baehr_p_richter_m_dictatorship_in_history_and_theory_bonapar

regime accepted (and eventually encouraged) a greater degree of mayoral politicization, endorsing the actions of a large number of first magistrates who sought to enhance their legitimacy by standing for election in the municipal elections of 1865. In the words of Rouher, it was “the nature of things which forced mayors to seek a double baptism, that of nomination by the government and of election”; the government had to “leave mayors in the movement so that they could control it.”41 Even some authoritarian Bonapartists recognized that the Second Empire’s commitment to universal suffrage made it necessary for mayors to stand for election. Haussmann, while expressing opposition to this custom on grounds of principle, nonetheless conceded that “Mayors and Municipal Councillors have always shown themselves more eager to please their electorate than to satisfy the Government from which they derived their principal attributions. In any case, when there exists the possibility of holding both qualities, the Mayor, if he only holds the one, suffers a certain discredit as long as he is not invested with the other.”42

This acknowledgment of the necessity and legitimacy of politics was accompanied (somewhat contradictorily) by continuing efforts to depoliticize local elections. From 1864, elections for muncipal and general councils were increasingly conducted without extensive administrative interference, except in cases where known enemies of the Empire were standing for election. As a circular from Minister of Interior la Valette to prefects made clear in March 1864, “Every time an election assumes a political character, you should intervene clearly. But when, in the light of the opinions of the contestants and the good spirit of local populations, the elections present no political significance, you should leave mayors and voters entirely free to choose the candidate which will seem best suited to defend the interests of their locality.”43

By the 1860s, accordingly, the Empire faced multiple problems in its management of the provinces. The administration, which had helped consolidate the new imperial order in the aftermath of the 1851 coup, was universally decried for its abrasiveness and its inefficiency. The key agents of the Empire in the departments and communes, the prefects and the mayors, found their authority challenged by the re-emergence of electoral politics and by the growing local hostility to administrative authoritarianism. The centralization that the Emperor himself had seen as an unlimited

41 Cited by Lucien-Anatole Prevost´ -Paradol, Quelques pages d’histoire contemporaine (Paris, 1866), 279. 42 Baron Haussmann, Memoires´ , vol. I (Paris, 1890–93), 537–8.

43 Arch. Nat. Papiers Rouher, 45 AP 5; circular to all Prefects, March 15, 1864.

political benefit had become a clear liability, as the public blamed all the failings of their local administration on central government. The political opposition, which had bowed to the force of arms and the repression of the commissions mixtes, was challenging the Empire strongly in many areas by the late 1860s as the system of official candidatures proved increasingly ineffective and unpopular. As a report from the procureur-gen´ eral´ of Rennes made clear after the 1869 elections, “Public opinion has not concealed its view that the moment had come to give back to the country a greater role in the management of its own affairs.”44 Imperial decentralization was thus not primarily born out of deference to the demands of the constitutional opposition, but through an assessement of the internal failings and contradictions of the Second Empire’s local government regime.

THE EMPIRE’S DECENTRALIST RESPONSE

Our system of centralization, despite its advantages, has had the grave inconvenience of creating an excess of regulation . . . Formerly the constant control of the Administration over a host of matters could perhaps be justified, but to-day it has become a burden. To make the greatest possible number of citizens participate in the management and responsibility of affairs, while preserving for central authorities those powers necessary to ensure the internal and external security of the State, to strengthen the autonomy of the department and the commune, to seek the new attributions which should be devolved to elected councils, this is the programme which we should pursue.45

In a letter to Rouher in June 1863, Napoleon III asked his minister to initiate a wide-ranging review of decentralization, which should include measures to enhance the attributions of elected councils. Despite his commitment to a strong state, Napoleon III was not insensitive to the charms of decentralization, partly as a result of his memories of the English system of local government, partly through the influence of close advisors such as Le Play.46 His response to the political and administrative difficulties he faced was to accelerate the pace of institutional liberalization, and in particular to promise significant reforms in the field of decentralization. In 1865, the Emperor asked the Council of State to produce a comparative study of decentralization.47 In 1866 and 1867, there were modest increases in

44Arch. Nat. BB30–89; report dated July 29, 1869.

