherent over-conservatism. The Bonapartist saying that “a society 

without religion is like a ship without compass” resonates with Sarkozy’s 2007 statement 


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according to which “No society can exist without morals; there is no good moral without 

religion; religion is accordingly the only basis that provides the state with a firm and lasting 

support” (both citations were retrieved by Duhamel in his “A Contemporary First Consul”, 

2009). Again, a historical comparative perspective is to be adopted. As stated by Gildea, “in the 

decade after 1848 organized religion, and especially the Catholic Church, was rehabilitated as a 

principle of order and authority in a turbulent world” (2003). As a result, Napoleon III took 

several measures that rehabilitated the grasp of the religious over the French life. First of all, he 

reinstated religious programs at school, before calling upon and favoring the development of 

religious congregations, that “reached a high point of recruitment in the 1855-1859 years” 

(Gildea, 2003). Napoleon’s Empire was also committed to the defense of the Church’s interests 

even with military means, and particularly when Napoleon III sent several garrisons of soldiers 

to Rome to restore the authority of Pius IX. However, this harmonious collaboration ended up 

abruptly on December 1864 after the Pope’s Syllabus of errors which was very critical of 

authoritarianism and took a stand toward the “liberalization of politics”. This pamphlet was 

censored in France by the Emperor and leads him to take position for the Italian reunification 

camp against the Pope’s later on, as reported by Gildea (2003). Yet, and independently of these 

troubled relations with Rome, religion was awarded a central place in the imperial ruling and 

consequently supported the regime’s obsession with some of its key concepts, such as order 

and morals. 

Sarkozy’s same mania for discipline pushed him quite naturally in the following of Napoleon’s III 

footsteps. “Unlike any French president in decades, Mr. Sarkozy sees a more open role for 

religion in French society”, asserted Marquand (2008), to the extent that some observers 


29


considered such a standpoint as a defy to the French tradition of secularism, “one of the most 

prized traditions of The Republic (regarding the) strict legal and cultural sanction against 

bringing matters of church and faith into the public realm” (Marquand, 2008). The warning 

lights started the 12 th of September 2008 with the Pope Benedict XVI’s first visit to the 

Hexagon. The first breaking of the French presidential protocol occurred when Sarkozy, along 

with his wife Carla Bruni, welcomed the Pope personally at the airport. The “sacrilege” 

continued at the College of Bernardins where Sarkozy underlined, as cited by Englund “the 

importance of “the religious fact,” observing that “it is legitimate for a democracy and is 

respectful of laïcité for the dialogue to continue with the religions, and notably with the 

Christian religion, with which we have shared such a long history. Not to do so would be folly, 

would be a sin [faute] against culture and thought” (2008). By this way, even the use of a 

religious wording – “sin”- is interesting to highlight (and even more while mixed to notions like 

culture and thought). To this unexpected declaration emanating by one of the most secular 

country in Europe, the Pope called for “a new reflection on the true meaning and importance of 

laïcité”—a reflection that would usher in “new ways of interpreting and living daily life” (2008). 

In a country marked by a profound detachment vis a vis religion, Sarkozy’s religious preaching is 

puzzling regarding the French sacralization of their secular system. At this regard, the order’s 

card is not convincing by its own. Other motivations, such as the need of continuing his political 

breach into Le Pen electorate (widely known for their religious ultra-conservatism) or even the 

desire to bring in the religious within the current national debate of identity he is so attached 

do, seem to explain Sarkozy’s political religiosity. 


30


On the other hand, the second collaborator both of the Emperor and the President relied on 

was either the army or the police. Napoleon III’s early enlistment in the Swiss Army where he 

was even granted the position of Captain in 1834 and his everlasting fascination toward his 

Imperial uncle’s military’s conquests brought about his reliance on the armed forces during his 

entire political career. Precisely because of his Uncle’s Grande Armée prestige, he was solidly 

supported by the Army which never failed in accomplishing the various missions Napoleon III 

entrusted it with; even if in 1850 it consisted in the massive killings of opponents. More 

broadly, the Army was a strategic pawn over which the Emperor built a strong and aggressive 

foreign policy as we shall see later on. Two centuries later, Sarkozy pursues the Bonapartist 

path yet with a marked preference for the domain in which he gained his first political battles 

as Minister of the Interior: the Police. 

At this regard, Sarkozy’s reliance on the police as a coercive tool of regulation of the public 

order started not as his presidency, but more than eight years ago. Numerous law proposals 

were enacted under his lead, and again since he was minister of the Interior. He made of 

security management a personal “credo” where words like “karcher” or “racaille” became his 

marque de fabrique. His very attachment to the prefectoral organization, a state of affairs 

reinforced even further by his Grenoble’s Speech more recently, brings in a Bonapartist whiff. 

This latter is a “very 18th-century concept, since the prefectoral corps was created in 1800 by 

Napoleon Bonaparte, after the coup of the 18 Brumaire the previous year” (Derbyshire, 2010). 

Accordingly, this muscular partner and assistant of Sarkozy’s political leadership serviced one of 

the key concepts of his political philosophy: security. 


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III- A revival of conservatism: authoritarianism, nationalism, and order 

As defined by the Juan Linz, a political science scholar of Yale University, 

authoritarianism in government denotes “any political system with limited, not responsible 

political pluralism, without elaborate and guiding ideology but with distinctive mentalities, 

without extensive nor intensive political mobilization, except at some points in their 

development, and in which a leader or occasionally a small group exercises power within 

formally ill-defined limits but actually quite predictable ones” (1964). If from the two previous 

sections, Napoleon III’s authoritarianism is not to be proved; here is a recapitulative listing of 

some of its features, as described by Baillet in 2007: the systematic repression of the republican 

opponents and their deportation to Algeria, the instauration of a Constitution against the 

democratic principles of the 1848’s one it replaced, the uninominal electoral system based on 

state-sponsored candidacies, the weakening of the legislative power, the lack of separation of 

powers, and the restriction of civil liberties (including the close watch of the education system). 

However, and in comparison, labeling Sarkozy’s political philosophy as authoritarian in the 

context of a modern democracy like 2010’s France seems hazardous. As a matter of fact, such 

an undertaking is surprisingly backed up by several components of the political governance of 

this democratically elected head of state, which at this regard “is not very distant from the 

Emperor’s” (Baillet, 2007). Sarkozy’s politics being intrinsically based on the “collective fear” 

previously mentioned, the threat of and effective use of force is systematized in an attempt by 

Sarkozy to bring under his control and authority the very French of whom he is the President. 

His Bonapartist-inherited form of authoritarianism appears thus as a nuanced version of the 

Emperor’s, but still as a replica of the original model. Since 2007, Baillet analyzed Sarkozy’s 


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electoral program in terms of domestic policy and concluded that his politics “aims at 

repressing the current working classes (sans papiers, striking workmen) assimilated to social 

disorder, at stigmatizing the youth of the suburbs, at increasing the police power, at deporting 

illegal immigrants, and at the restriction of freedom of circulation throughout the territory”. 

This revival of burly politics appears thus not to be exclusively reserved to totalitarian or 

despotic regimes which are equally labeled as authoritarian. This remark echoes by this way 

with the previous comment made on the oligarchic derive of contemporary democratic 

systems. 

From a philosophical standpoint, Alain Badiou ingrained such conception of political 

governance within the contemporary state of “collective disorientation” of Western societies. 

Such a diagnosis is for itself a clear denial of all the post-1970 political philosophies, the most 

known being Bernard Henri Lévy’s “anti-totalitarian moralism” (Bickerton, 2009), and what 

Badiou coined as “the symptom of a return to radicality based on a pseudo-theorisation of the 

most opportunistic fears and survival instincts” (2008). Badiou’s verdict at this regard echoes 

with the “revolts contained in Napoleon III’s contemporaries diaries” asserts Garrigou (2008), in 

an allusion to Jules Ferry, Charles Baudelaire, or even Karl Marx. This equation - voluntary 

servitude versus authoritarianism - especially when this latter is based on popular plebiscite, is 

not then a Sarkozy’s specificity or creation, but again seems to descend from Napoleon III’s 

epoch. 

Besides the centrality of authoritarianism, nationalism (with all its declensions like patriotism 

and conservatism) is a key concept of the Bonapartist thought. The supreme ideal of France’s 


33


revival, lead by strong leaderships, requires over-federalists concepts such as motherland 

(patrie) or honor. On the first one, the Emperor declared that “the first of the virtues is the 

devotion to the homeland”; a vision developed even further by Sarkozy while he stated that 

“hating your homeland is to hate yourself”. On the second, Louis Napoleon asserted that “honor 

for a leader is his morale tax” while Sarkozy declared that “the leader does not grow when the 

nation declines”. The French president justifies his firmness on such guiding principles by the 

necessity for the citizens of dragging themselves from their assistantship attitude, and thus 

paying back their obligations to the very nation which granted them with rights. 

The exacerbation of the nationalistic fiber reached its peak on two correlated issues during 

Sarkozy’s presidency: the national identity debate, and the immigration policy of the state. On 

the both chapters, one of Sarkozy’s earliest reforms was the creation of a “Ministry of 

Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Inclusive Development” since May 2007. The 

two successive ministers in charge, namely Brice Hortefeux and Eric Besson, are two politicians 

affiliated to the French ultra-conservatism. It is interesting to highlight that one of the mission 

of this ministry is “the promotion of the Republican values of France”. The promotion this 

ministry undertook under the strong leadership of Sarkozy consisted mainly in the over- 

mediatized ban of the burqa and niqab in the public sphere in the name of the French Laicité, 

few weeks before Sarkozy’s statement that “Not (granting importance to establishing a 

dialogue with religion) would be folly, would be a sin [faute] against culture and thought”. The 

reforming thus appeared as an ethnic and religious discrimination in the very time the French 

constitution guarantees equality before the law for “without distinction of origin, race, or 

religion”. As quoted by Derbyshire, “the former Prime Minister Alain Juppé declared that 


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reasonable anxieties about law and order did not legitimate "exaggerated responses barely 

compatible with our fundamental values", while De Villepin denounced Sarkozy’s distinction 

“between "French citizens" and "citizens of foreign origin" is an offense against "the republic 

and against France" (2010). From this perspective, the very idea of engaging a national identity 

debate aiming at defining the Frenchness or Frenchlessness, and thus creating a first and a 

second-class citizenship (The French de souche, and the French via naturalization) is in fact the 

recycling of what the Extreme Right in general, and Le Pen in particular, declared more than 

four decades ago. 

On immigration, the French debate between assimilation and integration is a “long-running 

dispute that dates back to the French Revolution” as pointed out by Derbyshire (2010). Again, 

Sarkozy put an end to the French status quo on the question (based on moderated immigration 

policies until now). Marthaler traced back Sarkozy’s early activism on that question to the Law 

2003-1119 of 26 th November 2003 whose objectives were “to restrict illegal immigration, fixing 

a target of 25,000 deportations in 2006 (compared with 10,000 in 2002) and to reduce the 

number of asylum-seekers” (2008). The refrain of an “immigration choisie et non subie” serviced 

Sarkozy’s argument according to which these measures aimed at improving the integration of 

the foreigners already settled in the Hexagon. The discourse on immigration will follow a 

gradual radicalization, starting from Sarkozy’s saying in 2006 “If there are people who are not 

comfortable in France, they should feel free to leave a country which they do not love” to this 

except of the last July Grenoble Speech: "French nationality should be stripped from anybody 

who has threatened the life of a police officer or anybody involved in public policing". In the 

overall context of the Roms’ deportations this summer, the politics of Sarkozy could be 


35


qualified as xenophobic, though again, he did not create anything. As a matter of fact, 

Soubrouillard reminded us that he simply recycled “what the Prodi government in Italy did in 

2007 after an isolated act of delinquency of a Romanian tsigane, before Berlusconi’s political 

exploitation of it” (2010). Again, the ethnic stigmatization of this community seems to be based 

on a desperate populist approach, even if a recent communiqué of the Reuters news agency, 

cited by Le Point, unveils that an IFOP opinion polls showed that “56% of the French 

disapproved this policy while more than 71% of them estimated that the image of France 

abroad was damaged by these deportations”. 

At this level emerges the (last) missing link of Sarkozy’s Bonapartism, at least as far as his 

political philosophy is concerned: the primacy of security and order. At this regard, Duhamel 

comments are worth mentioning: “the order has always been the priority of the Right while the 

movement was rooted in the Left; the originality of Bonapartism, this authoritarian and 

modernist Right, consists in mixing order with movement and tradition with change. At this 

point, Sarkozy is to be affiliated to the Bonapartist family” (2009). The obsession of statistical 

results in that domain and Sarkozy’s everlasting and, on the long-run, tiring police state 

dynamic roots even more the security card within his political philosophy. However, his latest 

declaration supporting the “extension to video-surveillance to all big urban centers” is subject to 

virulent debates and raises the question of whether if Sarkozy will stop his securitarian 

escalation or if he will simply bypass the Republican conception of civil liberties. 


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Chapter II: An economic policy aiming at modernizing the country via 

advocating a neo-mercantilist liberal approach 

« L’industrie, cette source de richesse, n'a aujourd'hui ni règle, ni organisation, ni but. C'est 

une machine qui fonctionne sans régulateur ; peu lui importe la force motrice qu'elle emploie. 

Broyant également dans ses rouages les hommes comme la matière, elle dépeuple les 

campagnes, agglomère la population dans des espaces sans air, affaiblit l'esprit comme le 

corps, et jette ensuite sur le pavé, quand elle n'en sait plus que faire, les hommes qui ont 

sacrifié pour l'enrichir leur force, leur jeunesse, leur existence. Véritable Saturne du travail, 

l’industrie dévore ses enfants et ne vit que de leur mort. » 

Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, Des Idées Napoléoniennes, 1860. 

I. A selectively dirigist state relying on a neo-liberal mercantilist approach 

It is undeniable that Napoleon III and Sarkozy inherited very dissimilar economic 

situations while they accessed power. The emperor for instance had to deal with the growing 

urbanization and the 2 nd industrial revolution’s repercussions on the mid 19 th century France. 

Accordingly, he somehow benefited from a relatively prosperous situation, though he handled 

a severe monetary crisis in 1857-1858. Sarkozy for his part inherited from the Chirac’s 

presidency a country embroiled in many economic difficulties he assessed thoughtfully since he 

promised during his presidential campaign to tackle them through large-scale reforms. In fact, if 

the emperor benefited from an ideal economic timing, the president inherited of an explosive 

situation, worsened by the occurrence of a financial crisis few months after his election. As 

assessed by the Economist in its cover story, the incredibly shrinking president, “the strengths 

that protected France's economy from the worst of the recession are turning into weaknesses in 

the recovery; last year even the Dutch exported more than the French” (2010). 


37


In both cases, it is interesting to highlight the centrality of the industrial sector in their 

economic approach. As explained by Milza, “Napoleon III was Saint-Simonian, liberal yet 

interventionist. Like Nicolas Sarkozy, the emperor was convinced by the necessity for France to 

have a developed industrial sector, inspired by the British model which was then 40 years ahead 

of the rest of the world” (2008). Again, both leaders followed the same economic strategy, 

marked by a mixing of interventionist and neo-liberal forms of policy. At this regard, the 

imperial policy followed two chronological steps: first protectionist, then liberal; while the 

president adjusted his policy to a contradictory yet simultaneous vision which can be labeled as 

being selectively mercantilist and neo-liberal depending on the issue to be dealt with. 

At this regard, Sarkozy’s pre-election program was coherently neo-liberal and moved 

progressively into a hybrid economic model lacking consistency. As explained by Bickerton, 

citing Badiou’s analysis of Sarkozy’s economic policy, “resolving crises substitutes for a longer 

term political program; urgency has its own meaning and logic; in his response to the financial 

crisis, we have learnt a great deal about Sarkozy’s underlying political pragmatism. Badiou 

paints Sarkozy as a committed neo-liberal, sold to “big capital” and pushing money-making to 

the centre of French public life while in recent weeks, Sarkozy’s actions have suggested 

otherwise: his attempts at coordinating a pan-European response indicated a belief in the 

necessity of state intervention and leadership” (2009). From the latter, Bickerton assesses 

Sarkozy’s politics as short-termist and opportunistic, managing the “French exceptionnalism” 

with a strong yet quintessential crisis management style (2009). The implementation of his 

campaigny’s political program followed then a changing path varying with the occurrence of 

new issues of concern. Rieff deplored the fact that “a number of issues, programs announced 


38


with tremendous fanfare have had to be delayed or withdrawn; almost invariably, Sarkozy has 

blamed the minister in question, and then moved on to the next subject to strike his interest” 

(2009). The efficiency of Sarkozy’s approach is especially questioned on the public finances’ 

debt question. In an overall morose economic climate, where almost all of its European 

neighbors tackled this issue with austerity plans, Sarkozy’s France "stands out as the only 

country that has not spelled out how it will reduce its deficit" notes Laurence Boone, an 

economist at Barclays Capital in Paris, cited by The Economist (2010). After more than three 

decades of unbalanced budget, this cold-feet attitude toward the “rigueur” reforming could 

have been of no consequences if the crisis did not out broke and put France in an 

unprecedented fragile position. As reported by The Economist, “Moody's, a rating agency, 

warned that in the absence of consolidation, rising debt could threaten France's AAA rating; 

François Baroin, the budget minister, admitted that the objective of preserving France's rating 

was tight" (2009). In fewer words, the perspective of credit agencies stepping back for a top 

indebted country like France would plunge its economy into a grave recession if not tackled 

very quickly by its crisis management’s president. 

