The Collaborative International Dictionary
Bonapartism \Bo"na*part`ism\, n. The policy of Bonaparte or of the Bonapartes.
Wikipedia
Bonapartism is the political ideology of Napoleon Bonaparte and his followers and successors. It was later used to refer to persons who hoped to restore the House of Bonaparte and its style of government. After Napoleon, the term was applied to the French politicians who seized power in the coup of 18 Brumaire, ruling in the French Consulate and subsequently in the First and Second French Empires under the House of Bonaparte (the family of Bonaparte and his nephew Louis). The term was used more generally for a political movement that advocated a dictatorship or authoritarian centralized state, with a strongman charismatic leader based on anti-elitist rhetoric, army support, and conservatism.
Marxism and Leninism developed a vocabulary of political terms that included Bonapartism, derived from their analysis of the career of Napoleon Bonaparte. Karl Marx was a student of Jacobinism and the French Revolution, and was a contemporary critic of the Second Republic and Second Empire. He used "Bonapartism" to refer to a situation in which counter-revolutionary military officers seize power from revolutionaries, and use selective reforms to co-opt the radicalism of the popular classes. Marx argued that in the process, Bonapartists preserve and mask the power of a narrower ruling class.
According to his essay " The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon" (1852), Marx believed that both Bonaparte and his nephew Napoleon III had corrupted revolutions in France in this way. In this document, he drew attention to what he calls the phenomenon's repetitive history by saying: "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce."
More generally, "Bonapartism" may be used to describe the replacement of civilian leadership by military leadership within revolutionary movements or governments. Many modern-day Trotskyists and other leftists use the phrase "left Bonapartist" to describe those, such as Stalin and Mao, who controlled 20th-century bureaucratic socialist regimes. In addition, Leon Trotsky was accused of using his position as commander of the Red Army to gain top-level power after Lenin's death.
Noted political scientists and historians greatly differ on the definition and interpretation of Bonapartism. Sudhir Hazareesingh's book The Legend of Napoleon explores numerous interpretations of the term. He says that it refers to a "popular national leader confirmed by popular election, above party politics, promoting equality, progress, and social change, with a belief in religion as an adjunct to the State, a belief that the central authority can transform society and a belief in the 'nation' and its glory and a fundamental belief in national unity." Hazareesingh believes that although recent research shows Napoleon used forced conscription of French troops, some men must have fought believing in Napoleon's ideals. He says that to argue Bonapartism co-opted the masses is an example of the Marxist perspective of false consciousness: the idea that the masses can be manipulated by a few determined leaders in the pursuit of ends.
Scholar Raymond Hinnebusch has characterized Hafez al-Asad's regime in Syria as Bonapartist.
Usage examples of "bonapartism".
This person, a sailor, of turbulent character, and whom I suspected of Bonapartism, has been secretly to the Island of Elba.
Morrel family who lived at Marseilles, and gave us so much trouble from their violent Bonapartism -- I mean about the year 1815.
Three brigands, called Trestaillon, Truphemy, and Graffan, publicly assassinated everybody whom they suspected of Bonapartism.
Yet Bonapartism is still insufficient to destroy completely the organisations of the working class, and a special form of reaction is therefore required to perform this task - fascism.