Part 1: Bonapartism and Boulangism

Boulanger and, more recently Charles Du Gaulle has being described as "Bonapartism withtout a Bonaparte". At least superficially.

Conceptually, Bonapartism is a modern, post-revolutionary and post-democratic regime whose legitimacy nevertheless lied in popular sovereignty. The idea is that the citizenry of France (in both 1804 and 1851) had had enough of parliamentary politics and democratic norms as inefficient, destabilizing and conferred rule (often through national plebiscites) upon a populist, militarist, authoritarian strongman who would cut through the winding, inefficient and often unpopular politics of democratic Republics. In order to strengthen the government, individual liberties, the rule of law, the right of dissent and individual rights was to be sacrificed to some extent.

Importantly, the Bonapartists not only accepted, but often embraced many of the gains made by radicals in past revolutions: the most notable of which is universal male sufferage. The Bonapartists were modernizing regimes, centralizing power and using it to carry out the will of the people as well as to strengthen the country. Both Napoleon I and III undertook their own programmes at modernizing France. I.E the Code Napoleon in the case of Napoleon I, railroad construction and rebuilding Paris in the case of Napoleon III.

The Bonapartists are therefore, a sort of precursor to 20th century populist strongmen on both the left and the right who claimed enough popular popular support to do away or ignore democratic institutions and gain genuine popular support through appealing to nationalism and launching modernization programs (of various effectiveness). Peron in Argentina and Nasser in Egypt immediately comes to mind.

General Boulanger in the late 19th century represented that: a popular military man with vague political views who seemed "left to the left, right to the right". Many Frenchmen looked to him as a solution to the dysfunctional and bitterly divided politics of the French Third Republic with its weak executive. Boulanger tapped into the Bonapartist tradition of the desire for a popular, strong "man of the people" and a strong government.

Because of the ambiguity of Bolulanger's own views, he ended up drawing electoral support from both the left and the right (with a strong correlation in areas which voted for Louis Napoleon and himself), as well as creating a left and right wing within his own constituency. With the left imagining a government which would enact quasi-Socialist policies to help the poor while the right spewed anti-antisemitism. Boulanger himself declared that France must be defended from 'the German without and the Jew within". One of the lasting impacts of Boluangism was to empower both the radical left and the radical right electorally.

Source: The Right in France from the Third Republic to Vichy By Kevin Passmore

Dictatorship in History and Theory: Bonapartism, Caesarism, and Totalitarianism by Peter Baehr, Melvin Richter