Back to the resemblances between Napoleon III and Sarkozy’s economic policy, their 

handling of the banking system is a startling feature common to their approaches. The 

emergence of an organized system of trade consequent to the development of the industry 

during Napoleon III’s reign ended up in a state handling and support of the banking sector. As 

explained by Spitzer in 1962 “a majority of historians grant Louis Napoleon some of the credit 

for the unprecedented stimulus to capital formation, credit expansion, and a spirit of enterprise 

foreign to the crabbed, unimaginative Orleanist economic tradition, and essentially believe with 


39


Girard that France still enjoys a legacy of "l'oeuvre édifée par les Francais du Second Empire". 

The emperor was the patron of the emergence of full-size banking institutions like the Crédit 

Lyonnais or the Crédit Mobilier destined at increasing the flux of capital in circulation 

throughout the territory and its articulation within “an improved credit system backed up by 

these new finance houses investing in industry” (Miller, 1997). Inspired again by the Anglo- 

Saxon model of capital circulation which heartened the neighboring British economy, the 

imperial policy permitted the flourishing of the financial system and the transforming of the 

French economy into an export-led one. 

Sarkozy as well heavily insisted upon the primacy of a sound banking system, especially in his 

pre-campaign book Testimony. Accordingly, when the French banks were two feet from falling 

into bankruptcy in 2007, Sarkozy implemented an unprecedented (and very controversial) 

policy under the Fifth Republic: he injected 360 billion Euros within the banking system. As 

explained by Durand-Parenti, this aid consisted in two main funds: “a state guarantee of the 

inter-banking loans of 320 billion Euros plus 40 billion Euros dedicated to the re-capitalization of 

the banks via a public institution whose sole shareholder is the French state” (2008). In an 

overall situation where hundreds of workers lost their jobs because of the massive firings 

engendered by the financial crisis or simply the delocalization of big transnational corporations, 

Sarkozy’s help for the very responsible of such a situation (as repeatedly stated by the Left) was 

puzzling, especially since the crisis-engendered unemployment did not beneficiate from any 

presidential magnanimity. “The state will not let any banking institution bankrupt, if such a 

situation occurs, it will take control over it and the managing team will be changed” answered 

the President (TFI News Broadcast, September 2008), echoing by this way the imperial saying 


40


referring to the state injection of money in the Crédit Agricole, according to which « the 

finances of any big state should offer the means to face extraordinary circumstances” (Des Idées 

Napoléoniennes, 1860). Napoleon III’s incentive and encouragement to the French banking 

system was to trigger off a domino effect over the economy in its entirety. According to Wolf, 

the funds of the banking institutions passed from 250 million French francs in 1852-1854, to 

500 million in 1855 and 520 million in 1856. The state initial stimulation ended up in a situation 

where private investors quickly recaptured the torch: between 1848 and 1851, two thirds of 

these investment funds were supplied by the state, “this figure was no more than 10% between 

1852 and 1856: the production of cast iron more than doubled as it did for iron and steel, it 

tripled for iron ore and increased by 80% for coal” (Wolf). 

At this point, the two leaders’ focus on the French banking is closely related to another 

pattern of their economic policy: the promotion and sustainment of national champions. As a 

matter of fact, if both Sarkozy and Napoleon III were so attached to preserve sound financings 

it is because they expected from it to favor either the emergence or the preservation of what 

one might call a patriotic industrialism. On the one hand, worried by the British and German 

competition, the emperor strived toward the stimulation of the French coal and iron industries. 

As explained by Bernstein, “by a decree of August 1860, Louis Napoleon authorized government 

loans to private firms and "great solicitude" was shown for coal and iron establishments 

because of their fundamental importance to the entire economy: to these signal may be added 

the completion of the telegraph system, and subsidization of steamship lines” (1960). At this 

point, the emperor succeeded in accompanying the development of the industrial base of the 

country. 


41


One hundred and fifty years later, Sarkozy followed the same path and deployed considerable 

efforts toward the preservation of national champions from the troubles of globalization. As 

assessed by the Director of the Centre for European Reform, he “promised to prevent foreign 

takeovers of French firms, and to foster the creation of French and European champions” 

(Grant, 2007). Such a policy was not a novelty brought by his election to the presidential seat, 

but rather a long-term process started while he was Minister of Finance in 2004. As stated by 

The Economist, “not content with the state's existing stakes in many big French firms, Mr 

Sarkozy has set up a new fund, the Fonds Stratégique d'Investissement (FSI), to make further 

investments: half owned by the Caisse des Dépôts, a public financial institution, and half directly 

by the government, the FSI aims to invest €2 billion a year in French companies” (2010). As 

detailed by this publication’s article - Dirigisme de rigueur- several examples are significant at 

this regard. Accordingly, Sarkozy encouraged the FSI’s investment in Valeo threatened of being 

bought back by the American investment fund Pardus Capital. The same applies to Areva, for 

whom the FSI lobbied toward its acquisition by the two national firms (Alstom and Schneider 

Electric), to prevent it from being taken over by the Japanese Toshiba Inc. Finally, “the FSI 

invested €7.5m in DailyMotion, a successful video-sharing website which competes with 

YouTube outside America, and took a seat on its board, since "It's the only decently successful 

French start-up in the internet industry" explains an adviser to Mr Sarkozy” (2010). Such 

examples are not again proper to the Sarkozy presidency: in 2004, he saved Alstom from 

bankruptcy and transformed it into a national (and even European) champion. In an era where 

patriotic protectionism is outdated not to say at the limits of legality regarding all of the 

European Union and Word Trade Organization’s provisions, such a behavior raises eyebrows 


42


and questions. Hannaford provided a rather cynical answer on that matter estimating that 

Sarkozy “presides over a country with permanently high unemployment, low productivity and 

growth, but oodles of cradle-to-grave social services; it's no wonder he wants to glorify the 

state, since competing effectively in the markets of the world seems not possible” (2009). 

At this point, the previously mentioned blurring of the political barriers as a basic 

component of Bonapartism at the political level ends up in the reliance on mercantilism at the 

economic one. It is interesting to envisage from the latter Napoleon III’s rule as “an anticipated 

state socialism; Napoleon used to joke that he was “The Socialist Emperor”, as cited by the 

Southern State California University’s report on the Saint-Simonian’s aspects of the imperial 

economic policy. This report also awards the emperor the fatherhood of the legal existence of 

labor unions in France since he legalized “Limited Liability Corporations” and granted them the 

right of striking. The encouraging of exports ended up in 1860 in the signature of the Cobden- 

Chevalier treaty of trade with Great Britain which increased heavily the French trade balance 

and turned its economy into an export-led one. As explained by Miller, the “volume of French 

foreign trade tripled between 1850-1870” as a result of the imperial policy which was at the 

origins of the improving of communications: the country disposed of 1200 miles of railway in 

1848, by 1871 it reached 11500 miles (1997). The flourishing of the industry reached its peak in 

the latest years of the empire: Napoleon III wanted to display the success of his mercantilist 

economic policy by an unmatched event within the nineteenth century Europe, the Paris 

Exhibition of 1867. 


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Sarkozy as well intervened heavily in the French business world. Matlack anticipated such a 

policy since the very next day of his election, reporting that “the market was rife with rumors 

reflecting expectations that Sarkozy may exercise a dirigiste industrial policy” (2007). As a 

matter of state, the pre-Sarkozy trend of the French rulers in that matter was rather a gradual 

detachment from the state-owned firms, pushing them into a market-oriented approach to 

increase their productivity. A noticeable example at this regard was the France Telecom case in 

the late 2000s. As explained by an investment banker in Paris, and reported by The Economist, 

"the tide was going in one direction for years, even the socialists privatized, we had less political 

interference and more financial savvy, but now we're stepping backwards" (2010). The trend is 

being reversed, yet new patterns of state involvement in private businesses appeared. As 

explained by the article cited above, “phone calls from the Elysée are becoming a frequent 

feature of French business”. It was notably the case for Vivendi which was lectured by the 

Elysee for not consulting it concerning its desire to acquire the Brazilian media company GVT, or 

Eutelsat’s boss who received a phone harangue from one of Sarkozy’s advisers for preferring a 

Chinese satellite to of one of the French Arianespace’s. However, it is worth mentioning at this 

regard that Sarkozy’s protectionism is not limited to the French territory, but is rather rooted in 

the European economic frame. At this point, his vision oversteps classical Bonapartism and 

enlarges the economic vital space of France to Europe. As explained by Clift, “recalling earlier 

ambitions to reinvent dirigisme on a European scale, Sarkozy is also a proponent of EU-level, 

neo-mercantilist trade and industrial policies, what he calls a “real” European industrial policy” 

(2008). The president is accordingly shaping a Neo-Bonapartist approach to industrial policy, 

enlarging it to regional groupings such as the European Union, and openly claiming 


44


responsibility for it. It was the case when he declared to Le Monde the 5 th of September 2007 

that “the state needs a new strategy within globalization”, while commenting the fusion of GDF 

and Suez (presently co-managed from its Brussels and Paris headquarters). 

From the latter, and from the rationale of regional groupings of competitiveness, the other 

leading powers are to be included into the dynamic. Such a strategy cannot be limited only to 

national (or regional) champions. As highlighted by the Program Director of the Warwick Taught 

Masters in International Political Economy, “Sarkozy’s neo-mercantilism is not confined to large 

French firms; he is committed to introducing a French “small business Act”, on the US model, 

giving preferential treatment to French small businesses in securing public contracts” (Clift, 

2008). However, Sarkozy’s interventionist zeal in small businesses showed some limits, and 

especially when he intervened in favor of the catering sector via reducing its Value Added Tax 

from 19,6% to 5.5 %. This measure costed the “tax-payer € 2.4 billion a year” according to the 

Economist, and mostly “involved a fierce battle with the European Commission” (2010). The 

boom of consumption expected from this fiscal gift did not materialize, since the coupled 

effects of the inflation and the still high unemployment rate all over the country did not 

increase the part reserved to restaurant frequenting within the French familial budget. 

Having consequently followed an interventionist approach on some economic issues, 

one should not conclude that both Napoleon III and Sarkozy did not also extol the virtues of 

neo-liberalism. As explained previously, the emperor alternated the two approaches while the 

president used them simultaneously. Napoleon III was even recorded as the only French 

emperor who advocated the laisser-faire laisser-aller policy: “only once in its history has France 


45


ever followed a determinedly liberal economic policy: during the 1860s, when the authoritarian 

Napoleon III, in alliance with Britain, set up the first west-European common market and 

created an embryonic common currency” (Tombs, 2008). The tariff reduction he implemented 

seemed to be influenced both by one of his closest collaborators, Pereire, a prominent French 

capitalist, and by Haussman, the architect of contemporary Paris, as recorded by Wright (1938). 

Another motive, the imperial concern vis a vis popular classes, as expressed in his book 

“L’Extinction du Paupérisme”, mistakenly convinced him that a liberalized economy will benefit 

primarily the masses and relief him from any political riot consequent to poverty and 

unemployment. In all cases, the end result was the flourishing of trade and the overall 

refiguring of both of the French agricultural and industrial base. 

This imperial neo-liberalism “resembles that of Sarkozy”, explains Baillet, « who also considered 

that economic growth will contribute in improving the social conditions of the French” (2007). 

Considering the European Union as a convenient zone of commercial exchanges, Sarkozy 

advocates the virtues of the Anglo-Saxon model of free trade and questions by this way the 

Socialist acquis in contradiction with such a theoretical perspective. The reconsideration of the 

35 hours, the social pensions reforming, the transforming of the universities into attractive 

poles of competitiveness are some examples of his “authoritarian liberalism that is more linked 

to Napoleonic principles than to the authentic republican and democratic ones” (2007) 

continues Baillet. On the social chapter, Sarkozy progressively shelled a complete set of 

measures aiming at reducing the welfare role of the French state and the valorization of the 

“France’s that wakes up early”. The French tradition of social assistantship was thus shaked in 

its foundations. Firstly, Sarkozy “made very public his desire to facilitate firing (calling for 


46


“amicable separation” between employees and firms) within the modernization of the 

employment contract” (Clift, 2008). The rationale behind this reforming was his neo-liberal lens 

according to which increasing the elasticity of the human capital lightens the workforce’s 

burden from the employers. He thus advocated the need for the French workers to show more 

professional flexibility; a criterion determined by the market and not by the employers in such a 

conception. Second, the taxation chapter also obeyed “the hyperglobal (neo-liberal) capital 

flight argument: “if we tax labor too much, it delocalizes, if we tax capital too much, it 

delocalizes” (Clift, 2008). In the same move, Sarkozy launched a very incisive campaign against 

the “tax heavens”, either at the European Union or the G20 level (while paradoxically asking for 

the implementation of the Tobin Tax on financial transactions). The president also called upon 

the “ending of inheritance taxes for all small and medium-sized estates that is 90-95% of them” 

(Gizzi, 2007). A huge fiscal gift (of approximately 4 billion Euros as estimated by Le Point) was 

also proposed to the wealthiest: Sarkozy intends to considerably reduce the taxation on the ISF 

(Impot sur la Fortune), a gesture aiming at preventing the France’s fortunes from escaping to 

more clement countries in terms of taxation (by this way, Sarkozy declared in a political talk 

show broadcasted by France 2 the 24 th of May 2009, that he was “disappointed” by the 

departure of his friend Johnny Halliday to Belgium because of taxation’s concerns). 

Another neo-liberal battle fought by Sarkozy was his reforming of the social pensions system, 

and mainly the changing of the pension’s departure from 60 to 62 years. It is worth mentioning 

that this very unpopular reform set the French streets ablaze for several weeks, and ended up 

with a paralyzing shortage in fuel (the workers of the main oil refineries being in strike) but was 

forcefully adopted by both of the Parliament and the Senate (since the president holds the 


47


majority of voters in both chambers). Sarkozy 2010’s stand firm against the social protests 

resembles the 2009’s one dealing with the universities reforming. As a matter of fact, on the 

22 nd of January 2009, Sarkozy unveiled his reforming program of the French universities during 

his speech related to “the launching of the reflection on a National Strategy of Research and 

Innovation”. As explained by Clift, the president’s main arguments were the expansion of the 

number “of competitiveness poles, and also expanded the research tax credit (credit impot 

recherché CIR) increasing from 10 to 30 % the state’s reimbursement of a firm research 

expenses on research” (2009), but also the promotion of financial autonomy, Anglo-Saxon way, 

of the institutions of higher institutions and what it implies in terms of state disengagement in 

that domain (thus the opening of education to the private funds). Evans for his part underlined 

the president’s saying during this speech that “the present top-down framework as' infantilising 

and paralysing'” (2009). This shifting from the French tradition according to which education is 

a public service to be backed up by the state to maintain an equal access, accordingly far from 

the Anglo-Saxon universities’ competitiveness which ends up in high tuition fees was simply 

revolutionary. Such a privatization was in view of that strongly opposed and resisted, but again 

and following the Bonapartist authoritarian liberalism’s principle, the law was forcefully 

adopted. 

To close this chapter, Sarkozy already unveiled the next domain he intends to reform starting 

from June 2011: the health sector. His declaration did not bring any additional information, yet 

one might guess that it will follow the education reform’s path (that is the liberalization of the 

sector and its opening to the private funds). 


48


II. The closeness vis a vis the business milieu and a magnanimous relation to money 

Being in a proper court-configuration, Napoleon III gathered around him the most 

powerful economic players of his time, and mainly “ennobled bankers, coming from the 

“affaires milieu” controlled by the advantages its members await from the ruler” (2008) as 

explained by one of the emperor’s posthumous biographers, Pierre Milza. He continued 

underlying the « indisputable analogy with the friendships of Nicolas Sarkozy in the business 

world”. In a populist arrangement, the mixing of the rapprochement with the lowest social 

classes and the highest strata of the business milieu can seem antagonist, if not from a 

Bonapartist approach. Both the emperor and the president strategically needed to gather 

popular classes to their camp since they intrinsically believe in the popular plebiscite to access 

to and be maintained at power. However, the latter does not in fine contradict the display of 

personal ties with the business owners who are strongly attached to conservatism. As put by 

Lévy, Sarkozy “seems to be vacillating between a genuine effort to modernize France and 

electorally motivated pay-offs to conservative constituents” (2008). At this point, the previously 

highlighted lack of consistency of Sarkozy’s economic policy appears for McNicoll as another 

motive behind such a phenomena, since “the French president has a habit of putting the 

economy at the mercy of his personal political imperatives: at heart, the problem is that he has 

no true economic principles, that the only key to Sarkonomics is expediency” (2009). 

