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

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