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Democratic Alliance Alliance démocratique | |
|---|---|
| Leader | Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau Alexandre Ribot Raymond Poincaré André Tardieu Pierre-Étienne Flandin |
| Founded | 21 October 1901 |
| Dissolved | 6 January 1949 |
| Merger of | Moderate Republicans Progressive Republicans |
| Merged into | National Centre of Independents |
| Ideology | Liberal conservatism Conservative liberalism[1] Conservatism[2] Liberalism Laicism[3][2] Laissez-faire[4] |
| Political position | Centre-right[5][6] |
| National affiliation | National Bloc (1919–1924) RGR (1946–1949) |
| Colours | Gold |
The Democratic Alliance (French: Alliance démocratique, AD), originally called Democratic Republican Alliance (Alliance républicaine démocratique, ARD), was a French political party created in 1901 by followers of Léon Gambetta such as Raymond Poincaré, who would be president of the Council in the 1920s. The party was originally formed as a centre-left gathering of moderate liberals, independent Radicals who rejected the new left-leaning Radical-Socialist Party, and Opportunist Republicans (Gambetta and the like), situated at the political centre and to the right of the newly formed Radical-Socialist Party. However, after World War I and the parliamentary disappearance of monarchists and Bonapartists it quickly became the main centre-right party of the Third Republic. It was part of the National Bloc right-wing coalition which won the elections after the end of the war. The ARD successively took the name "Democratic Republican Party" (Parti Républicain Démocratique, PRD), and then "Social and Republican Democratic Party" (Parti Républicain Démocratique et Social), before becoming again the AD.
The ARD was largely discredited after supporting the Vichy regime during World War II, an option strongly supported by its major leader Pierre-Étienne Flandin and other members such as Joseph Barthélemy. The centre-right party tried to reform itself under the direction of Joseph Laniel, who had taken part in the Resistance. It temporarily joined the Rally of Republican Lefts (Rassemblement des gauches républicaines, RGR) before merging into the National Center of Independents and Peasants (Centre national des indépendants et paysans, CNIP). The AD, which in contrast to the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) or the French Communist Party (PCF), never became a mass political party founded on voting discipline (in these left-wing parties deputies usually vote in agreement with the party's consensus), turned at that time in little more than an intellectual circle whose members met during suppers. However, it was dissolved in only 1978, long after its effective disappearance from the political scene.
Under the Third Republic, the majority of the AD's deputies sat in the Left Republicans (Républicain de Gauche) group,[7] the main centre-right parliamentary formation (due to a particularity called sinistrisme right-wing politicians took some time to accept the label 'right-wing', as republicanism was traditionally associated with the left-wing and the right-wing traditionally meant some form of monarchism: see Legitimist and Orléanist).
- ^ Kittel, Manfred (2009). Provinz zwischen Reich und Republik: Politische Mentalitäten in Deutschland und Frankreich 1918-1933/36. Oldenbourg Verlag. p. 125. ISBN 9783486596106.
- ^ a b Kay Chadwick (2000). Catholicism, Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century France. Liverpool University Press. p. 60.
- ^ Kevin Passmore (2002). From Liberalism to Fascism: The Right in a French Province, 1928-1939. p. 15.
- ^ Sylvie Guillaume; Rosemonde Sanson (2005). "Le centrisme en France au XIXe et XXe siècles : un échec ?". Le centrisme dans l'Alliance démocratique. pp. 93–104.
- ^ Read, Geoff (2014). "Was there a Fascist Femininity? Gender and French Fascism in Political Context". The French Right between the Wars. Berghahn. p. 129.
- ^ Irvine, William D. (1997). "Domestic Politics and the Fall of France in 1940". The French Defeat of 1940. Berghahn. p. 90.
- ^ Andrew Pfannkuche. Sitting on the Left: French Political Identities in the Long Nineteenth Century. p. 52.