combining ‘archaisme et modernité’ (Corbin 1975)? How did the perceived need to promote economic development affect the regime’s agenda? To what extent did economic ‘modernisation’ and most obviously the revolution in communications affect the government machine and particularly its capacity to penetrate society?
Conversely, how did social change and a widespread (although very unequal
improvement) in living standards influence political attitudes? What was the impact of the establishment of an authoritarian and repressive political regime followed, after a decade, by liberalisation, the easing of restrictions on political 4
activity, and (re-)politicisation? To what extent did politics involve competition between elite groups for access to political power and patronage and to what extent did it represent a challenge, from below, to the established social order? Lastly, how did internal and external politics interact?
Similar questions might be asked of any political system. Every regime is
responsible, primarily, for the maintenance of order, although definitions of what constitutes ‘order’ and the systems constructed and methods employed to achieve this objective will vary both between regimes and, in the case of the same regime, over time as situations and personnel change. Political repression can be regarded as a ‘normal’ feature of governmental activity, but its intensity varies with perceptions of danger and the capacity of the administration to conduct ‘police’
measures. Thus, the establishment of the Second Empire or, for that matter, Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany might in part be seen as responses to particularly intense general crises and widespread social fear. Repression, however, carries the risk of alienating much of the subject population. The Second Empire can be
distinguished from the two twentieth-century dictatorships because, by means of liberalisation and the institutionalisation of protest through elections, it sought a method of moderating opposition and of more effectively ensuring long-term
stability. In this context, the criteria employed for defining potential threats and ensuing policy decisions – as between repression or concession – tell us a great deal about a regime and its relationships with the wider society. It is probably true that most regimes would prefer to rule through forms of social control which encourage consensus and possess a clearly defined moral and legal basis for the exercise of power, rather than resort to violence. This explains the importance of securing cultural domination through religious or educational institutions which provide means of instruction designed to induce conformity to socially and politically conservative norms of behaviour.
The debate on the nature of the state and, indeed, on the character of the Second Empire continues to be informed by the contribution of Karl Marx. In The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), he contended that ‘the executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’. The forms taken by a state were the product of class rule at a particular stage of social development. His stress on the repressive role of the state was supplemented by an insistence on the state’s employment of religion and patriotism and on its recourse to war, as a means of reinforcing its position – an emphasis foreshadowing the Italian Marxist Gramsci’s notion of hegemony. However,
5
Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte’s seizure of power caused problems for Marx. It
represented an apparent renunciation of power by the ‘ruling classes’ and a step back from bourgeois liberalism to absolute monarchy, to a situation in which ‘the executive power with a host of officials numbering half a million, besides an army of another half a million, [an] appalling parasitic body . . . enmeshes the body of French society like a net and chokes all its pores’ (Marx 1848: 284–5). The state had achieved apparent autonomy. This seeming contradiction could be resolved only by insisting that the state continued to favour the interests of some social groups rather than others. It remained the guarantor of the established social order.
Marx assumed that, in the longer term, state policy had to remain compatible with the interests of economically and socially powerful interest groups, particularly those from which ministers, bureaucrats and army officers were recruited (Marx 1962: 340–1). Awareness of context is all important. The rulers of a nineteenth-century authoritarian state could deal harshly with opponents, but were neither willing nor able to engage in the forms of extreme and sustained brutality which have been employed to ensure compliance during the twentieth century. While the elites which had shared political power during the Restoration (1814–30) and July Monarchy (1830–48) might be prepared to accept a temporary dictatorship at a time of extreme crisis (in the fashion of the ancient Roman Republic with which these classically educated elites were so familiar), in the longer term they would favour a return to a ‘normal’ and renewed fragmentation of political power. In effect, the boundaries to state action were defined partly by power centres – social groups, political alliances, institutional bodies – capable of political organisation.
Stability depended upon accommodating their special interests. As a result of the introduction of manhood suffrage following the revolution in February 1848, greater attention would also be given to the concerns of socially subordinate groups: to the small businessmen, professionals, peasants and workers all
increasingly anxious to influence state policy. Indeed, one of the central questions to be considered in this essay will be the degree to which these various groups might have lost or benefited from changes in the (unequal) balance of power. Another concern will be the ways in which state power impinged upon the various groups and how they perceived its activities – as class oppression or as the benign exercise of authority. How would they react, not only to governmental activity, but also to social change on a previously unimagined scale? While continuities with
