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

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