45Arch. Nat. Papiers Rouher 45 AP 11; Napoleon III letter to Rouher, June 27, 1863.

46Luc Gazeau, L’evolution´ des libertes´ locales en France et en Belgique au cours du XIXeme siecle` (Paris, 1905), 247–8.

47L’Opinion Nationale, August 31, 1865.

the competences of municipalities and General Councils, primarily in the budgetary powers of local government institutions; this gesture was offset, however, by an extension of the powers of the prefects. In 1868, laws granting greater press freedom and the right to hold electoral meetings without prior administrative sanction were promulgated, and a step was taken in the direction of greater accountability by instituting the practice of ministerial interpellation in the Corps Legislatif´ .48

This general trend toward liberalization was accentuated in 1870 with the establishment of the liberal Empire. The appointment of Emile Ollivier was accompanied by the promise of wide-ranging political and economic reforms. High on Ollivier’s list of priorities was decentralization, for by 1870 many Bonapartists and liberals felt that a thorough re-examination of the local government regime was necessary. The liberal Empire established an extra parliamentary commission on decentralization as early as February 1870. The Minister of the Interior Chevandier de Valdromeˆ recognized, in a letter to the Emperor, that the promotion of further political liberalization had made the institution of greater decentralization all the more necessary: “One cannot, without a fundamental contradiction, give citizens a large and sincere measure of participation in the government of their country, and yet continue to deny them the management of their most direct and intimate matters.”49

The promise of further local liberties aroused interest and even enthusiasm in the immediate aftermath of the creation of the 1870 commission. In the words of the Procureur-Gen´ eral´ of Agen: “The proposed reforms [by Emile Ollivier] which have aroused the greatest interest in our furthest provinces are not those which bear on general political matters . . . but rather those which are intended to promote greater communal liberties and to develop individual initiative.”50

Speaking in the Corps Legislatif´ in June 1870, Clement´ Duvernois called for the “broadening of the role of provincial assemblies.”51 In the eyes of many liberal Bonapartists, the promotion of greater decentralism represented an intellectually coherent and politically effective response to the growing political and administrative problems the regime faced in the late 1860s. Presenting the 1867 law on municipalities to the Senate, the liberal Bonapartist Louis-Bernard Bonjean underlined the numerous advantages of

48Alain Plessis, Nouvelle Histoire de la France contemporaine 1852–1871 (Paris, 1979), 215.

49Journal Officiel February 22, 1870; report of Minister of Interior to Emperor on formation of 1870 Commission of Decentralization.

50Arch. Nat. BB30–90; report from Procureur-Gen´ eral´ of Agen, April 1870; emphasis in text.

51In Journal Officiel, June 4, 1870.

a moderate form of decentralism:

If indeed, it is indispensable that the government should retain firm control of the direct management of all parts of the administration which are concerned with state security and general prosperity, it could not take charge of the collective interests of local communities without getting bogged down in details and multiplying beyond reason the number of its agents: this would be a form of communism, that is to say the most absolute and intolerable form of despotism. It is in the nature of things . . . to allow local communities to administer those affairs which are of exclusive concern to themselves. This system has, furthermore, considerable advantages: it forms the civic customs of the country, and accustoms the citizenry to the management of public affairs; it lightens the burden of central government; and, just as important, it reduces the budget, by replacing salaried officials with the unremunerated efforts of the citizenry.52

However, the promotion of decentralization was not the sole concern of “liberal” Bonapartists. Many of their authoritarian counterparts also actively endorsed the principle. Former Minister of the Interior Ernest Pinard justified greater local freedom by an organic analogy: “In order that a nation be strong and prosperous, there must be overabundance nowhere, and some activity in all parts. The social organism is like the human body, which remains strong and healthy only if blood circulates freely in all its organs.”53 The Bonapartist “conspirator” Jules Amigues, who was strongly hostile to the liberal evolution of the Empire in the late 1860s, nonetheless advocated the adoption of substantive measures of decentralization.54 His specific proposals included the “decapitalization” of Paris, the reform of universal suffrage, and the “emancipation” of the commune. All these measures were deemed to be entirely compatible with the principles of “authority” which were necessary for the continued health of the French polity.55