As a matter of fact, no republican law forbids any president from having a tight circle of friends 

within the affaires milieu; yet such a state of affairs becomes embarrassing when there is an 

overlap or conflict of interests, or when flagrant and glaring examples reveal “clubbish links” 

(The Economist, 2010) between the Elysee, and certain business and media bosses. In fact, an 


49


entire book is dedicated to the Rich friends of the president. Renaud Dély and Didier Hassoux 

explain that Sarkozy’s flirting with powerful and influent friends is not a novelty but rather a 

long-term process started since he was elected mayor of Neuilly. Accordingly, influential and 

extremely wealthy people such as “Martin Bouygues (CEO of the Bouygues Group, salary of 2,4 

millions Euros per year, 21 st fortune of France), Bernard Arnault (owner of the LVMH Group, 1 st 

fortune of France with 23 billion Euros), Arnaud Lagardère (owner of the Laguardere holding, 

personal fortune estimated to 314 million Euros), François Pinault (businessman, 7 th French 

fortune), Jean-Claude Decaux (fortune of 3256 million Euros in 2010), Daniel Bouton, Edouard 

de Rotschild, Vincent Bolloré, and Alain Minc” (Dély & Hassoux, 2008) are closely related to him; 

Martin Bouygues is nothing less than the godfather of his son Louis, while Bernard Arnaud is 

one of his best clients (he defended his interests as a lawyer) for example. 

The red line was crossed between the personal and professional circles of the president more 

than once as pointed out by The Economist while denouncing “the appointing of rich friends to 

prominent business jobs” (2010). The publication cites three controversial appointments, and 

namely: Francois Perol as head of the BCPE (the second largest banking group in France), 

Stéphane Richard at France Telecom (the largest telecommunications company in the country), 

and finally Henri Proglio at EDF (Electricité de France, a firm owned at 85% by the state). The 

supposedly networking of Nicolas Sarkozy with the affaires milieu extends to his own family, 

with the harsh reception of his son’s candidacy to the EPAD (cf chapter I), and more recently a 

scandal revealed by an information website. As a matter of fact, the 14 th of October, Médiapart 

unveiled the fact that the pensions’ reforms is going to benefit the “Malakoff Médéric” giant, 

whose CEO is the president’s brother, Guillaume Sarkozy (Le Nouvel Observateur, 2010). A 


50


confidential business plan of this insurance company published by Médiapart revealed that 

Guillaume Sarkozy‘s firm plans to realize huge benefits from this reform (evaluated to 40 to 100 

billion Euros). In an overall environment already dominated by the Bétencourt’s scandal (still in 

court, but dealing with a supposedly illegal financing of Sarkozy’s presidential campaign 

involving his Labor minister Eric Woerth), the latest revelation of Médiapart is not helping in 

laundering Sarkozy from the accusation of putting his personal friendships at the mercy of his 

political agenda and vice versa. 

Another likeness between the last emperor of France and its latest president is worth 

highlighting: their magnanimous relation to money. They both relied on the transparent 

accounting of the money they use vis a vis their electorate with a similarly liberalized relation to 

it. As rapported by Brézol and Crozière, the emperor addressed to the Belgian l’Indépendance 

“a long letter detailing the use his civilian list, and stipulated that His Majesty allocated to 

himself an annual sum of 5 millions of French Francs to be dispensed according to his own wish” 

(1912). 

In parallel, one of Sarkozy’s earliest amendments proposed to the Parliament was a personal 

raise of his annual salary from 101 488 to 240 000 Euros, what corresponds to a pay rise of 140 

% as reported by L’Express (2007). In an overall context of crisis, and with “a slumping economy 

and soaring inflation, this did not help in” getting any sympathy neither from the opposition or 

the population (Harris, 2008) and was considered as indecent in a country were half of the 

country barely earns a monthly salary of 1500 Euros. In addition, and as outlined by Matlack 

and Fouquet, “Sarkozy’s approach to political finance seemed refreshingly different: To prepare 


51


for the 2007 elections, Sarkozy and Woerth hired a professional fund-raising staff at the UMP 

and set up U.S.-style "donor circles" (2010). Accordingly, the journalists points out that the UMP 

raised a record of 9.13 million Euros, in a time the Socialists raised 750 000 Euros (Matlack & 

Fouquet, 2010). Answering a question about his “relation to money” during the June 12 th 

2010’s TF1 interview, Sarkozy declared that he is “suspicious of people who idolize money as of 

those who detest it". That being said, such a magnanimous standpoint seems perfectly coherent 

and sensed from a hyper-president whose preferred refrain is his “travailler plus pour gagner 

plus” maxim, even if it (again) goes against the French tradition of bienséance which bans and 

“taboo-es” the money talks. 


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Chapter III: A lively and dirigiste political communication sustained by 

interest ties with the media owners 

« Oui, on se réveillera ! Oui, on sortira de cette torpeur, qui, pour un tel peuple, est la honte : 

et quand la France sera réveillée, quand elle ouvrira les yeux, quand elle distinguera, quand 

elle verra ce qu'elle a devant elle et à côté d'elle, elle reculera, cette France, avec un 

frémissement terrible, devant ce monstrueux forfait qui a osé l'épouser dans les ténèbres et 

dont elle a partagé le lit. 

Les sceptiques sourient et insistent ; ils disent : « N'espérez rien. Ce régime, selon vous, est la 

honte de la France. Regardez donc la tribune, la presse, l'intelligence, la parole, la pensée, tout 

ce qui était la liberté, a disparu. Hier cela remuait, cela s'agitait, cela vivait, aujourd'hui cela 

est pétrifié. Eh bien, on est content, on s'accommode de cette pétrification, on en tire parti, on 

y fait ses affaires, on vit là-dessus comme à l'ordinaire. Ne vous faites pas illusion, ceci est 

solide, ceci est stable, ceci est le présent et l’avenir. » 

Victor Hugo, Napoléon le Petit, 1863. 

I. A lively and squared monitoring of the media: 

Thought the last monarch and the latest president of the Hexagon experienced and 

evolved in dissimilar media environments, their respective relationship with the fourth power 

and the degree of freedom they conceded to it are interesting to compare since again 

Napoleon III’s background in that domain seems inspirational for Sarkozy. Before handling this 

cross-centuries comparative analysis, two limiting criteria should be taken into account to 

adjust the analytical lens: first the almost unlimited room for maneuver of the emperor in 

comparison with Sarkozy’s inheritance of a matured media system and second the very nature 

of the media and their evolving role in shaping political leadership in France. 

This being said, it is worth highlighting the fact that the main mass medium of the mid 

nineteenth century was the press, a tool of communication the emperor happened to know 


53


very well since he extensively relied upon it during his exile years. This very situation which 

enabled the Prince Napoleon to shake Louis Philippe’s reign aroused his awareness of the 

powerful impact of a liberated press serving as a tribune of freely expressed dissidences and 

oppositions. Not that Napoleon III feared his opponents: as explained before, once they were 

spotted by the regime, their fate was put between the hands of the police (a situation which 

ended up either in imprisonment or in exile). In point of truth, since the emperor seated his 

legitimacy on popular plebiscite, controlling the perception of the French population of his rule 

via a strict monitoring of the press was primal. D’Alembert cited in his Dictionnaire Politique 

Napoléonien the emperor saying according to which he “must preserve the freedom of the press 

from the two excesses that compromise it: the arbitrary and its own license” (1849). 

Accordingly, quick and radical measures were taken to ‘protect the freedom of press’, and 

mainly the Press Law of July 16 th 1850 which “required all articles on political or theological 

questions to be signed, and handicapped editors in many other ways” (Thompson, 1955) like the 

mandatory caution deposit imposed on editors as a proof of their “good will” (in reality the 

latter served as a gambling card the authorities used for blackmailing the indocile publications). 

Miller details even further the silencing of the press with evocating the Decree Law of 1852 

which “introduced a system whereby newspapers directors were allowed only two warnings 

before a newspaper was liable to suspension” (1997). Such a situation ended up in a press 

whose maneuver of action was limited to the transcription of the imperial accomplishments, 

and preferably in a gracious tone: a state of affairs denounced by an angry Regnault citing the 

British Times saying that “Louis Bonaparte had put civil liberties under the heel of his boots” 

(1907) and an exiled Hugo bemoaning the suppression of one hundred publications “twenty in 


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Paris and eighty in the provinces” (1863). From the latter, the first decade of the French Second 

Empire witnessed a state-reorganization and control of the journalism and the suppression of 

its watchdog leverage endangering the sate stability. As a matter of fact, Louis Napoleon used 

again the populist card to justify his censorship by stating in a speech delivered to the 

Parliament the 29 th of March 1852: “why was not France moved by the restrictions on press 

freedom and individual liberties? It is because they have degenerated into license and odious 

excesses that threatened the rights of each one of you” (1868). At this point, the Second Empire 

was not satisfied by the control of its national press, but attempted twice to put under its grasp 

the foreign one. Hugo explains that the emperor brought into court two Belgian publications 

(“The Bulletin Français” and “The Nation”), but after the failure of his attempt (both were 

acquitted by the Belgian justice) he decided to impose a ban over their entrance into the French 

territory; the hostile British press as well was targeted via the expulsion of its correspondents in 

France (1863). These attempts proved to be “half successes” for Hugo since the foreign 

journalists escaped the imperial license via various stratagems and subterfuges. 

One century and a half later, such a direct censorship of the freedom and independence of the 

press being simply unfeasible and unpractical, Nicolas Sarkozy engaged a lively management 

and control of the media yet through more insidious ways. Sarkozy’s Bonapartist thirst of 

control and what it engendered in terms of decline of press and media freedom was recently 

unveiled by the 2010 annual report of Reporters Without Borders which classified France at the 

44 th position (that is to say a fall of 33 places) and made its General Secretary, Jean-François 

Julliard, assert that “the French government is no longer considered as respectful of the freedom 

of information”, highlighting by this way that “only Berlusconi’s Italy is worse in Europe with its 


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49 th ranking” (Télérama, 2010). Once the French contemporary media scene under scrutiny, it 

appears that to achieve the monitoring of the information, Sarkozy’s strategy relied upon the 

combination of three powerful mechanisms: an influential clientelism with the French media 

owners, a direct interference in the sector via its reforming, and finally a state-sponsored 

surveillance and repression of the journalists. On the clientelism chapter, Sarkozy did not create 

anything, but rather turned into his advantage the current organization of the media ownership 

in France. As explained by Sachs, “the concentration of media ownership in the hands of a few 

well-connected industrialists has been building for years, but the circles of influence, wealth, and 

political power have converged to an unusual degree in Mr. Sarkozy's France” (2007). The happy 

few mentioned below happen to be Sarkozy’s closest intimate friends; accordingly and even if 

the president do not possess any media outlet, he can rely upon the support of his powerful 

network since “two thirds of all French newspapers and magazines are owned by the president's 

close friends Dassault and Lagardère whose affiliated company, Hachette, also owns most of 

France's publishing houses and a large part of the book and magazine distribution network” 

(2010) as explained by Willsher. The Guardian’s journalist proposes an even further description 

of Sarkozy’s de facto “media empire” through revealing the listing of his “band of five loyal 

media musketeers”, and namely Arnaud Laguardère (Paris Match, Elle, Journal du Dimanche, 

Télé 7 Jours, Première Magazine, France Dimanche, and dozens of news and radio stations and 

cable channels), Martin Bouygues (TF1, Eurosport, and a variety of cable channels), Bernard 

Arnault (La Tribune, Les Echos, Investir, and Radio Classique), Serge Dassault (Socpresse Group, 

Le Figaro, Valeurs Actuelles), and finally François Pinault (Le Point, Europe 1). Further 

investigations showed that Sarkozy’s circle of influent media friends encompasses other grands 


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patrons (and even powerful advertisers) as listed by Bénilde (2006): Jean-Claude Decaux (world 

leader in urban advertising), Gérard de Riquemorel (Hachette Fillipacchi Médias), Nicolas de 

Tavernost (M6), Arnaud de Puyfontaine (Mondadori France), Thierry Saussez (Image et 

Stratégie), Philippe Gaumont (FCB), Jean Luc Mano (France 2 general manager), Edouard de 

Rotschild (Libération), and Stéphane Courbit (Endemol France). 

In fact, no republican law forbids presidential acquaintances with the media tycoons; what is 

problematic in such a state of affairs is the employment of these acquaintances for the 

presidential domination of the mainstream media. "Rarely in the course of the last decades has 

the media risked becoming so much the instrument of a single mind-set, and yet at the same 

time so scorned by people in power," declared a coalition of six French journalist unions cited by 

Sachs who pointed out the “direct presidential interference” (in editorial decisions) or “the self- 

censorship on the part of overly cautious editors tiptoeing around unflattering news about their 

bosses and their bosses' important friends” (2007). Several incidents are worth mentioning at 

this regard, all revealed by the few remaining independent publications. The Leftist Marianne 

for example brought up a “mysterious wave of suppressing of unflattering articles” citing the 

cover story of Paris Match which was about to reveal the fact that Sarkozy’s ex-wife Cecilia did 

not vote at the second tour of the presidential election but which was pulled out at the last 

minute (Kirby, 2007). Sachs for his part related several pre-election incidents, among which one 

involving Arnault’s Tribune. This publication commissioned an opinion poll that revealed that 

the Socialist candidate Royal “inspired more confidence on economic questions than Sarkozy; La 

Tribune prepared a front page headline to that effect, with the full story scheduled to run inside, 

but on the eve of publication, the chief editor killed the story” (Sachs, 2007). Bénilde finally 


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denounced an “unbearable mark of media allegiance to the political power”(2006) while 

relating the firing of Alain Génestar, director of Paris Match, because he published a cover story 

showing Cecilia Sarkozy with her lover in Paris streets in June 2006. Infuriated, Sarkozy 

interrupted his friend’s – Laguardère – holidays in the Bahamas, urging him to return back to 

Paris to “handle this impertinence”(Dély & Hassoux, 2008). Actually and as rightly pointed out 

by Bénilde during the 2007 presidential race, the will of controlling the media is quite usual 

from a politician; what is more puzzling is the self-enslavement of the community of media 

owners which she identified as caused by their “overestimation of his politics during their 

coverage of its candidacy which make them occult his ministerial failures, and mainly the 

eradication of violence, that increased of 12% between 2002 and 2006” (2007). Be it self- 

censorship or presidential interference, media control in France’s Sarkozy gave rise to a broad 

wave of protests emanating either from professionals like Gozlan, a Marianne editorialist who 

declared that Sarkozy is “really a danger for the freedom of expression and critical sense; it 

means there is a kind of court around him; it’s the first time we see such a phenomenon” (Kirby, 

2010) or from politicians such as Arnaud Montebourg who deplored the fact that the 

“mainstream media are becoming markedly concentrated in his (Sarkozy’s) favour” (Willsher, 

2010). On that, Sarkozy repeatedly denied any direct interfering in the media sphere, in a time 

his spin doctor since the late 1980s, Thierry Saussez, did not contradict this accusation and 

declared to the BBC that “the president enjoys keeping the press on its toes” (Kirby, 2008). At 

this point, the previously cited Times saying according to which “Louis Bonaparte had put civil 

liberties under the heel of his boots” (1907) as reported by Regnault founds some echoes in the 

Sarkozy presidency. 


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Another aspect of the president’s clientelism is his not-exclusively media-oriented habit of 

returning favors to friends. While still minister of Budget and Finances, in the preparatory phase 

of his candidacy to the presidency, he fought for “maintaining the controversial tax abatement 

(7650 Euros per year) of journalists” (Bénilde, 2006). One year later, an « extremely shocking » 

event (cf the French Union of Journalism) revived the suspicions: as reported by The Economist, 

the former campaign director of Sarkozy, Laurent Solly, was appointed head of TF1, supposedly 

after a phone call of Sarkozy to his old friend Martin Bouygues (2007). Other examples of the 

influence the president exerts on the media decision-making circles were noted down by The 

Guardian whose journalist Willsher was astonished while underlining that “two radio satirists 

(Stéphane Guillon and Didier Porte) described by Sarkozy as "insulting, vulgar and nasty", were 

sacked one week later by their direction” (2010). Valérie Domain, a Gala journalist, was another 

victim of Sarkozy’s disgrace: in 2005, when she decided to write a book about Sarkozy’s failures 

as a minister of the Interior, her editor, Vincent Barbare, was called in Place Beauvau; her 

publishing contract was annulled and few times later she was fired for obscure reasons from 

Gala (Bénilde, 2008). 

