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

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