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

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