All these incidents could have gone unnoticed since they were disseminated in the continuous 

overflow of presidential presence in the news but they all surfaced after Le Monde launched a 

crusade against Sarkozy’s monitoring of the sector. This publication’s campaign compiled grave 

infringements to the freedom of press since Sarkozy’s access to power. First of all, Le Monde 

along with Le Canard Enchainé accused the Elysée of spying on journalists via illegal phone- 

tapping supposedly by using the DCRI’s (Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur) 

services. This accusation was confirmed by one of Sarkozy’s special advisors (Henri Guaino) in 


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Le Monde’s columns while advocating the supremacy of the raison d’état over the freedom of 

the press; accordingly this allegation was taken very seriously and ended up the 4 th of 

November 2010 in the auditing of the General Director of the National Police (Péchenard) and 

the DCRI’s Director (Squarcini) by the French Parliament (as rapported by Le Parisien in its 

edition of the same day). Another revelation, issued this time by Médiapart - the information 

website at the origins of the Bettencourt scandal – accused the French president of having 

entrusted the French secret services with the spying on two of their journalists who were 

investigating the Karachi and the Bettencourt affairs. Second, Le Monde piled up several 

testimonials of journalists who were indicted in 2008 with the charge of “retention of 

information”. As a matter of fact, these journalists refused to unveil their sources on the 

Bettencourt affair in the name of the “source protection” law. Sarkozy’s answer was 

instantaneous: few days later, he entrusted the National Assembly with the examination of a 

law amendment according to which “the preservation of journalists’ sources can exceptionally 

be dismissed when an overriding public interest justifies it”. Scalbert awarded then France of the 

title of “European champion of judiciary actions against the press (related to sources 

preservation in Affaires d’Etat): in one week, five house-searches, two indictments, and four 

summonses for journalists” (2008), considering by this way that the freedom of press in France 

was exposed to a severe devolution. 

The rise of a Sarkophobic editorial line consequent to these revelations among the 

professionals, and mainly among the five public channels (FR2, FR3, FR4, FR5, and FRO) as 

explained by Wells lead to a presidential coup d’éclat: Sarkozy decided to burst into the sector 

by first ending “all advertising on public television channels” (2009). This surprising measure 


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caught short all the media professionals in France regarding its stake: the transference of one 

billion Euros per year of advertising revenues from the public to the private sector of TV 

broadcasting. Saint-Martin considered it as both a threatening signal addressed to dissident 

public media and “a gift to Sarkozy’s friends” (2009). As a matter of fact, the journalist 

identified four main recipients of this presidential largesse: Martin Bouygues (TF1, highly 

dependent upon advertising which accounted for 68,7 % of its turnover in 2007), Vincent 

Bolloré (Direct 8), Arnaud Laguardère (Virgin 17 and Gulli), and finally Nicolas de Tavernost (M6 

Groupe). As if this was not enough, in December 2008, Télérama released a disturbing 

confidential document: the 2008’s TF1 Livre Blanc (an internal document covering the strategic 

planning of the Bouygues Groupe affiliate). In fact, Soubrouillard explains that “startling 

resemblances between the recommendations of this document and Sarkozy’s reforming of 

advertising in public TV broadcasting suggest that the president was strongly inspired by it” 

(2008). 

In the same breath, Sarkozy continued his raid over public media and decided that from now 

on, the nomination of the presidents of both of Radio France and France Télévisions will be a 

presidential prerogative (with the symbolic approval of the CSA - Conseil Supérieur de 

l’Audiovisuel). Leroi explains that the head of state wanted the superseding of the president of 

Radio France, Jean-Paul Cluzel, who built up a strong resistance to Sarkozy’s seducing of the 

media and allowed his journalists to keep a critical standpoint vis à vis his politics. In a model of 

monitored media, even Cluzel’s « satisfactory bilan since his nomination in 2004 by the CSA - 

according to Médiamétrie, Radio France stations achieved a 24,6% of market penetration which 

represent 12,6 million daily listeners – that ended up in Radio France being the first radio group 


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in France” (Leroi, 2009), is not compensating the damages it inflicts on Sarkozy’s image. The 

trade association CGT Radio France launched at this occasion a large campaign of strikes among 

the sector in May 2009 under the slogan: “Where is the manipulation, in defending public 

service broadcasting and freedom of information or in appointing and dismissing authoritatively 

and unilaterally the presidents of France Télévisions and Radio France? No, Sarkozy will not 

muzzle the public service! » (2009). As a matter of fact, Sarkozy did: he replaced Cluzel by one of 

his closest friends, Jean-Luc Hees, who – among other things - signed in 2007 a flattering book 

of the UMP candidate (Sarkozy président ! Journal d'une élection) and whose first measure was 

the firing of Stéphane Guillon and Didier Porte, the very radio satirists that irritated the 

president more than once. The same scenario was reproduced for France Télévisions: the very 

popular Patrick de Carolis (either within the profession or the French) whose firm stand against 

Sarkozy’s reforms of the French public broadcasting was reported as “courageous”, was tossed 

out and replaced by Rémy Pflimlin, the “foal of two very close collaborators of Sarkozy, Claude 

Guéant (the General Secretary of the Elysee), and Alain Minc” (Basqué & Psenny, 2010). 

II. A purposefully-designed communication strategy: 

The tip of the imperial iceberg directed at controlling the press, visible at the level of the 

enacted laws silencing the opposition and the physical repression of journalists, hides an 

amazingly well-organized machine de guerre. As a matter of fact, it was not before the early 

1900s that confidential documents revealed the underlying foundations of Napoleon III’s 

communication strategy. In their well-documented book Napoléon Le Néfaste, Brézol and 

Crozière disclosed the underlying mechanisms of the imperial press policy; and mainly the 

shaping of a state-defined editorial line for the newspapers, the seating and placing of pro-state 


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redactors within the press crews, and finally a spiders’ web of direct state subventions into 

both already and soon-to-become allegiant publications. Accordingly, and on the first measure, 

the way the press was organized for the regional elections of April 1859 by the Press Division of 

the ministry of the Interior is revealing of the imperial dynamism in that domain. Brézol and 

Crozière came across this document and ended up with two plans of action. First, “the 

introduction of a comparative system of newspapers reading, in order to follow more subtly the 

political disputes department by department, via a daily reporting of electoral events” and 

second, “the insertion in the press of a political advertizing section, in which various journalists 

will prepare the opinion via correspondences, informational articles…etc” (1912). The ministerial 

report even self-congratulates the efforts deployed in applying this strategy which ended up in 

the squaring of 80 newspapers in less than three days; a situation that “allows the minister to 

prompt any polemic of his taste, and this wherever he wishes (at least in 150 newspapers) and 

in a very short delay” (Brézol & Crozière, 1912). Three additional dispositions are detailed by 

this report, and mostly: the grants-in-aid aimed at assuring either the existence or the 

dedication of the newspapers, the grants-in-aid aimed at publishing free extra-copies during 

electoral periods to sustain the imperial propaganda, and finally the grants-in-aid aimed at 

reinforcing the imperial editorial line through the integration of loyal redactors within the 

newspapers. In addition, different sets of measures were applied for the provincial and the 

Paris-based press. For this latter, Brézol and Crozière revealed that a formal contract was signed 

between the ministry and the publications (for instance: Le Figaro, La France, Le Peuple, La 

Prairie, Le Messager de Paris, Le Public, and Le Dix-Decembre) assuring the weekly diffusion of 

(at least) 100 000 copies of issues filled exclusively by the lithographies of imperial candidates 


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(1912). Concerning the departmental press, its attachment to Napoleon’s cause did not require 

any formal contracting, only the perception of a monthly state subvention. Here is the detail of 

the April 1859’s 50 000 French francs allocated to the departmental press: Courrier du Cers 

2.000 Journal de Saône-el-Loire 1,000, Journal de Montbéliard 5oo, La Côle-d'Or 5.000, Courrier 

Populaire de Lille 1.200, Phare de Marseille 5.000, Aube (service de Presse) 5.000, Gers (service 

de la Presse) 2.200, Journal de la Corse 600, Journal de Seine-et-Oise 380, Doubs (service de la 

Presse) 2.5oo, and Le Bas-Rhin 9.000 (Brézol & Crozière, 1912). Finally, the very same report 

ends up describing Napoleon III latest brainwave: the installment of a fake opposition 

newspaper, Le Siècle, whose director, M. Lavin, was daily (and secretly) received by the 

emperor to define “in which conditions he should fight the government, in the best interest of 

all” (Brézol & Crozière, 1912). Such an advanced and elaborated system of control of the press 

lasted a decade, and achieved its quintessential goal: the watering of the population with a 

state-defined editorial line (even if the dissidences were growing, especially from the elite 

either within the country or exiled in neighboring countries). 

However, and almost in an overnight process, Louis Napoleon sharply decided to shift toward a 

more liberal press system. It is worth highlighting here that no motive compelled him in doing 

so besides his (personal) desire of discovering how the public opinion he relied upon so much 

appreciated his rule. As quoted by Miller, the emperor recognized this when he stated “I am 

isolated, I no longer hear anything” (1997). Again, this change in direction was engineered by 

Napoleon III as a transitional strategy during which he intended to adjust his populist discourse 

to the streets criticisms. The following relaxation of the Press Laws of 1868 lasted shorter than 

what was expected by the imperial ruler (since he was deposed in 1871), but resulted in a 


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“flood of 150 new newspapers, mostly hostile” (Miller, 1997). Louis Bonaparte’s communication 

strategy was from the latter rather innovative, yet always under control; a fact that explains 

why “modern scholars have been impressed by his particular form of political manipulation” 

stated the Southern State University of California’s report on the French Second Empire, since 

he “pioneered a new form of mass politics in which authoritarian politicians could employ 

nationalist and populist tactics, to achieve genuine popularity”. 

At this point, the well-oiled and thoughtful Bonapartist strategic vision vis a vis the fourth 

power has some echoes in Sarkozy’s approach of and relationship with the contemporary 

French media. Like the imperial censors who were entrusted with the shaping of the press 

headlines and the insertion of flattering articles (Barthelemy, 1889), Sarkozy as well extolled the 

virtues of intervening in the media through providing actively to its professionals what he 

wanted to see covered. As explained by Cohen, a recurrent pattern of Sarkozy’s communication 

strategy was his communicators’ readiness and eagerness in “providing the journalists, week 

after week, with some “biscuit” as stated by the media jargon… He (Sarkozy) “releases worthy 

news”, he is a scoop-machine” (Cohen, 2006). By this way, being both the source and the 

recipient, Sarkozy participates lively in the process of newsworthiness selection, a process 

usually reserved to the editorialists. In addition, a similar kind of practice was experimented the 

two first years of his presidency before a polemic stopped it sharp in December 2009: the 

insertion in the French press of Elysee-sponsored political polls. Here, and as explained by Le 

Parisien, the use of the French taxpayers money (estimated at 3,28 million Euros in 2008, and 1 

989 million in 2009) for complacent thus questionable polls (they were conducted by an 

opinion polls institute affiliated to Le Figaro, which belongs to Dassault, one of Sarkozy’s 


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“closest friends”) infuriated the Constitutional Council (2009). However, this short-lived 

calculation error should not mislead in evaluating Sarkozy’s communication strategy. Like 

Napoleon III, he established a well-studied approach vis a vis the media that came within reach 

of a line of attack thoughtfully matured. As a matter of fact, Sarkozy’s strategy was meticulously 

elaborated since more than twenty years. 

April 1983: the 28 years old freshly-elected mayor of Neuilly-Sur-Seine landed in a media 

dreamland. As explained by Rocco, the commune he just conquered « shelters an extraordinary 

gold mine since it houses the headquarters of numerous advertising agencies and influent media 

and broadcasting groups such as UGC, Gaumont, Havas, Hachette Fillipacchi, Sacem…” (2007). 

The young and ambitious UMP mayor realized at that time how beneficial for the takeoff of his 

political career such an environment can be if used adroitly: within few weeks he created the 

“Neuilly Communication Club” whose placarded ambition was to give birth to a “French 

Communication’s Silicon Valley” as explained by Thierry Gaubert, president of the Caisse 

d’Epargne banking group and General Secretary of Neuilly Communication since its creation 

(Rocco, 2007). This select Club was a master hit, Sarkozy succeeded in attracting 50 powerful 

advertizers, industrials, and media tycoons like the one listed by Strategies Magazine; Gérard 

de Roquemaurel (Hachette), Guy Verrecchia and Alain Sussfeld (UGC), Phillipe Gaumont (FCB), 

Jean-Claude Decaux (Decaux Advertising), Jean-Louis Tournier (Sacem), Christian Courtin 

(Clarins), Nicolas de Tavernost (M6), Arnaud de Puyfontaine (Emap France), Martin Sorrel 

(WPP), Dominique Baudis (CSA), Franz-Olivier Giesbert (Le Point), Claude Douce (McCann 

Erikson), Liliane Bettencourt (L’Oréal), Dominique Comolli (Altadis), Alain de Pouzilhac (France 

24), Martin Bouygues, Arnaud Laguardère, …etc (2005). The young lawyer whose incisive sens 


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des affaires attained its zenith in this period succeeded in seducing this establishment and 

patiently weaved a powerful networking, either via developing professional relations (his 

lawyer cabinet defended the interests of the Neuilly Communication members) or via more 

personal interactions (urbane and mundane receptions, diners…). At this stage, Maitre Sarkozy 

« acknowledged the fact that controlling the information is necessary to political power, and 

that communication is capital” (Rocco, 2007) as explained by Thierry Saussez, communication 

advisor of Sarkozy and president of the SIG (Service d’Information du Gouvernement) since 

2008. In the early 1990s, Sarkozy decided to reap the fruits of a decade of networking: he asked 

for and obtained the support of the Neuilly Communication Club in his governmental 

undertaking. Few months of powerful lobbying over the Elysee and a constant well thought of 

press after, Sarkozy entered the Mitterrand administration as Finance minister and 

spokesperson of the government, and finally attained his goal: minister of Communication. At 

this point, the trend was reversed. Sarkozy did not need to seduce the media; they instinctively 

courted him in order to traverse this strategic period of media evolution in France that 

witnessed the “creation of the free radios, the creation of Canal+ and M6, the privatization of 

TF1, the Evin Law on advertising…etc” as explained by Rocco (2007). 

Here, a line has been crossed: in 1995, Sarkozy wrote under the Mazarin pseudonym a series of 

letters addressed to a variety of politicians, Les Lettres de mon château, published in Les Echos. 

This epistolary phase of Sarkozy’s political maturation is worth mentioning since in many letters 

he provided advices to the political actors about their political communication. For instance, in 

the letter addressed to Claude Chirac, the daughter and communication advisor of his 

presidential father, Sarkozy alias “Mazarin” provided advices about “who should be privileged 


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either in her journalist contacts or targeted publications” (as reported by the Politiful Blog, 

2005). Being immerged in the communication world for more than a decade at that moment, 

his analysis underlined a sharp understanding of the winning ficelles of the French media to be 

used for political purposes. This insightful experience allowed him to elaborate a Bonapartist- 

like communication machine once elected head of state. Like the Emperor, he dedicated 

considerable amounts of money to polish his image in the media. A military-like communication 

horde of 51 professionals entered the Elysee in 2007 in Sarkozy’s shade. Exit the sober Chirac’s 

twelve-person communication team: like Napoleon III, nothing was enough to Sarkozy’s thirst 

of communication policing. First and to start with, a communiqué of the Elysée reported by Le 

Nouvel Observateur unveiled that 7,5 million Euros were devoted to the presidential public 

relations in 2009 (the 1,3 million Euros spent by Chirac the last year of his presidency pale into 

insignificance besides this, still according to the same source). Le Parisien (2009) detailed even 

further Sarkozy’s communication machine that encompasses: an internet strategic cell (7 

collaborators, 500 000 Euros), the presidential press service (15 collaborators), two presidential 

speechwriters (Henri Guaino and Marie de Gandt, 290 368 93 Euros of annual salary for each 

one of them), an opinion polls cell (3,28 million Euros in 2008, and 1,989 million for 2009), a 

broadcasting service (24 technicians, in charge of transporting and installing for all the 

presidential speeches 8 tons of material including 45 boxes of material, up to 40 speakers, 1 to 

6 panels, 10 to 30 flags…etc), a freshly-built TV studio within the Elysee (cost: 2,5 million Euros), 

and a technological gift for the Elysee-accredited journalists: a high-tech pressroom (cost: 500 

000 Euros). Accordingly, the fortunes of political communication are scrupulously studied to 

polish to the fullest the president’s image. 


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At this point, it is worth mentioning that both of the Emperor and the president’s 

communication strategies showed some limits which proved that they similarly failed in putting 

under their monitoring grasp the sector. For instance, Napoleon III’s most bitter failure in that 

domain, and as reported by Regnault, occurred in 1868. In few words, one of the emperor 

relatives, a mysterious Pierre Bonaparte, killed two journalists (Victor Noir and Bernard 

Fonvielle). The imperial coat smoothed the affair for weeks; nothing filtered in the press, until 

the clandestine La Lanterne published it and engendered “a never-seen before hostile 

movement against the ruling dynasty around Victor Noir’s coffin” (Regnault, 1907). The same 

applies for Sarkozy. The resisting bastions of independent press (Le Monde, Médiapart) 

successively revealed very embarrassing affairs for the president, among which the 

Clearstream’s affair and more recently the Bettencourt one (already labeled as Sarkozy’s 

“Woerthgate”). Consequently, a wind of change blew over France’s editorial offices; this 

scratched image is by this way one reason –among many others- behind Sarkozy’s record in 

terms of satisfaction rating (only of 29% according to the latest IFOP opinion poll in date of 

October 24 th 2010). 

