There are no remaining descendants in the male line from any other of Napoleon's brothers and there is no serious political movement that aims to restore any of these men to the imperial throne of France.

Desires for public order, national glory, and emulation of the Roman Empire had combined to create a Caesarist coup d'etat for General Bonaparte on 18 Brumaire.

The honey bee was a prominent political emblem for both the First and Second Empires;[5] it represented the Bonapartist ideal of devoted service, self-sacrifice and social loyalty.

"[7] According to historian René Rémond's famous 1954 book Les Droites en France,[citation needed] Bonapartism constitutes one of the three French right-wing families; the latest one after far-right Legitimism and center-right Orléanism.

Notable examples of the latter include Vincent Cronin, who referred to Napoleonic government as "middle-of-the-road",[8] as well as André Castelot in his Bonaparte, for whom being above and outside of party struggles was the founding principle of Bonapartism,[9] and Louis Madelin, who describes Napoleon's role in French history as being the great reconciler after the divides and wounds of the French Revolution (conclusion to Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire).

In Des Idées Napoléoniennes (On Napoleonic Ideas), published in 1839, the future Napoleon III quoted his uncle's words to the Council of State on this subject, ending with the following explanation: "You see, this is why I have composed my Council of State of constituents who were called Moderates or Feuillants, like Defermon, Roederer, Regnier, Regnault; of royalists like Devaines and Dufresnes ; lastly of jacobins like Brune, Réal and Berlier.

Always faithful to principles of conciliation, the Emperor, during the course of his reign, gives a pension to the sister of Robespierre, as he does to the mother of the Duke of Orleans.Bonapartists have consistently disagreed with this classification, as one of the fundamentals of Bonapartism as an ideology is the refusal to adhere to the left-right divide, which they see as an obstacle to the welfare and unity of the nation.

Martin S Alexander, in his book French History since Napoleon (London, Arnold, New York, Oxford University Press, 1999) notes that Bonapartism as an idea would not have made a significant impact if it had been classifiable as either left-wing or right-wing.

The historian Jean Sagnes in The Roots of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte's Socialism notes that the future Emperor of the French edited his political works through far-left publishers.

He expounded on this point to explain that Bonapartism, as practiced by his uncle Napoleon the Great and represented by himself was in the middle of "two hostile parties, one of which looks only to the past, and the other only to the future" and combined "the old forms" of the one and the "new principles" of the other.