Born inLons-le-Saunier, Rémond was the Secretary General of Jeunesses étudiantes 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).[1][2] The author of books on French political, intellectual and religious history, he was elected to theAcadémie Française in 1998.[3] He was also a founding member of thePontifical 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 at a specific phase of French history:Legitimism (counter-revolutionaries),Orléanism, andBonapartism.Boulangisme, for example, was according to him a type of the Bonapartism, as was theGaullism. These he considers as being a authoritarian, needing a leader with charisma, and presenting their movements as more "populist" than the others.[4] Legitimism refers to theroyalists who refused to accept the legitimacy of theFrench Republic during the 19th century. (TheAction Française royalist movement belongs to the Legitimists, who, being marginalized during the 20th century, managed however to take back some influence during theVichy régime.) Similarly, he classes theNational Front (Le Pen's party) in this group. Orléanists he identifies aseconomic liberals, which characterizes present-day conservative parties. This group presents itself as bourgeois rather than populist.[4]
Rémond died in April 2007 inParis at the age of 88.[5]