III. Beyond Bonapartism: Sarkozy’s own contribution in shaping a new political communication 

in France: 

The introductory comments of that chapter, the limiting factors of a Sarkozy/Napoleon 

III comparative overview in terms of political communication for instance, make sense in the 

comprehensive evaluation of the 21 st French president public relations style. Being a pure 

product of the TV generation, Sarkozy adapted his political communication to the novelties 


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brought by the contemporary trends in that domain. First of all, he inherited from “the growing 

standardization in the ‘image politics’ of Western democracies of national political leaders” 

(Barisione, 2009). As a matter of fact, the successive and bouleversing innovations and 

modernizations of the communication media and tools this sector is knowing since more than a 

century, and more recently the digital revolution, compelled the politicians to adapt their 

political communication to the new imperatives and expectations of their societies in terms of 

political leadership. The earlier forms of modern political communication were for instance 

pioneered in the US and UK political tradition, with a large-balaying continuum of political 

communication, encompassing the traditional press, but also broadcast news (radio and TV), 

and the new forms of information technologies (phone texts, internet…etc). New patterns 

emerged: as explained by Mazzolini, right-wing populism positioned itself “firmly in advanced 

industrial democracies media and is on the conservative reactionary spectrum of political 

ideology” (Stanyer, 2007). Politicians are nowadays profoundly engaged in a process of political 

branding that imposes its own rules and diktats. A brief historical overview of contemporary 

trends of communicated politics, as detailed by Sanders (2009), reveal that its evolutionary 

path followed several steps. Initiated by the 1953’s presidential campaign of Eisenhower “with 

a revolutionary use of TV advertising campaign coupled to the extensive use of polls”, this trend 

was accentuated and developed in the 1960s with the Kennedy-Nixon presidential race 

(Sanders, 2009). Later on, the equation politics-communication was scrutinized under a variety 

of perspectives, among which Mc Combs and Shaw ‘s agenda setting effect of the media or 

Stuart Halls’ encoding/decoding paradigm. The theoretical framework under which Sarkozy’s 

political communication will be studied is the one defined by Johnston in 1990 and according to 


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which a purposeful communication of politics encompasses four categories: election 

communication, political communication and the news, political rhetoric, and finally political 

attitudes and behavior (Sanders, 2009). 

From the latter, it is interesting to cite the parallel established by the Italian political analyst, 

Donatella Campus, between Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi, since she identified a four- 

steps strategy common to their respective approach of the media and the reinforcing of their 

image, made of: “building an appealing image, establishing a direct and emotional link, creating 

media events, and going personal” (Campus, 2010). At this level, two main purposes are 

targetted, both the mediatization and the personalization of politics. The transalpine political 

spectacle introduced by Berlusconi in the Italian media relies heavily upon a top-heavy 

occupation of its space, and notably the TV channels, to generate a top brand-recognition 

phenomenon within the population. Sarkozy as well constructed its political leadership upon 

“an intensive and long-term investment in setting the news agenda and becoming a political 

celebrity” as stated by Campus and Ventura (2009). Sarkozy is therefore in complete rupture 

with the French presidential tradition which consisted in limited media appareances and the 

practical inexistence of modern communication techniques (under the Chirac presidency for 

example, it would have been unconceivable to send phone texts or emails to the UMP 

members database). 

At this point, the over-occupation of the mediatic space is not enough, Sarkozy accentuated 

even more his force de frappe via the Anglo-Saxon technique of “riding the wave”, since he 

“always coordinated his public statements and political decisions with external events to benefit 


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from the coverage attracted by the newsworthy events” (Campus, 2010). From the latter, 

hyperactive politics as practiced by the French president serves the mediatic omnipresence 

sakes. In parallel, the reliance on political myths, and for instance the “French tradition of 

heroic, decisive, and strong leaders” (Campus, 2010) reinforces even further the storytelling 

image of the “TéléPrésident”. On the personalization chapter, the contemporary trend of 

politics previously mentioned in chapter I – the rise of personalization and the decline of party 

identification -, is served by a never-seen before peoplization of politicians in the media. In 

addition, and viewed from a populist lens, desacralizing the leaders via the (over) exposure of 

their private lives in the media, is a convenient and effective tool in provoking the voters’ 

identification phenomenon. In fewer words, shaping a political leadership on human traits (that 

is exposing the politicians’ daily lives, holidays, or personal problems) is a winning recipe in 

catching the attention and making the “buzz”. This petite revolution in France’s usual “remote, 

condescending, and monarchical governing style” is embodied by Sarkozy’s perpetual “show of 

luxury vacations, millionaires' yachts and private jets, jogging shorts and worn jeans, fancy 

sunglasses and fancier wristwatches, a sudden divorce followed by a quick, furtive marriage to a 

trophy wife of disconcerting background” (Harriss, 2008). This flow of mediated exhibitionism 

crossed a line during what The Economist called the “Act two of The Hyper-president’s 

Spectacle” in which “Sarkozy decided to allow the camera in his intimacy, for one Paris Match 

shoot in his Elysee Palace bedroom” (2007). At this regard, an interesting study conducted by 

Kuhn about “The Public and the Private in contemporary French politics” determined four main 

areas of contention for the personalization of politics, and primarily: money, health, sex and 

sentimental intimacy, and finally family values (Kuhn, 2007). Sarkozy used (and continues to 


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use) them all, sometimes simultaneously in his public display process. For instance, and since 

day 1 of his presidency, he systematically invited journalists to cover his Sundays’ joggings and 

sport activities in a purposeful gesture supporting a “key aspect of his political image as a 

dynamic man of action” (Kuhn, 2007), but also as a way of being covered by the news shows 

during weekends (a traditionally empty niche for politicians). On the sentimental intimacy, 

Sarkozy’s over-covered marital problems with Cecilia, his romance with the Italian top-model 

Carla, and more recently the supposedly extra-marital adventures the press alleged to him, 

reveal a showbiz approach vis a vis the media, and outline his evolution “into a P. Diddy of the 

political world” (Harriss, 2008). On the money chapter, the previously mentioned magnanimous 

relationship toward money (his salary raise) coupled to a continuous display of luxury, place 

Sarkozy in the people’ section of the glossy paper’s media. Finally, and on the mediated show of 

family values, Kuhn pointed them out as a recurrent thematic of the Sarkozy’s personalization 

approach, via citing the “mobilization of his young son, Louis, in the effort to help his father’s 

presidential ambitions through an appearance on a video footage (‘Bonne chance mon papa’) 

at a UMP rally in November 2004 which marked Sarkozy’s takeover of the party leadership” 

(Kuhn, 2007). 

This incessant and continuously reinvented presidential staging appears, after a mid-career 

retrospect, as a way of replacing the politics of action by the politics of communication. Such a 

strategy, labeled by Le Figaro as a “privatization of the public sphere” (2009), is a technique of 

pushing the media saturation to its extreme: Sarkozy being everywhere, and every time a 

French citizen turns on his radio, television, or connects to the internet induces the misleading 

conception of a dynamic of political action, that is in fact more a communicational shaping of 


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political leadership. At this regard, Cohen predicted since 2006 the mediated characteristic of 

an eventual Sarkozy presidency since he followed him for more than a decade and analyzed his 

political communication with the TNS/Media Intelligence UBM (Unité de Bruit Médiatique), an 

index evaluating the media impact of politicians. Accordingly, Cohen explains that “a monthly 

average of 200 UBM being a very good score, what about Sarkozy’s UBM of 2587 realized in 

September 2005? He is a mediaholic animal” (2006). Another specialist of the French media life, 

Olivier Duhamel, analyzed Sarkozy’s media coverage, and compared four top-audience 

magazines – L’Express, Marianne, Le Nouvel Observateur, and Le Point -. He ended up with 80 

cover stories dedicated to the president between 2008-2009 (1/5 in term of coverage ratio); “it 

represents an absolute record in the history of French presidentialism” (Duhamel, 2010). In a 

country where 97% of the population read at least one of the 171 national magazines per year 

according to the AEPM’s (Audience de la Presse Magazine) study conducted by the Presse 

Magazine Institute the exposure to Sarkozy is almost unavoidable (Saint-Joanis, 2009). At this 

point, an outburst of media indigestion appeared. Harriss mentions an interesting anecdote at 

this regard: an association of “citizens suffering from SarkoFatigue” is militating for the creation 

of an official “Non-Sarkozy Day, during which no story about him would be published” (2008). 

Another noticeable feature of Sarkozy’s political communication resides in his personal style, or 

what Johnson would label as “political rhetoric” (Sanders, 2009). At this regard, Sarkozy 

combines adroitly his academically acquired lawyer rhetoric with a linguistic frankness. It is as if 

the president combined the two definitions Napoleon III provided of the “eloquence” and 

“frankness” words. In fact, and as quoted by D’Alembert in his Dictionnaire politique 

Napoléonien, the emperor defined eloquence (of lawyers) as the “expression of a true feeling, 


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of a fair idea, stripped of the luxury and ostentation of words” and frankness as the “avoidance 

by politicians of subterfuges to bring the greatest clarity in their approach” (1849). On this 

point, and even before running for the presidency, the Sarkozy ministerial speechifying was 

remarkably different from his fellow ministers’ one: his direct, and sometimes rude, style was 

purposefully within the reach of the average French citizen. Exit the elaborated and difficultly 

understandable political rhetoric à la française; political speeches, Sarkozy style, resembles the 

daily sentencing of his audience. Bénilde analyzed in 2006 his oratory dexterity and identified 

three recurring patterns: first an “emphatic appeal to interrogative forms and anaphora” (« 

Parce que vous croyez que... »), then “the use of stunning effects via images” (« On ne peut pas 

violer impunément une adolescente dans une cave »), and finally a “posture of the “parler vrai” 

and popular” (« Moi, j’essaye d’être compris des gens »). Accordingly, the use of a simple and 

talkative vocabulary coupled to a drama-like storytelling served by multiple repetitions creates 

an emotional connection able of, first, drawing the attention and second, keeping it all speech 

long. Jean Véronis, a linguistic specialist, examined 130 speeches of the head of state in his 

book Les Mots de Nicolas Sarkozy and noted that he simply recycled “commonly used 

techniques thought in any good communication school” (Gillet, 2008). Such techniques involve 

first a perfect flexibility vis a vis the audience’s linguistic expectations, then the putting in of a 

contact with the assistance (via notably direct harangues), and finally the content’s 

appropriation to wrap it with rhetoric sincerity, this latter being embodied by Sarkozy by “an 

extreme personalization of power – ‘Je ne vous mentirai pas‘” (Gillet, 2008). 

However, such a well studied public relation technique is not infallible: and especially since 

Sarkozy, as he usually does in other domains, pushes his stratagems beyond their limits because 


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of his uncompromising temper. The end result is a political caricature at the opposite of the 

expected outcome. For instance, the president pushed his “parler vrai” beyond presidential 

limits of the French etiquette when he turned out literally insulting a French citizen. As 

explained by Marquand “Buzz off, you idiot – is a charitable translation of what he said to a 

man in the crowd who refused to shake his hands” (2008). This incident that occurred in the 

Agriculture Salon of Paris in February 2008 echoed with a muscular verbal exchange with a 

fisherman of Guilvinec in November 2007, and even before while he treated one of his 

collaborators (David Martinon) of “imbecile” (idiot/fool) in front of CBS’s cameras in October 

2007 during the recording of the 60 minutes program. The president verbal impulsiveness 

engendered a wave of consternation and exasperation throughout the country. “Can he 

incarnate France with dignity and legitimacy?” wondered Dominique Moisi, a senior advisor at 

the French Institute for International Relations (Harriss, 2008). 

Actually, this interrogation was premonitory since the worst was yet to come in terms of 

discourtesy and public disrespect, this time vis a vis foreign leaders. As reported by Slate 

Magazine, a particularly epic diner held by the French head of state at the Elysee the 17 th of 

April 2009 in honor of French deputies was marked by a barely-believable medley of cutting 

remarks. Accordingly, Barack Obama “was elected since two months and never managed a 

ministry in his life: there are numerous issues on which he has no position”; José Manuel Barroso 

(the president of the European Commission) was “completely absent from the G20”; Angela 

Merkel “rallied my (Sarkozy’s) position once she acknowledged the damages inflicted to her 

banking and car industries”; and finally José Louis Zapatero is “not very intelligent” (2007). 

Consequently, a clamor of indignation popped up throughout the international press, and 


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mainly the British, Spanish, and German one as reported by Marquand (2008) and made the 

French one wonder “how such a politician, whose strength is public relations, can make so 

many damaging and inexplicable miscalculations”. By trying to do too much in his no-inhibitions 

approach, Sarkozy pushed his system on its knees and put France in an uncomfortable and 

embarrassing position vis a vis its foreign partners. From familiar and intimate, his political 

communication turned into colloquialism. Did France’s hyper-president eccentric style 

handicap the positioning of his country in terms of foreign policy since 2007? This is one 

question – among many others - to be discussed in the upcoming chapter. 


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Chapter IV: A hyperactive foreign policy dedicated to France’s glory and 

oscillating between humanistic and Realpolitik considerations 

« Le temps d’une crise, Nicolas Sarkozy a bonapartisé l’Europe. C’est ce qu’il fait à la puissance 

dix depuis que l’économie-monde est atteinte d’épilepsie. Face aux épreuves et aux périls, le 

président bonapartiste se métamorphose en Vishnou, le dieu aux quatre bras. Les ordres 

viennent de l’Elysée, les idées sortent de l’Elysée, les paroles tombent de l’Elysée. Face au 

dragon de la crise, il ne saurait y avoir qu’un chevalier en armure, Saint Nicolas. L’Allemagne 

rechigne, Jean-Claude Juncker s’agace, Jose Manuel Barroso se résigne. Jamais un président 

du Conseil européen n’a déployé autant d’activité et d’autorité. Jamais un modèle 

bonapartiste n’avait submergé auparavant le système de pouvoir cadenassé de l’Europe.» 

Alain Duhamel, Sarkozy : un Bonapartisme de crise, 2008. 

I. A Grands Plans policy extending the geopolitical space of France’s influence: 

Nineteenth century France’s geopolitical context did not resemble the twenty-first 

century one: yet, the first and latest presidents of the Hexagon handled its foreign policy in 

manners that reduce considerably the cross-centuries disparities. In a fatherly-like approach of 

the nation they ruled, Napoleon III and Nicolas Sarkozy had Grands Plans for France aimed at 

restoring its lost prestige either over its direct neighboring vital space or over farther regions of 

the globe. In fact, the Bonapartist approach to foreign policy involves the interaction of four 

main elements: first a broad imperialist vision, second the reliance upon a muscular defense 

strategy, third a foreign hyper-activism promoting the symposium culture, and finally the 

combination of a dirigist style as a tool with the promotion of the leader nationally as a goal. 

From the latter, and on the necessity of restoring France’s foreign radiation, Nicolas Sarkozy 

followed Napoleon III’s footsteps and targeted three main spheres of influence: the 

Mediterranean, Europe, and finally the conquest of far away geopolitical zones. Looking 


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inwards the Mediterranean Sea is thus a shifting of policies from the gradual French 

detachment in the region, a shift rooted in the Fifth Republic tradition since it was 

uninterrupted since the decolonization’s days. World’s leaders discovered with amazement 

Sarkozy’s Montpellier speech where, and as cited by Bowen, “praising the dreams of Napoleon 

Bonaparte when he invaded Egypt, Napoleon III when he conquered Algeria, and Marshal 

Hubert Lyautey, the first French Resident General of Morocco, Sarkozy said they all participated 

in a Mediterranean vision, which he called one of “civilization not conquest” (2007). 

This Mediterranean dream was to be materialized by one of Sarkozy’s most ambitious proposal: 

the creation of a Mediterranean Union led by a France trying to reconcile its past colonial 

dominion over the region with the evolution of this latter’s strategic importance within the 

international relations arena. On this, Nash considered Sarkozy’s “re-creation of this Napoleonic 

dream” as a foresighted enterprise since it relies on the “re-creation of the Roman’s Empire 

boundaries - which actually stretched further, but did include all the Mediterranean” (2007). 

By this way, the latter resonates with Louis Napoleon’s imperial expansion in the region, even if 

his colonial undertaking was far more ambitious than Sarkozy’s. As a matter of fact, the imperial 

foreign policy targeted two strategic regions: Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean. Concerning 

the African continent first, the emperor’s conquest of Algeria in 1857 which made him describe 

himself “grandly as just as much the emperor of the Arabs as the French” (Miller, 1997), was 

closely followed by the establishment of other Southern colonies, and mainly in Senegal, 

Guinea, and Dahomey. On the Eastern Mediterranean expansionist policy, the French 

expedition to Syria in 1860 and the engineering of the Suez Canal project marked the 

boundaries-less colonial appetite of the emperor. On that, Thompson noted that “whatever the 


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verdict on other foreign adventures of the Second Empire, Louis cannot be denied an important 

part in one scheme of lasting international importance (idea of joining the Mediterranean and 

the Red Sea)– the construction of the Suez Canal” (1955). However, and to render to Caesar the 

things that are Caesar's, tracing the origins of this Canal ends up in 1789, with Napoleon 

Bonaparte’s prospecting in the region. His nephew materialized then this Napoleonic Grand 

Plan half a decade after the withdrawal of the “Grande Armée” from Egypt in the early 1800s. 