There were also a number of political justifications for the pursuit of the strategy of administrative decentralism. First, there was a need to provide a political response to the opposition groups’ clamours for greater civil and political liberties. For many supporters of the Empire (indeed for many authoritarian Bonapartists), the promotion of greater local liberty offered an ideal opportunity to meet the opposition on its own terrain and demonstrate the ideological superiority of imperialism over its adversaries. Decentralism was in this sense a means of appealing to (and capitalizing on) the instinctive attachment of French society to order and social conservatism.56 Following

52 Bonjean speech, July 12, 1867, in Bulletin du Ministere` de l’Interieur´ 1867, 472–3; emphasis in text.

53Ernest Pinard, Mon Journal, vol. 1 (Paris, 1892), 223.

54Jules Amigues, “Restaurons les Parlements!” in La politique d’un honneteˆ homme (Paris, 1869), 45–9.

55Jules Amigues, Les aveux d’un conspirateur bonapartiste (Paris, 1874), 8.

56Anonymous, Le Tiers parti et les libertes´ interieures´ (Paris, 1866), 13.

directly from the above, the Empire’s decentralism was also part of a deliberate strategy of playing rural populations off against urban centers. As noted earlier, the middle and late 1860s saw a steady progression of support for opposition groups, notably republicans, in populated agglomerations. Faced with the prospect of political decline in these parts of the country, the Empire hoped that the offer of greater decentralization might consolidate and even broaden its support in rural France, hence countering the threat to the political base of Bonapartism. The establishment of the 1870 commission on decentralization was thus part of a strategic calculation. In particular, it was believed that freeing local populations from the stifling burden of administrative conservatism would help to regenerate the social and organizational fortunes of Bonapartism by attracting powerful local notables to the movement. In the late 1860s, as the political pressure on the Empire began to mount, administrative decentralism was seen as a valuable opportunity to reinvigorate local Bonapartist elites.

The importance of enhancing the social base of Bonapartism was spelled out in a report of the Procureur-Gen´ eral´ of Agen in early 1870. Writing about the local population’s insistent demands for greater communal and departmental freedoms, he stressed: “These freedoms would have a no less favourable consequence: They would give back to those intelligent and devoted men, the rich landowners who devote their time and fortune to the public good, the legitimate influence which they lose under the regime of bureaucracy and excessive centralization.”57 Interestingly enough, this opposition to the administrative despotism of local imperial potentates was shared by many authoritarian Bonapartists. These notables were often uncomfortable with the constitutional evolution of the regime in the late 1860s, but sympathized with the idea of promoting greater local liberty to the municipalities and especially the General Councils. There were even Bonapartist suggestions that provincial parliaments should be restored: These measures were seen to have “the double advantage of giving greater satisfaction to liberal demands, and not weakening central authority by directing the pretensions of a single assembly at it.”58

Decentralism was also deployed as a means of building bridges with other opposition groups, particularly the monarchists. By the late 1860s, as the Empire’s political position in urban centers became increasingly precarious, the prospect of rallying provincial royalists and Catholics into “the ranks

57Arch. Nat. BB 30–90; report dated January 1870.

58Jules Amigues, Les aveux d’un conspirateur bonapartiste (Paris, 1874), 8–9.

of the great conservative army” seemed appealing to many Bonapartists.59 The legitimists were a particularly worthy object of the Empire’s attentions for a number of reasons. The conflict over the Roman question had created a sharp antagonism between the regime and the ultramontane clergy, and indeed rekindled the anticlerical component of popular Bonapartism.60 However, many supporters of the Empire did not lose hope of re-establishing close relations with the legitimists, who were believed to share a number of common interests with the Empire. Like the Bonapartists, they regarded order as a supreme political virtue and firmly believed in hereditary authority. Also like the Bonapartists, they were attached to the principle of equal treatment of citizens by the law, but rejected the revolutionary notion of social equality; similarly, they tended to regard freedom as a civil rather than political attribute.

