Democratic Republican Alliance
민주공화동맹
A centre-right party of the French Third Republic founded on 23 October 1901. A secular and liberal party of moderate republicans, it was, with the Radical Party, the mainstay of most governments between 1901 and 1940. Originally centre-left and part of the Bloc des gauches, it moved towards the centre-right; discredited after the Second World War by many members’ part in the Vichy regime, it survived until 1978 only as a circle of members.
In depth
The Alliance was formed by moderate (Opportunist) republicans who, from 1899, stayed on the left with the Radicals and parliamentary socialists in support of Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau’s cabinet of Republican Defence. Its aim was to counterbalance the Radicals, whose progress in 1898 threatened to make them hegemonic in the new coalition. It was founded on 23 October 1901 by the engineer Adolphe Carnot, the deputy Henry Blanc, Edmond Halphen and the journalist Charles Pallu de la Barrière; Louis Barthou, Raymond Poincaré, Joseph Caillaux and Maurice Rouvier were among its leading members. Oscillating between association and party, it was called the Democratic Republican Alliance (ARD) in 1901–1911 and 1917–1920, the Democratic Republican Party (PRD) in 1911–1917, the Democratic Republican and Social Party (PRDS) in 1920–1926 and the Democratic Alliance (AD) from 1926.
The Alliance supported the policy of the Bloc des gauches until 1907 and set itself apart from the right by backing the 1905 law and the measures against the congregations. By joining the national concentrations of 1912–1914 behind Poincaré, Aristide Briand and Barthou, and backing the Three-Year Law with the right in 1914, it moved rightward. It became a real party in 1911, its deputies rising from 39 in 1902 to 125 in 1910 and its members to about 30,000 in the early 1910s. Émile Loubet, Armand Fallières and Poincaré served as presidents of the Republic.
After the First World War, with 140 deputies, it organised and led the Bloc national (1919–1924) and from 1926–1929 under Poincaré was the pivot of governments of republican concentration with the Radicals. Pierre-Étienne Flandin, its president from 1933 to 1940, reorganised it into a hierarchical, centralised party of about 20,000 members by 1936. In the 1936 election the deputies under its influence fell from 99 to 42, and from 1938 it divided between a pacifist majority behind Flandin that defended the Munich agreement and a minority firmer towards Hitler around Paul Reynaud, members of which resigned from the party’s bodies after Munich. Albert Lebrun was president of the Republic from 1932 to 1940.
On 10 July 1940 the Alliance’s deputies and senators voted full powers to Pétain; under Vichy Joseph Barthélemy was minister of justice and Flandin foreign minister and head of government from December 1940 to February 1941. Although one of the six parties of the National Council of the Resistance, the Alliance was discredited by many members’ part in Vichy. On 16 March 1946 all but one of its parliamentarians left for the Republican Party of Liberty, and the founding of the National Centre of Independents in 1949 drew away most of its leading figures. It left the RGR in June 1954 and joined the CNIP, and thereafter survived until 1978 as a circle whose members met at commemorative dinners.