According to Thompson, Napoleon III benefited from the “accession of a new Viceroy, Abbas 

Pasha, and the enterprise of Linant and Mougel”, a state of affairs which “encouraged him to 

bring the project before the government and financiers of Europe” (1955). 

One century and a half later, the Bonapartist Mediterranean vision knew an unexpected (and 

quite pompous) revival with the victory-speech of Nicolas Sarkozy, the 10 th of May 2007. Nash 

cites at this regard Sarkozy’s “Kennedy-esque speech”: “I want to issue a call to all the people of 

the Mediterranean to tell them it is in the Mediterranean that everything is going to be played 

out, that we have to overcome all kinds of hatred to pave the way for a great dream of peace 

and a great dream of civilization” (2008). In fact, the bridging of Southern Europe with Northern 

Africa is simply the recycling of the Barcelona Process (also known as the Euromed Partnership) 

launched in 1995 under the European Union banner, even if two noticeable changes are worth 

highlighting in the MU (Mediterranean Union) plan: first the appropriation of the project by the 

French president, and second the broadening of the scale of cooperation in the Sarkozist vision. 

Actually, the sixteen countries included in the board of governors of the Mediterranean Union 

(namely France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Israel, Turkey, Lebanon, Libya, 

Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco) are expected to increase regional collaboration in terms 


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of financial cooperation (creation of a Mediterranean Bank, European Central Bank style), 

immigration and terrorism-related mutual support, and finally a strengthened energy and 

environment regional policy. Obviously, behind Sarkozy’s federative approach of the 

Mediterranean “dream of civilization”, there is more at stake than only its (clearly) stated 

“general effort to rehabilitate French colonialism by accentuating its positive aspects and 

showcasing its most humanitarian administrators” (Bowen, 2007). If the Mediterranean is for 

Sarkozy a “key to (France’s) influence in the world” (Nash, 2008), it is also because such an 

undertaking is likely to compensate for Turkey’s entry in the European Union; an access the 

French head of state is vehemently opposed to since years, regarding it as threatening vis a vis 

his conception of European identity (not inclusive of the Islamic tradition of the Ottomans 

descendants). In addition, Sarkozy’s master plan wanted to rehabilitate its Israeli friends (as we 

shall see later in this chapter) within the Arab world in a conciliatory approach, since the 

Mediterranean Union meetings will be the only ones where Arab countries are supposed to 

formally cooperate with Israel. Into the bargain as well a strategic raid over North Africa’s gas 

reserves Sarkozy’s envisions in return for “French expertise on nuclear energy” (Nash, 2008). 

However, the idea of the Mediterranean Sea as Sarkozy’s Mare Nostrum was harshly welcomed 

by the European countries with no Mediterranean shore. As explained by The Economist, “the 

entire project is dismissed by some in Berlin and Brussels as no better than a diversion of EU 

cash to promote French gloire” (2008). Finally, and discontent with Sarkozy’s stealing of the 

original EU’s Barcelona Process, the United Kingdom and Germany compelled the detachment 

of the Mediterranean Union from France which “has since been forced to water down the 

vision” (The Economist, 2008); it is now an EU project, not Sarkozy’s. 


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By this way, Europe is precisely the second playground of Bonapartist activism in terms of 

foreign policy. As pointed out by the French historian Pierre Milza, both Napoleon III and 

Sarkozy wanted to “return back to France its place in Europe, by restituting to it its natural 

frontiers and its power role in the region” (2008). Milza however details the different situations 

both of them inherited: the emperor wanted to restore the military power of France eroded by 

the situation created by the Vienna Congress of 1815, while Sarkozy had to face the decline 

consequent to the French “No” to the European Constitution under the Chirac presidency in 

2005. At this point, and even if the goals pursued are alike, the means they employed are 

different. 

Louis Napoleon for instance involved France in a variety of military interventions, among which 

the Crimean War of the earlier years of his rule (1853-1856), the German interventionist policy, 

the French participation in the Italian reunification, and finally the Austro-Prussian War (1866). 

Accordingly, Napoleon III ended up reaping several noticeable fruits of his European foreign 

policy. The Crimean War and the consequent treaty of Paris “were seen as a triumph for the 

emperor who could now enjoy a re-established Anglo-French entente and international 

prestige” (Miller, 1997). In parallel, the imperial policy in Italy ended up with the 1860’s Torino 

Treaty that returned back to France the previously lost territories of Nice and Savoy. More 

broadly, Napoleon III succeeded, along with some of his contemporaries, in destroying the 

Vienna Settlement’s spirit throughout Europe (even if eventually, such a situation resulted in 

the isolation of France in Europe in the early 1870s). 

Nicolas Sarkozy as well had big plans for Europe, and as explained by Reland “it just happens to 

be the brand he so successfully sold to the French electorate: “we must operate a radical change 


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in the way we build Europe”, he has asserted many times since” (2008). As a matter of fact, on 

the very day of his accession to power, the freshly-elected Sarkozy declared that “France had 

returned to Europe” (Gordon, 2007). The latter proved to be an euphemism regarding all the 

efforts the French head of state deployed in the European arena, and especially under his six- 

months presidency of the European Union (from July to December 2008). As a matter of fact, 

Sarkozy inaugurated a never-seen before European activism, and extended some aspects of his 

domestic policy to the European level, leading in his disruptive wake the usually-slow European 

bureaucracy. Starting from the acknowledgement that France is “too small on its own to be a 

major global player, Sarkozy believed that the European Union can be leveraged to support 

French designs” (Gordon, 2007). To start with, the French head of state started with 

engineering a rapprochement with his two main neighboring powers: Brown’s United Kingdom, 

and Merkel’s Germany. Second, he initiated a seduction’s enterprise of the European 

bureaucracy. As explained by the European Constitutional Law Review in date of February 2009, 

Sarkozy’s visit in December 2008 to the European Parliament, the “temple of democracy” to 

quote him, was decisive in his coup d’état over Europe. In fact, and as detailed in the same 

source, Sarkozy performed a noticeable campaigning via “an inspired speech calling on the 

members of Parliament not to unravel the package of agreements by making amendments; and 

the Parliament, appreciating what it had seen, complied, voting the whole program into law 

almost immediately afterward. The result was a legislative tempo not only unheard of in the 

Union but in many a contemporary democracy” (2009). He also succeeded in convincing EU 

officials to support the French candidacy to the International Monetary Fund’s managing 

direction (Dominique Strauss-Kahn). As a matter of fact, and even before the start of Sarkozy’s 


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presidency of the European Union, this latter was “looking at France with the great 

expectations one can have about a major founding country and at the same time the fear of a 

dominating attitude that will not respect the European tendency to compromise” (Ricard- 

Nihoul, 2008). In fact, the Bonapartisation of the EU as put by Duhamel (cf introductory 

comment of that chapter) started under the German presidency in 2007 with Sarkozy being 

(literally) the guest star of the Berlin Summit, occulting Angela Merkel’s lukewarm statements 

with his large-scale reforms and big plans for a stronger Europe. However, one might not 

conclude from the latter that the French leader’s Europeanist policy is relegating the French 

interests into the background. EU officials were as severely criticized when French interests 

were contradicted by the European ones as they were courted when Sarkozy’s stakes 

corresponded with Europe’s. For instance, and as detailed by The Economist, “to consternation 

in the Commission, Mr Sarkozy publicly blamed Peter Mandelson, the trade commissioner, 

arguing that his offer to cut farm tariffs in the Doha trade talks had worried Irish voters” (2008). 

The same applies to the European Central Bank whose lack of flexibility vis a vis its monetary 

policy irritated Sarkozy, or even the European lack of consensus around some environmental 

issues (like the Carbon Tax he so heartedly defended in several European capitals). The 

escalation of Sarkozy’s verbal raids and criticisms vis a vis the EU reached a peak compelling 

José Manuel Barroso to urge “Mr. Sarkozy to stop making Brussels a scapegoat” (The 

Economist, 2008). However, and if a making-up of Nicolas Sarkozy’s European foreign policy is 

to be done, he has several points in his favors: the management of the EU’s deadlock in Ireland, 

of the Russo-Georgian conflict, of the Airbus/EADS crisis…etc. As a result, he succeeded in 

effectively imposing France as a major player and power of the European Union via such an 


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energetic policy. The mild and half-hearted Chirac’s or Mitterand’s European policies are over: 

Sarkozy’s agenda for France passes by Europe, then a strong Europe is at the heart of the 

preoccupation of France in his international activism, since Sarkozy, like Napoleon III, did not 

limit the scope of his foreign policy to France’s immediate neighborhood: he undertook a 

horizon-wide conquest of farther (and sometimes improbable) regions of the world. 

Being in a proper colonial foreign policy, Napoleon III extended the scope of French 

interventionism to far-off lands. As explained by Miller, the French army was very active in Asia 

in general and in Indo-China in particular. The imperial breakthrough the region ended up 

successfully: in 1862 “Cochin China was annexed and a protectorate established over 

Cambodia” while slightly before, in 1860, a joint France-Britain expedition in Peking “resulted in 

even greater trading concessions” (Miller, 1997). On the other side of the globe, Napoleon’s 

(expensive) Mexican conquest (1861-1867) lead by the Austrian Habsburg Archduke 

Maximilian, revealed the limitless imperialist appetite of the Second Empire’s France. At this 

point, and on the motives behind such a dynamic foreign policy, Pottinger-Saab explained that 

“Napoleon III envisaged that his ideas relating to Europe would one day be extended to 

encompass the world” (2002). 

Sarkozy as well believes that a shining France passes through the conquest of the international 

arena, thought not militarily like the emperor. Accordingly, and if such an undertaking means a 

180 degrees shift of what appears now as “traditional” French foreign policy, the president did 

not hesitate in “moving away from the stubbornly independent stance established by Charles De 

Gaulle and followed by every president since” (Cue, 2007). The examples of a pro-US foreign 

policy for instance multiplied, among which a muscular stance and US-aligned Iranian policy, 


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the criticism of Russian human-rights violations, the support of the American move in both 

Afghanistan and Irak, and a rapprochement with Israel which ceased the unconditional and 

everlasting French support of the Palestinians. As outlined by Gordon, Sarkozy defined his 

desire of moving closer Paris to Washington in his pre-electoral book Testimony, where he 

“stressed his admiration for the United States and says he has “no intention of apologizing for 

feeling an affinity with the greatest democracy in the world” (2007). The traditional hostile US- 

containment of France’s foreign policy that lasted for decades seems resolutely over, at least 

under Sarkozy’s presidency. Even his domestic policy seems affected: “in what is seen as a 

reflection of pro-American sensibilities, he selected former Ambassador to Washington Jean- 

David Levitte to head a new National Security Council based on the White House model” (Cue, 

2007). At this regard, Sarkozy’s pro-American alignment is far from being consensual 

domestically: several political figures still denounce his stance that betrays the profound French 

design of foreign policy, to the extent that a new presidential nickname popped up: “Sarko 

l’Américan” (Claudia & Jeffrey, n.d). On the same display of French hyper-activism in the 

international chessboard, Sarkozy wants to have a say in world economic forums. As outlined 

by The Economist, “never short in ambition, Mr. Sarkozy wants the G20 to become the forum 

for talks about global economic stability and governance, including exchange-rate volatility” 

(2010). Here, and as usual, when president Sarkozy decides to conquer new horizons, the 

machine de guerre is immediately launched: he undertook a world-tour dedicated to his 

conception of the future of the G20, being the main campaigner in favor of his, - France’s by 

extenso – interests, and obtained from his interlocutors the hosting of no less than two G20 

summits in France in 2011. 


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In the same breath, the shifting of the French foreign policy followed a Bonapartist watershed: 

Sarkozy, like Napoleon III, is quite comfortable with the promotion of a muscular defense 

strategy. Obviously he did not involve (yet) France in any military conflict like the emperor who 

multiplied the wars during his rule, yet he shattered France’s position in that domain. 

The first revolution he undertook was his reconsideration of the Gaullist tradition vis a vis the 

North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s integrated military command that lasts since 1966. As 

explained by Gordon, “the new French logic is that America and its Atlanticist allies in NATO will 

never trust or support European Union efforts to develop more defense autonomy unless France 

can show itself to be a loyal NATO ally” (2007). Such a move, aiming at ensuring France a 

privileged place within the international security and defense arena, erased the last US 

skepticisms about Sarkozy’s real shift of foreign policy toward more Atlanticism. Again, Sarkozy 

negotiated his country’s re-entry in NATO via assuring the formulation of “appealing” 

guarantees (such as the remaining of French military troops under his exclusive control – which 

means that he reserves to his approval the sending or not of troops, a margin of maneuver 

normally lying under NATO’s authority). In parallel, the reinforcement of the French concern vis 

a vis its military defense strategy was visible at the European level. As a matter of fact, Sarkozy 

militated actively for “an ambitious European defense agenda and the relaunch of the ESDP” 

(European Security and Defence Policy) via giving it a “high rhetorical priority” (Ghez & 

Larrabee, 2009). Subsequently, and after the international and European initiatives on defense, 

Sarkozy got down to the drafting of a new national White Paper on Defense and National 

Security “envisioned as the guiding document for French foreign and security policy over the 

next 15 years- to replace the 1994 version” (Hicks, 2008). Some guiding principles of this 


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proposal are listed by Hicks, such as: an intervention force of 60,000 European troops 

deployable for one year with the requisite air and naval support capabilities, the capability to 

deploy and support two to three “peace-enforcement” operations and additional civilian 

missions across multiple theaters, common European planning and operational capabilities, and 

a French commitment to spend €377 billion over the next twelve years on defense (2008). 

Within a domestic context marked by a strong non-proliferation model, Sarkozy even 

campaigned in favor of a possible use of nuclear weapons. As cited by Bowen, “in a letter to a 

French antinuclear group, Citizen Action for Nuclear Disarmament, Sarkozy insisted on the 

essential character of France’s nuclear force de frappe and declared his support for an 

upgrading of the nuclear-tipped missiles on France’s attack submarines” (2007). 

The same burly stance applies when France’s interests are jeopardized abroad. Sarkozy adopted 

for instance unused-of (in France’s tradition) methods of handling terrorism. While reporting on 

Sarkozy’s “war against Al Qaeda”, Von Randow noted that following the murder of a French 

hostage by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQMI), the “government is thinking out loud 

about retribution for an attack on the AQMI bunker in Northern Mali, by drawing on experience 

commandos in the region who are familiar with this kind of mission” (2010), and no matter if 

such undertaking endangers Spain’s negotiations about the release of two of its citizens at the 

mercy of the very same organization. In addition, Sarkozy is worried about AQMI’s threat vis a 

vis the Hexagon’s strategic interests in the region, among which “the sand of Niger (where) lies 

the source of 40% of France’s uranium consumption” but also the fact that “France relies on 

nuclear energy for nearly 80% of its electricity; the Sahel region is arguably more important to 

France than the Persian Gulf region is to the US” (Blanche, 2010). 


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Another noticeable feature of the foreign policy, Bonapartist style, is its reliance upon hyper- 

activism and the preaching of the big conferences culture. At this level, a kind of parallelism can 

be established with its reliance upon popular plebiscite at the domestic level: it is as if, in its 

desire to manage the collective sake, Bonapartism needs a kind of legitimacy brought by its 

fellow foreign leaders vis a vis its foreign undertakings. However, such an approach is not 

contradictory with the unilateral decision-making approach, especially when the domestic 

interests are in contradiction with what the multilateral actors seems to prefer. 

Napoleon III for instance advocated for decades his fondness for multilateral solutions to 

diplomatic crises, especially the ones involving, in a way or another, his European neighbors. As 

explained by Echard, “from 1849 to 1963, he repeatedly urged the assembling of a general 

congress: during the same period, he responded to every European crisis with at least a 

willingness to seek solutions at the conference table” (1966). It was notably the case for the 

Paris conference of November 1852 that settled the Franco-Russo fight over Constantinople (in 

Paris’ favor), another Paris meeting in August 1858 where a convention dismantling the 1815’s 

treaties was signed by a European Congress, or the 1866’s conference organized conjointly with 

Otto Von Bismarck to reach an agreement on the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen candidacy for the 

Spanish throne. In parallel, and as outlined by Gildea, the emperor pursued an active policy of 

mediation between disputed countries; like when he “mediated between Prussia and Austria, 

taking Venetia from Austria to bestow on the humiliated Italians, and hoping for some 

compensation for France in the future” (2003). Finally, unilateral foreign policy decisions were 

also taken by Louis Napoleon; it is interesting at this regard to cite the imperial settling of the 

Italian question without any form of consultation with Italy. Gildea explains that this 


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schizophrenic foreign policy approach gradually isolated France’s Second Empire from its allies: 

the emperor being unpredictable, too taken by his over-involvement in foreign matters, and 

too inclined vis a vis imperialist undertakings, his European partners ended up suspiciously 

isolating Paris from the European diplomatic circles and chancelleries. 