This attempt to bring closer two of the major forces of French conservatism bore some fruit in 1869–70. In the aftermath of the appointment of the Ollivier administration, there were attempts to effect a rapprochement between Bonapartist and legitimist groups. This was manifested in the formation of the Commission of decentralization, which included a number of leading liberal legitimists such as Claude-Marie Raudot and Charles Garnier. It was also particularly evident in the stronger showing of Bonapartism in Catholic and legitimist heartlands in the elections of 1869, the plebiscite of May 1870, and the subsequent municipal and departmental elections.61 In the department of the Loir-et-Cher, for example, the legitimist newspaper completely rallied to the Bonapartist cause during the campaign for the 1870 plebiscite, arguing for a common front against the threat of social revolution.62 Similarly, in Nantes, the municipal elections of August 1870 saw the triumph of the republican list against an alliance of Bonapartists, legitimists, and clericalists.63

Finally, the pursuit of decentralism was intended to encourage the emergence of independent forms of associational activity and strengthen the country’s sense of social solidarity. The first of these objectives represented an extension of a consistent Bonapartist theme throughout the Second Empire. In a speech given at Limoges in 1858, for example, the Prince Napoleon had

59Fernand Giraudeau, Nos moeurs politiques (Paris, 1868), 393.

60Bernard Menager,´ Les Napoleon´ du peuple, 206–7.

61For the elections of 1869, see Louis Girard, Les elections´ de 1869 (Paris, 1960), xv. See also Pierre de La Gorce, Histoire du Second Empire, vol. VI (Paris, 1903), 106–7; and Arch. Nat. BB30–90, for the reports of the Procureurs-Gen´ eraux´ of Angers ( July 4, 1870), Besancon ( July 8, 1870), Bordeaux ( July 9, 1870), Caen ( July 11, 1870), and Toulouse ( July 7, 1870).

62Georges Dupeux, Aspects de l’histoire sociale et politique du Loir-et-Cher 1848–1914 (Paris, 1962), 400.

63Le Temps, August 18, 1870.

suffrage without administrative interference in local elections threatened the political base of the Empire. Bereft of the clear guidance traditionally provided by the provincial administration, local populations would become entirely vulnerable to false prophets and demagogues. Never known to understate his case, Persigny conjured up a dramatic vision of a country overcome by anarchy and subversion: “Disorder is being introduced in almost all the communes of France . . . the very foundations of the Empire, that is to say the foundations of universal suffrage seem shaken.”72

This fear of the political and administrative consequences of decentralization was widespread among authoritarian Bonapartists. Quentin-Bauchard expressed the typical view that most communes were effectively incapable of self-government:

Have those who demand that administrative decentralization should extend as far as communal autonomy considered the practical consequences of such a regime? To allow communes to govern themselves would be a very good thing, if they did so; but who does not have the sense of the thousands of interests which would suffer at the hands of incompetent municipalities?73

In short, the introduction of greater political decentralization would bring nothing but disaster to France. This perspective was summed up in the apocalyptic (and somewhat prophetic) vision of a Bonapartist prefect anticipating the consequences of the collapse of the centralized state: “Destroy this organization, and the first revolutionary tremor will bring all public services to a halt, and suspend the administrative life of France; parties will take advantage of the weakening of authority to divide the country, civil strife will break out in favour of socialism and the Foreigner who will come to exploit our divisions and to try and capture France.”74

THE BALANCE SHEET OF BONAPARTIST DECENTRALISM

Like the Second Empire as a whole, Bonapartist decentralism was a diverse and often contradictory phenomenon. However, it has been sufficiently analyzed in these pages to dispel the notion that it was merely a tactical or rhetorical device. This is our first general conclusion: Underlying the Bonapartist conception of local liberty was a distinct civic project, which was articulated by imperial ideologues and pamphleteers, and widely discussed among the different branches of the Bonapartist state. Furthermore, the

72Bib. Nat. Papiers Persigny naf 23066, Persigny to Napoleon III, August 5, 1865.

73Quentin-Bauchard, Etudes et Souvenirs, vol. II (Paris, 1902), 362.

74Boyer de Sainte Suzanne, La verit´ e´ sur la decentralisation´ (Amiens, 1861), 29.