Rene Remond

Rene Remond ([ʁəne ʁemõ]; 30 September 1918 – 14 April 2007) was a French historian, political scientist and political economist.

Born in Lons-le-Saunier, Remond was the Secretary General of Jeunesses etudiantes Catholiques (JEC France in 1943) and a member of the International YCS Center of Documentation and Information in Paris (presently the International Secretariat of International Young Catholic Students). The author of books on French political, intellectual and religious history, he was elected to the Academie francaise in 1998. He was also a founding member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.

Remond 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 (counter-revolutionaries), Orleanism, 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. (The Action Francaise royalist movement belongs to the Legitimists, who, being marginalized during the 20th century, managed however to take back some influence during the Vichy regime.) Similarly, he classes the National Front (Le Pen's party) in this group. Orleanists he identifies as economic liberals, which characterizes present-day conservative parties. This group presents itself as bourgeois rather than populist.

Remond died in Paris.