Nicolas Sarkozy as well pursued an extremely dynamic foreign policy, perhaps even more 

hyper-active than his domestic policy. Comparing his diplomatic moves to the British Prime 

minister’s ones, Poirier concluded that Sarkozy’s “appetite for the world looks pharaonic, or is 

Napoleonic a better word? He has visited three countries a month on average – not counting 

two trips to Afghanistan. After Berlin, Sarkozy visited the UK, Spain, Poland, Belgium, Algeria, 

Tunisia, Libya, Gabon, Senegal, Hungary and – only then – the United States for the UN General 

Assembly in September; this was followed by Bulgaria, Russia, Morocco, the US (again), 

Germany (again), China, the Vatican, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and, India” (2008). France has 

rarely been that present by the past in the international stage, shaping the headlines of the 

world’s editorials and drawing attention on it from all around the world. Meunier even 

highlighted one of Sarkozy’s most commented foreign coup d’eclat: his advocacy for a 

“planetary New Deal”, estimating by this way that “French foreign policy has been a frenzy of 

proposals, a ubiquitous involvement of France, a constant whirlwind” (2008). This drastic 

makeover of the French diplomacy and its turning into a muscular display of foreign hyper- 

activism, Sarkozy style, is gradually irritating the traditional diplomatic channels. Citing the way 

France was ultra reactive when the South Ossetian war out broke in August 2008, Poirier 

underlined how Kouchner’s (the French minister of Foreign Affairs of that time) and Sarkozy’s 

appropriation of the diplomatic burden short-circuited the president of the European 


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Commission (José Manuel Barroso); she concluded that “the French president, who doesn’t 

believe in delegating power and who loves nothing better than inflated prerogatives, would go 

to Moscow as the face of Europe, and as Super President” (2008). On the same chapter, and on 

the eve of the French presidency of the European Union presidency, The Economist was 

astonished while underlining that “no fewer than ten international summits will take place over 

the six months: the French have prepared Grand Plans to show that France is back in Europe and 

the Sarkozy is a dynamic leader who can get things done” (2008). On that, the French political 

analyst Alain Duhamel pointed out the fact that Sarkozy’s dynamism relied upon the outburst of 

successive crises, either economic or diplomatic, which makes of his foreign policy a 

“bonapartisme de crise”, warning the French president by this way of the “Venetian-style 

republicanism of the European bureaucracy, very attached to its parliamentary culture and 

national susceptibilities” (2008). Duhamel anticipated the Sarkozist diplomatic staggers 

imposed via summits multiplications, foreign leaders’ harassments, and rules’ disruption on 

foreign matters (on that, one event is worth mentioning since it aroused a wide European 

commotion: Sarkozy’s invitation of one of the Euro’s - de facto - foes, Gordon Brown, to a EU 

summit dedicated to this currency’s future after the Greek crisis, 2008). At that time, at the end 

of the French presidency of the EU, France’s statesman muscular diplomatic activism was 

expected to considerably slow down. Such a bet would have been ignorant of the Bonapartist 

nature of Sarkozy’s foreign policy. As stated by Crumley, “although France relinquished the 

rotating presidency of the European Union with the New Year, French President Nicolas Sarkozy 

is showing no signs of surrendering diplomatic center stage” (2009). Finally, the starting French 

presidency of the G20 summit (since the mid-November Korean Summit), followed by the G8’s 


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one in 2011 will not help in lessening Sarkozy’s overtaking of the international stage, especially 

since Newsweek revealed that he plotted to schedule it on that very time. In few words, 

McNicoll reported that “it is no coincidence that Sarkozy is taking over the G20 now, he is said 

to have wanted his country’s turn at precisely that time; fellow leaders such as former British 

Prime minister Gordon Brown and China’s Hu JinTao are credited with helping him secure this 

presidency” (2010). 

At this point, the mixing of the personal (and short-sighted) agenda of Sarkozy with his foreign 

policy actions needs to be explained. Accordingly, two main factors weight in the balance of the 

French head of state’s diplomacy: first the personal staging and what it implies in terms of 

individual glory and second the domestic impact of his foreign policy in terms of polls 

satisfaction. Again, the French president seems inspired by Napoleon III own standpoint: as 

reported by Bloy, “Napoleon III was arrogant and ambitious: he was looking for sources of pride 

and personal achievement” (2002). Being the nephew of the Grand Bonaparte was a burden for 

him: he wanted to pursue the Bonapartist line of glory that persisted in the French collective 

memory, even if the Consul-Emperor died exiled and in disgrace. 

Sarkozy as well proved that his political moves were not disinterested being constantly aligned 

with the potential personal glory they may engender. As stated by Von Randow, the French 

gradually discovered that “the nature of their president’s foreign policy is mostly theatrical, his 

statements on foreign affairs are now bordering on megalomania” (2010). To illustrate his 

assessment, the Foreign Policy writer cited two revealing incidents. First, Sarkozy’s own 

description as “Europe’s president” while in charge of the EU presidency in 2008, and second his 

statement according to which he was the “founder of the G20 and the savior of global 


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capitalism” (2010). In the same vein, The Economist outlined since 2008 Sarkozy’s “self-serving 

skills; fully ‘95% of the text’ adopted by the Euro group to bail out Greece Sarkozy claimed ‘was 

French’” (2008). This pompous saying was taken up by Le Figaro whose next day headline stated 

“In Greece they call me (Sarkozy) ‘the savior’” (2008). The Economist journalist even concluded 

by revealing that “in Brussels, some senior figures are already referring to him privately as King 

Nicolas” (2008) as a reference to his monarchical-like need of self-appraisal following his 

diplomatic undertakings. Torreblanca identifies here the marks of “a foreign policy that is 

completely reliant on personal leadership, and that will most likely be unsustainable, since it will 

be subject to the vicissitudes that leadership may suffer” (2008). The constant seek of sources of 

personal reward in the Sarkozy style statesmanship compelled him effectively in adjusting his 

foreign policy strategies and actions. Discovering the domestic appraisal of his occupation of 

the international stage, the French president intensified even further the aggressiveness of his 

foreign policy in order “in the end, to anxiously claim some concrete achievements on his 

watch” (The Economist, 2008). The same source established a parallelism (apparently 

established by Sarkozy’s advisors as well), between the president popularity ratings and his 

foreign policy. Accordingly, and following his energetic presidency of the EU, Sarkozy’s 

“popularity rating climbed from 38% to 46% according to OpinionWay” (2010). More recently, 

and even after the destroying effects of a domestic policy highly contested (pensions’ reforms, 

Roms expulsions…etc) and that ended up with a historically low popularity rating (no more than 

30%), 70% of the French still “reckoned that Sarkozy defended the country well abroad” 

according to an October 2010 Paris-Match poll cited by The Economist. At that point, Sarkozy’s 

strategic scheduling of his G20 presidency (and in 2011 the G8 one) are a strategic move toward 


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more international crises management and diplomatic activism, to be capitalized afterwards in 

the domestic scene in terms of improved popular ratings. Finally, the perspective of the 2012’s 

presidential elections, and the emergence of a powerful challenger in the person of the IMF’s 

boss, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, whose ratings are sky-high in France since his involvement in 

the handling of the financial crises, is another powerful indicator of the persistence (not to say 

the escalation) of Sarkozy’s globe-trotting and the whirlwind statements and proposal that 

accompany it (considering the fact that even if he still refused to admit so publicly, Sarkozy is 

likely to race for a second presidential mandate in 2012). 

However, Sarkozy’s zeal again badly-serves his enterprise: as usual, by trying to exploit his 

model to the fullest, he lapsed into exactly the opposite scenario of what was initially expected. 

The Sarkozist adventure in Africa is a startling example of such a state of affairs. Dakar, 26 th July 

2007: in his official state-visit speech, Sarkozy declared “the African peasant has known only the 

eternal renewal of time via the endless repetition of the same actions and the same words; in 

this mentality, where everything always starts over again, there is no place for human 

adventure nor for any idea of progress” (Ankomah, 2007). Neocolonialism, racism: the 

humiliated African continent stood up united in front of Sarkozy’s insulting speech. Henri 

Guaino, one of Sarkozy’s speechwriter, “in his reply to the critiques, asks where the scandal is: 

why can Aimé Césaire speak of ‘homme noir’ while Sarkozy cannot speak of ‘homme africain’?” 

highlighting that “the main ‘material’ message of this discourse is that African states should 

keep their young people at home and prevent them from trying to emigrate to Europe” (Profant, 

2010). Again, and via continuously pushing for theatrical rhetoric and formulations wrapped up 

in his alleged openness, Sarkozy turns out caricaturing his enterprises thus his leadership. 


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II. A double-level standard: Humanist discourses versus Realpolitik moves: 

The final common feature of Napoleon III’s and Sarkozy’s appreciation of foreign policy 

is their juggling between a humanist-inspired official discourse and their application of 

Realpolitik-based moves in the international relations field. 

Milza explained in 2008 that the emperor had a very modern discourse vis a vis the Algerian 

population (in the mid 19 th century such a standpoint was resolutely avant-gardist from a Right- 

wing affiliated emperor) and constantly extolled the virtues of the population’s self- 

determination principle, especially for Italy and Poland. However, he did send a military 

expedition to Mexico and launched several wars contradicting his very statements. For 

instance, and in his Dictionnaire Politique Napoleonien, D’Alembert cites the imperial saying on 

the abolition of slavery according to which “if abolition of slavery was conducted by 

governments wanting sincerely the good of humanity, that is to say the prosperity of the black 

and white races, they would had gradually made their slaves move from forced to free labor” 

(1849). 

Nicolas Sarkozy as well started his presidential mandate with “a credo in favor of human rights, 

before evolving later on” (Milza, 2008). As explained before, he vehemently and more than 

once publicly denounced the Russian and Chinese human rights violations before adjusting his 

position to the incorporation of Realpolitiks in his foreign policy approach. At this point, 

Realpolitik is to be understood according to Henry Kissinger’s definition presented in his 

Diplomacy book, and according to which it refers to any “foreign policy based on considerations 

of power and national interest” (1996). Accordingly, it is not a coincidence if the American 

diplomat traces the origins of Realpolitik to one of Napoleon III’s contemporaries: Klemens von 


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Metternich and its very first application to Otto Von Bismarck (while handling the balance of 

power between Europe’s 19 th century powers). In few words, this German word justifies the 

abandon of humanist principles and values while the national interest of a country is at stake. In 

Sarkozy’s foreign politics, three main shifting of policies (both in tone and actions) are to be 

mentioned at this regard: Libya, China, and Syria. 

On the Libyan question, France was not directly involved: the dispute was between Bulgary and 

Libya. As a matter of fact, Sarkozy in an intermediation move negotiated the release in July 

2007 of “Bulgarian nurses jailed in Libya for allegedly having deliberately infected Libyan 

children with HIV in 1998” (Meunier, 2008). His (then) wife, Cecilia, played also a role in the 

happy ending of this crisis which still according to Meunier raised the profile of France as a 

diplomatic actor and earned Sarkozy “triumphal headlines- if only briefly- before the cost of this 

diplomatic coup came out in the public sooner than Sarkozy seemed to have anticipated” 

(2008). Gaddafi’s son unveiled the signature of an important (and still secret at that time) arm 

deal with France. The Aviation Week and Space Technology publication revealed that the 

agreement was up to 14 billion Euros, and was to include 14 Rafales, 8 Tiger attack helicopters, 

15 EC725/225 transport helicopters and 10 Fennec light single-engine helos, along with a range 

of land and naval hardware (2007). Meunier for her part explained in 2008 that “it was also 

later revealed that France may have sold a nuclear reactor to Libya as part of the deal”. Finally, 

the Libyan dictator even enjoyed a full rehabilitation “in a western country since his banishment 

from international diplomacy”: Sarkozy invited him to a full-scale state-visit to France, giving as 

a pretext a “foreign policy of reconciliation” (Poirier, 2008). In this case, the Libyan arms 


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contracts and what it implied in terms of benefits for the French armament sector forcefully 

helped this “reconciliation” stance. 

Second: China. The initially very critique standpoint of Sarkozy vis a vis China’s human rights 

violations and his recognition of the rightfulness of the Tibetan claims after his December 2008 

meeting with the Dalai Lama in Poland, as reported by Tibet’s Monthly Magazine in its article 

entitled China and France are friends again, Tibet being the watchword for caution, ended up 

sharply in 2009. As a matter of fact, an informal meeting of France’s and China’s heads of state 

(held during a G20 Summit) surprisingly sealed an unexpected warming of the Sino-French 

relations, officialized by Sarkozy’s consequent communiqué according to which “France pledged 

not to support any form of Tibet independence” (2009). Afterwards, a long list of fruitful 

domains of cooperation between the Chinese giant and a human rights-blind France 

progressively developed, including, and as listed by Jiansheng: a bilateral trade agreement with 

France worth more than 20 billion Euros, France unconditioned support of the Beijing Olympic 

Games of 2008, a nuclear full-scale cooperation, a bright future for Chinese investments in 

France in return of tax concessions and the simplification of visa procedures for Chinese 

investors, France’s support of the one-China policy and thus its opposition to Taiwan’s bid for 

UN membership, and finally France pushing for lifting the weapons embargo against China 

(2010). It is worthless to lastly mention that Sarkozy ceased sharp his concerns about the 

human rights situation in China. 

Finally, France’s post-Chirac Middle-Eastern design involved the recommencement of 

diplomatic relations with Syria. In fact, since 2008, the rapprochement was materialized by 

Sarkozy’s inclusion of Syria in his Mediterranean Union blueprint. As explained by Cumley, “and 


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although he faced heated criticism for embracing Assad – who is denounced by human right 

activists and widely accused of orchestrating the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister 

Hariri – Sarkozy defended the move as Realpolitik designed to turn an enemy into an ally” 

(2009). In fact, the French president rightfully acknowledged the leverage power of the Syrian 

card over Hamas, especially in a situation where Israel required Hamas’ ceasing of fire before 

any peace talks. Here, and even if France’s economic interests are not at stake, the perspective 

of being of any influence in the Middle East conflict was by itself appealing for Sarkozy, 

especially that at that time, the US were deserting the scene they traditionally occupy, busy 

with its presidential race. However, Sarkozy’ realpolitik, at least on this isolated diplomatic 

move, did not reap the fruits he was expecting. 


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Conclusion 


“You feel the advent of what Sarkozy is the name of as a blow struck by something, the no 

doubt disgusting something of which Sarkozy is the servant (…). 

What we are looking for is an ethic, a provisional ethic to avoid becoming either depressed 

or rats in Sarkozy’s heavy weather. We want to know how to be dignified, virtuous, 

guardians of the future of truths, during this bad patch” 

Alain Badiou, The Meaning Of Sarkozy, 2008 

Is it legitimate and academically sound to establish a parallel between Nicolas Sarkozy and 

Louis Napoleon Bonaparte? 

The Saint-Augustine Church in Paris still awaits the repatriation of the ashes of the last 

monarch of France -Louis Napoleon Bonaparte- to the majestic vault engraved by the blue 

imperial eagle the emperor choose as his last residence. Christian Estrosi’s 2010’s book (Le 

Roman de Napoleon III) dedicated to the glory of the engineer of his city’s re-attachment to 

France (Nice) revealed that the British authorities provided a positive answer to his 2007’s 

query. At that time, the minister of the Overseas Territories and mayor of Nice was entrusted 

by the freshly-elected president in person of negotiating the return of the late Bonapartist’s 

remains. Now the repatriation procedure is at its last bureaucratic step that is: imminent. 

However, Sarkozy did not await the “physical” return of Bonapartism: in his usual eagerness of 

getting things done, he proceeded since the early times of his presidency to a “spiritual” revival 

of the French Right-wing tradition rooted in the Bonapartist framework. Accordingly, Napoleon 

III will certainly be pleased to return back to a country he left politically defeated but where 

now his political tradition was so forcefully campaigned for and imposed by the current head of 

state. Yet, he might be deceived by the non-pronunciation of his political ideology as such: 


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because here lays the frontiers of the Sarkozism’ frankness. The “legende noire” as put by Hugo 

(1863) in which the emperor’s memory faded away still makes of Bonapartism a highly taboo 

word in the Paris political circles. 

