René Rémond
René Rémond was a French historian, political scientist and political economist.
Born in Lons-le-Saunier, Rémond was the Secretary General of Jeunesses étudiantes Catholiques and a member of the International YCS Center of Documentation and Information in Paris. The author of books on French political, intellectual and religious history, he was elected to the Académie française in 1998. He was also a founding member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.
Rémond is the originator of the famous division of French right-wing parties and movement into three different currents, each one of which appeared during a specific phase of French history: Legitimism, Orléanism, and Bonapartism. Boulangisme, for example, was according to him a type of Bonapartism, as was Gaullism. These he considers as being authoritarian, needing a leader with charisma, and presenting their movements as more "populist" than the others. Legitimism refers to the royalists who refused to accept the French Republic during the 19th century. Similarly, he classes the National Front in this group. Orléanists he identifies as economic liberals, which characterizes present-day conservative parties. This group presents itself as bourgeois rather than populist.
Rémond died in Paris.