Yet, if you leave these cozy salons and have a walk in the French streets, you might notice 

among some strikers’ flyers and banners slogans like “Stoppons Napoleon IV avant son coup 

d’état!” or “Sarkoleon, 2012 sera ton Sedan” 2 . If you want to have a newspaper pause in a 

coffee shop, you might find either in the editorial or political sections articles correlating 

Sarkozy’s policy to Napoleon III’s one, brightened up with anachronistic photo montages of the 

French president with a Napoleonic hat, Second Empire style. Are all these parallelisms simply 

the latest fancy discovery of journalists in perpetual search for audacious and striking 

sentencing? Are these French citizens abused by their Unions representatives in their 

perception of the very power that makes them invade the French streets? As a matter of fact, 

an academic response will be as crystal clear as uncompromising: the Sarkozism is undeniably 

rooted in the Bonapartist legacy of the French Right wing family. Hence, this research project 

established outstanding resemblances between the governance, Sarkozy style, and the way 

Napoleon III ruled France; thus far with acknowledging the limiting factors linked to the social, 

cultural, economic, and overall disparities of the Second Empire’s France and the contemporary 

one in order to adjust the academic lens of a Napoleon III/Sarkozy comparison. This being said 

and academically established, the time has come to broaden the analytical perspective to 

examine Neo-Bonapartism in contemporary French politics. 

***** 

2 Confer the references section of the website where these flyers and banners are to be presented. 


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What is Neo-Bonapartism in contemporary French politics? 

If it is true that it was Nicolas Sarkozy that pushed the farthest the reapprochment of 

the French Right wing with the Bonapartist side of the political spectrum under the Fifth 

Republic system, his political and historical significance stops here. 

In few words, it is not the personage that is worth examining any furthest, but rather what he 

stands for, and what his transforming from president of the French Republic into president of 

France reveals of the recent developments of the French politics, thus of the society these very 

politics frame and evolve within. In even fewer words, it is France in herself that should be 

examined. Bonapartism is not a pop-up political phenomenon that invades the political sphere 

in an overnight process, but rather a slowly-developing occurrence that roots its foundations in 

the social uneasiness, in the economic unrest, in the religious and cultural malaises. 

Here lies the force de frappe of Bonapartism. Its entire political dynamic requires the sine qua 

non collective aspiration of change to create the conditions necessary to its good functioning, 

to its deep-rootedness in the political framework. Call it change or simply political 

reactionnarism, the raison d’etre of this federative ideology capitalizes upon a formidable mass 

aspiration movement. In fact, even if all the French citizens did not vote for the candidate 

Sarkozy in 2007, they all agreed on the necessity of shaking up things, of healing a French 

system in shreds. Such a collectively and powerfully shared desire expressed itself even earlier, 

before the Sarkozist access to power, in the 2002 presidential race, embodied by the Le Pen 

seiure of a second ballot ticket. Decades of both lukewarm Right and Left policies left a bitter- 

tasting assessment: the French system was on its knees, be it economically, socially, or 

culturally. Change thus was the expression of the political radicalization of France: at this point, 


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two alternatives are appealing, either reactionism or revolutionism. From the latter, 

Bonapartism has a clear advantage; it proposes a clearly reactionist line of action while 

simultaneously containing revolution (lying in the French political spectrum at the extreme Left 

side). In addition, its reliance upon winning recipes, such as the restauration of the Glorious 

Past myth or the use of the populist mechanism in its legitimacy approach, end up with 

federative outcomes. 

To put things simply; Bonapartism rides the crisis wave, and demonstrates fully its politics of 

national greatness with a crisis management approach. Accordingly, to Grands Plans, Grands 

leaders (Grands in the latter being more the expression of an authoritarian derive than the 

grandeur d’ame of the leader). The compromising Mitterand or half-hearted and mild Chirac 

did not leave a strong print on France. The emergence of a strong political leadership becomes 

thus associated with the revival of a strong France, no matter if some liberty sacrifices are 

needed to fulfill the revival process. The republican loam being confronted to a de facto dirigist 

spasm, the citizenry inks then a contract leaving an early benefit of the doubt to the 

authoritarian leader but with a bond commitment. 

Here, the fatherly-like approach of Bonapartism, in the fullest sense of the word, is reassuring 

and comforting for a society in need of control, because this is the primal expectation, to feel 

embarked into a well-oiled and under control governance. It is not thus a coincidence if 

Segolene Royal missed her presidential destiny the night of the 2 nd of May 2007’s Great Debate 

(watched by a record audience of more than 20 million French) with her “sane anger” in front 

of an irreprochable and worth-of leading Sarkozy. Here, the Gaullist legacy shows that it 

profoundly marked –and still does- the French prioritization of criteria to be considered while 


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judging the presidency candidates. Second, this collective appeal of dirigist politics is the 

expression of a no-less collective state of fear. Fear here is plural and touches a wide range of 

domains. 

Economic fear first. The Fifth economy of the world is, like all its partners and competitors, 

trying with great difficulty to adjust to the structural changes brought by globalization. Since 

the early 2000s, the French economic sicknesses being alloted upon the lost of competitiveness 

of the national firms vis a vis emerging low cost labor economies, it is without surprise that 

mottos like “the relocalisation of French firms in France” are appealing. In parallel, the 

installation of a structurally high unemployment rate (of approximatly 10%), the multiplication 

of precarious work contracts, and a crawling inflation combined their effects and ended up in 

the degradation of the living standards of the French middle and working class that accounts for 

the majority of the country’s labor force. Accordingly, “travailler plus pour gagner plus” that 

sealed the end of the Leftist 35 hours whose immediate spillover were the reduction of the 

wages, is a seducing perspective in terms of quality of life improvements. In parallel, the 

promised return of the French firms to the homeland via fiscal incentives and patriotic 

industrialist policies short-circuited the Leftist economic policies and proved to be very popular 

among the population. Once done with both the precarity and the Chinese fears, the 

shimmering of a French-style American dream of economic prosperity for the “France qui se 

lève tot” via hard blows of meritocratic discourses marked the winning break trough of Neo 

Bonapartism within the traditionnaly Left-affiliated classes. In parallel, the latter even flirts with 

communism since this kind of discourse is presented as reducing the inter-classes economic 

oppositions. This pitch kills two birds with one stone since it tackles the inter-classes economic 


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fears: for the privileged, “do not worry, we are proponents of a liberated capitalism, your 

interests are safe” and for the middle and working class, “if you work more, you will be 

rewarded by improved incomes”. Accordingly, and in such a framework, the non-productive 

citizens are to be sanctionned since they slow down therefore harm the national welfare policy; 

how convenient does this sound to shake the French welfare system, accused thus of providing 

assistanship to non-deserving citizens. In few words: carrot and stick policies, Bonapartist 

fashion. 

Social fear second; a playfield where Neo Bonapartism expresses all of its populist tips and 

tricks. The first scapegoat is in fact an easy target since it does not cost any vote and what is 

more rallies the extreme right electorate: the fear of the other, of the foreigner. And when such 

a discourse is not hard-hitting enough, the French population is divided into two hierarchical 

categories: the de souche one, and the immigration-related second class one. Here, the schema 

is rather simplistic: insecurity, deliquency, social disturbances… quasi all the social troubles are 

of the making of your foreign-origin neighbor, who by the way should leave “France if he/she 

does not like it”. Not that France is particularly a “narrow-minded” society where racists, or to 

be less radical, ethnic-oriented discourses are traditionnaly warmly welcomed, but the 

relatively peaceful cohabitation of races, ethnicities, and religions was gravely affected by the 

post-September 11 legacy. In parallel, the failure of the French model of assimilation brought 

the immigration issue in the headlines, in general in association with social unrest and 

deliquency. If the latter is associated with the extreme Right “they take our jobs” slogan, the 

loop is looped, and ends up in an unprecedented Bonapartist-like national identity debate 

supposed to redefine the identity-bases of the new France, the one where foreigners do not 


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trouble their neighbors’ sleep. “Securité, autorité, identité” are now occulting the 

cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic, and so twenty century-like “liberté, égalité, fraternité”. In the same 

breath, a revival of the Christian origins of France will not hurt since it will bring again into sight 

values that proved their efficiency by the past, and that are so comforting while looking for a 

society where order prevails in a well-squarred Bonapartist arrangement. 

Into the bargain as well, the both extensive and intensive teamwork of several socio-economic 

factors and structures that enable Neo Bonapartism to become a de facto political plunger that 

turns into its advantage such a state of affairs. Neo Bonapartism is accordingly a political 

sickness that combines the effects of several symptoms, among which the weakness and 

division of the domestic political chessboard and the weaknesses of the Universal Suffrage 

system, the current organization of the media coupled to an oligarchic business system, and 

finally the disorganization of the international relations arena and its need of a federative and 

strong leadership. 

First and to start with, the organization of the contemporary French politics is witnessing a 

severe crisis whose stern divisions allowed the emergence of a triumphant Neo-Bonapartism. 

There is no choice but to acknowledge that the French Leftist disarray helped in strengtening 

Sarkozy-like politics. The advance of a slow yet firm process of personalization of politics and 

the unability of the French Parti Socialiste of proposing a strong candidacy that gathers all the 

sub-trends of the Left under the same leader’s banner compromises its chances of getting 

through the presidency path. As a matter of fact, the highly non-consensual Royal 2007’s 

candidacy reflected the image of a weak and highly disorganized party and endangered the 

gathering of forces within the Socialist camp, in a time Sarkozy’s muscular and highly 


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consensual take over of the UMP conveyed the image of a unified party that mobilized all of its 

political levearages in supporting its candidate. Nowadays, and despite a severe blow inflicted 

to the Right wing during the last mi-mandate regional elections of March 2010 that revealed a 

historically low score for the Right under the Fifth Republic regime (of only 35,38 % while the 

Leftist list scored a confortable 53,47 % of the total of expressed votes 3 ), the Leftist undertaking 

of the 2012’s presidential race do not seem to be facilitated by this electoral achievement. 

Two reasons explain such an assessment. First, this electoral result is rather a plebiscitarian 

disapproval of Sarkozy himself (and of his politics by extenso), as shown by his current 

extremely low confidence ratings, than a real return of the Left to the headlines. As matter of 

fact, the French are accustomed to and proponents of the sanction vote technique: they 

showed it by the past during their “No” to the European Constitution in 2005 that was more a 

clear political disavowal of Chirac’s than the simple formulation of their disapproval vis a vis the 

EU. Accordingly, it is legitimate to be questioning and unconvinced about a real break through 

of the PS in the French political life. Second, and as if the lessons to be learned from the past 

were not accuratly digested by the Socialists, the way they are preparing their party’s 

“primaires” for the 2012’s presidential candidacy are a reproduction of their 2007’s 

miscalculation. As a matter of fact, the up-to-date developments backed up by several recent 

opinion polls, showed that only one Leftist pretendant is able to face up a 2012’s Sarkozy 

presidency: namely Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the current head of the International Monetary 

Fund. Here, and after an initial good move toward a Royal-Aubry-Lang Pact supporting a DSK’s 

candidacy, internal splittings and scissions appeared, embodied the late week of November in a 

3 Official statistics of the French ministry of the Interior, retrieved from : 

http://www.interieur.gouv.fr/sections/a_votre_service/resultats-elections/RG2010/FE.html 


106


thundering and go-alone Royal’s candidacy to the PS’s primaires. It is undoubious then that 

Sarkozy will exploit this divergence and turn it into his advantage, precisely in the manner of 

what he did in 2007. 

Second, Neo-Bonapartism is empowered by the current organization of both the media system 

and the CAC 40 business’ oligarchy. As a matter of fact, and as we discovered in the media and 

business chapters of this research, its heavy reliance upon a spider web of powerful ties with 

the command circles provides it with a strong foundation. Neo-Bonapartism acknowledged 

rightfully the full-scale possibilities such friendships and acquaintances can offer, especially in 

terms of political leaverages. At this point, Sarkozy is only an insignificant extention of this 

oligarchic club of power; and if truth been told, this latter benefites more of such a state of 

affairs than the puppet leader it places at the highest strata of political power. In this win-win 

situation, the sole loser seems to be democracy, and by extenso the representation and 

defense of the masses’ interests within the political game. Being locked up, the current 

oligarchic tendency of the circles of influence, be it the media or the businesses, poses clearly 

the conflict of interests question within what is considered as one of the most achieved model 

of Western-style democracies. The conspiracy-inspired communist vision takes a full shape in 

Sarkozy’s France and can be granted here some credit for describing the diktat of the 

ownership in capitalist-oriented contemporary societies. The initial corrective measure 

endorsed to prevent and correct such a derive, that is the establishment of counter-balances 

(mainly the parliament, senate, and other republican institutions) pale into significance in a Neo 

Bonapartist style of governance and therefore appear outdated. In a court-like approach, the 

interests of the powerful friends of the backstage, is assured perennial horizons since the entire 


107


system of checks and balances is weakened thus materially deprived of its curative muscle by 

an emasculating presidential authoritarianism. 

Third, Neo Bonapartism arouses a graver problem: the democratic deficit of the Universal 

Suffrage system under the French Fifth Republic regime. Not that the leader is not 

“democratically” elected per se; in fact the very problem is that this democratic outcome is 

attained via barely-democratic mechanisms. A mostly devoted and curtsey-like media system 

coupled to the financing of the political effort by extremely rich business owners are the two 

main components of the equation that ended up in the 2007 electoral consecration. Not 

Sarkozy’s, but rather of a system in its entirety that backed up its political foal. Add to this the 

highly-efficient populist discourses of the Neo Bonapartist electoral machine de guerre and one 

ends up with a disturbing question: Is there a way to dismantle this iceberg of which Sarkozy is 

only the tip? 

In matter of fact, the immediate answer seems to be negative thus pessimistic: remelting this 

complex and rootly-settled socio-economic organization involves considering the extreme Left 

solution that is by essence a revolutionary one, 1789 style. Not that the French demonstrate 

cold-feetness when it comes to shake up things, but the radicality of such an enterprise seems 

hardly conceivable in 2010’s France. Neo Bonapartism seems from the latter to envision 

prosperous horizons before the advent of an eventual “Sixth Republic” system where such a 

democratic deficit would be erased or at least corrected. 

Finally, another hasty mechanism, though not domestic, reinforces even further the grasp of 

Neo-Bonapartism in contemporary France: the up-to-date configuration of both the European 

and international stage, torn between their divisions and contradictions. Sarkozy’s foreign 


108


policy showed how his fellow leaders, just like his fellow citizens in France, were somehow 

waiting for a strapping and dynamic leadership to put the international governance back on 

track. Obviously, the uncompromising Sarkozist style in that domain created tensions as we saw 

in chapter IV, yet, the French are willing to give credit for the foreign activism of their leader in 

the international stage. Sarkozy’s globe-trotting France is everywhere, in the battlefields and 

summits, reforming the world: conquerant. And for that, for the revival of France’s prestige in 

the international stage, Neo-Bonapartism is reaping the fruits domestically. 

As a final point, Neo-Bonapartism in contemporary French politics is the complex upshot 

of the interraction of various mechanisms, of profound and deeply-rooted malaises of this 

society in its entirety. What entered the Elysee palace in 2007 overcomes the Sarkozy character 

whose style is likely to hasten his fall as grandly as it allowed him to reach the highest political 

function of the country. What is today in power in France seems to be politically-proofed vis a 

vis a possible Sarkozy’s defeat in 2012. What rules 2010’s France is powerful enough to survive 

all the political vicissitudes regarding its invisible yet strong hold of the commands. 

Can France be courageous enough to undertake the reforms necessary to her liberation 

from this rampant yet unspoken-of seizure of Neo-Bonapartism? Can France be courageous 

enough to combat this political virus that already gangrened her bowels before it is too late, 

before the craze attains its eventual stage? Can France be courageous enough to tackle this 

challenging twenty first century combat, in the sake of liberty, of equality, of fraternity, of 

democracy? The answers to these questions, and to many others, are hazardous: only the 

forthcoming France, the post-Sarkozy one can, and eventually will, respond to. 

***** 


109

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Acknowledgements 

This capstone project could not have been properly completed without the help and support of 

several AUI’s faculty, and namely: 

Dr. Jack Kalpakian, academic advisor: 

Thank you for your five-year unconditional support and academic assistance. I really 

appreciated your pedagogic guidance throughout my curriculum at AUI. 

Thank you also for the hour-long discussions about US and French politics: I might today 

say that you confirmed my penchant for French politics, a state of affairs that ended up in 

this capstone research. 

Thank you finally for being one of the early supporters of the website idea. 

Dr. Eric Ross, capstone class teacher: 

Thank you for your precious guidance on all the capstone-related problems I encountered 

throughout the semester. 

Thank you also for letting me burst into your office without appointment for my 

“technical” concerns all semester long. 

Thank you for your accurate and thoughtful advices and suggestions: I appreciated your 

professionalism and availability. 

Thank you finally for succeeding in making this capstone experience a unique one. 

Dr. Nicolas Migliorino, capstone’s supervisor: 

Thank you for first and foremost for bringing in the Bonapartist ingredient into this 

capstone research - I would have missed an important part in my tackling of today’s French 

politics without your initial recommendation. 

Thank you for your kind supervision, and mostly for the meticulousness of your reviews 

and your overall theoretical framing. I really appreciated it. 

Dr. Bouziane Zaid, capstone’s second reader: 

Thank you for your involvement in this capstone research since day 1: your continuous 

support and assistance helped me in keeping the effort sustained all semester long. 

Thank you finally for your precious guidance, especially on the heavy “political 

communication” chapter: I sincerely would have dashed it off without your framing help. 


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