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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; 123 years ago (1901-10-21) |
| Dissolved | 6 January 1949; 76 years ago (1949-01-06) (formal dissolution in 1978) |
| Split from | 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 |
TheDemocratic Alliance (French:Alliance démocratique,AD), originally calledDemocratic Republican Alliance (Alliance républicaine démocratique,ARD), was aFrench political party created in 1901 by followers ofLéon Gambetta such asRaymond Poincaré, who would be president of the Council in the 1920s. The party was originally formed as a centre-left gathering of moderateliberals,independent Radicals who rejected the new left-leaning Radical-Socialist Party, andModerate Republicans (Gambetta and the like), situated at the political centre and to the right of the newly formedRadical-Socialist Party. However, afterWorld War I and the parliamentary disappearance ofmonarchists andBonapartists it quickly became the maincentre-right party of theThird Republic. It was part of theNational 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 theVichy regime duringWorld War II, an option strongly supported by its major leaderPierre-Étienne Flandin and other members such asJoseph Barthélemy. The centre-right party tried to reform itself under the direction ofJoseph Laniel, who had taken part in theResistance. It temporarily joined theRally of Republican Lefts (Rassemblement des gauches républicaines, RGR) before merging into theNational Center of Independents and Peasants (Centre national des indépendants et paysans, CNIP). The AD, which in contrast to theFrench Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) or theFrench Communist Party (PCF), never became a mass political party founded on voting discipline (in theseleft-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 calledsinistrisme 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: seeLegitimist andOrléanist).
In 1901, it supported theBloc des gauches aroundWaldeck-Rousseau, even if it tried to stand out by 1902. However, it supported the policy of the bloc until 1907, when the presidency was entrusted toÉmile Combes (1902–1905), who imposed for the first time the left-right divide. The Alliance demonstrated its difference from the right (theRepublican Federation and the ALP) by supporting the1905 law. Above all, the ARD encouraged political circles including Alliancists and Radicals.
Faced with the disintegration of the bloc and the emergence ofsocialism, the Alliance sought to establish in 1907 a democratic bloc with the right which demonstrated its willingness to reinstate the discredited right to power in France. Between 1912 and 1914, the ARD supported the right-wing governments which includedRaymond Poincaré,Aristide Briand andLouis Barthou. During the same period, the Alliance operated a shift to the right on the political spectrum and ended the policy of mutual withdrawals with the Radical-Socialists in electoral runoffs.
Meanwhile, the Alliance was transformed into a real party in 1911 by becoming the Republican Democratic Party (PRD). This strengthening of its structures was accompanied by an increase in its number of parliamentarians (from 39 MPs in 1902 to 125 1910 and fifty senators in 1910) and that of its supporters (around 30,000 at the beginning of the 1910s). Several leaders of the ARD in 1914 tried to form with Aristide Briand and the moderate left aFederation of the Lefts.
Undoubtedly, the Alliance weighed heavily on national policy as shown by the presence of its members in high cabinet positions (Émile Loubet,Armand Fallières andRaymond Poincaré as Presidents of the Republic andLouis Barthou andRaymond Poincaré as Presidents of the council as well as many ministries).
At the end of the war, the Alliance promoted new goals developed during its creation, namely that of creating a concentration of the centers. With its 140 MPs, it organized and led in this direction theNational Bloc (1919–1924). The experience was not successful because the Alliance became a prisoner of the right which constituted the bulk of the parliamentary majority, thus the failure of Aristide Briand cabinet (1921–1922) convinced its leaders to find practical ways to realize the doctrine of the just-middle despite the fact that one of its members, Raymond Poincaré, occupied the post of President of the Council between 1922 and 1924.
The Alliance focused its political doctrine in line with that which prevailed when it was created, even though the generation of pre-war faded (Adolphe Carnot, Charles Pallu de la Barrière and so forth) and that a new generation took over, such asCharles Jonnart its new president in 1920. Known as the PRDS, the Alliance professed its willingness to co-operate with theRadical-Socialist Party.
The party became the backbone of government including the Radical-Socialist Party following the fall of theCartel des Gauches. Nevertheless, the Alliance could not get the Radicals to rally around a centrist party, the opposition crystallizing around the issue of secularism, the intervention of the state or in terms of foreign policy (contrast between Aristide Briand and Raymond Poincaré).
Pierre-Étienne Flandin took the chair of the Alliance in 1933 with the aim to reorganize the party in a way whichLouis Marin had done ten years earlier with theRepublican Federation. Until then a grouping more than a party, the Alliance became a party which established a hierarchy and became more centralized. The party expanded its regional structures and increased the number of member to about 20,000 in 1936.
Flandin's leadership marked the end of the Alliance's overtures to the Radicals. However, the Alliance was torn on the doctrinal front. Common ground on the base of the defense of institutions, the middle class and the rejection of the extremes disintegrated due to divergent views adopted by the personalities of the Alliance, namely those of Pierre-Étienne Flandin around the group of Republicans of the Left, those ofRené Besse around theIndependents of the Left and those ofPaul Reynaud andAndré Tardieu around theRepublican Centre. These divergences were apparent during theLéon Blum government where Alliance members ranged from moderate support of the laws of the left-wingPopular Front, the division of the party was sensitive by 1938 between a pacifist majority (Flandin) supporting theMunich Agreement and the hawkish minority (Reynaud) opposing the Agreement. More profoundly, this division also reflected the significant oppositions within the party concerning the reform of the state and institutions between 1933 and 1934.
Since then, the Alliance struggled to maintain a centrist position in a Republic no longer managed by the centre. It became on the contrary a party which showed the different opinions chosen by the men from the Republican and parliamentary rights to address the social and political crises of the thirties.
The Democratic Alliance was a centre-right party which occupied between 1901 and 1940 a central position on thepolitical spectrum and this despite the iron rule of French politics developed byRené Rémond which said that each party would evolve further to the left or right due to the development of new political movements. Thus, even if the leaders of the Alliance saw the party as the incarnation of the centre-left in the wake of the parliamentary group formed by Léon Say (1871–1896), the party shifted to the right in Parliament due to two factors, namely the downfall of themonarchist andBonapartist right and the rise of the new left (socialism and latercommunism) as well as new centrist parties such as theLeague of the Young Republic and thePopular Democratic Party).
By its values and behaviors, the AD opposed the socialist left, but also the right (Popular Liberal Action and later theRepublican Federation). Like the Radical-Socialist Party, the Alliance adhered to the Republic and what constituted the Republic, that is the law of separation of church and state in 1905 or the quest for truth in theDreyfus affair. Unlike the Rad-Soc doctrine, it aspired to unite all Republicans and to impose the right and left athird way, that of the combination of centers around the phrase "no reaction nor revolution".
Its political culture was resolutely centrist, incorporating values of both left (the reference to theFrench Revolution, the defense offreedom and areformist agenda) and right (law and order, the defense ofliberalism and opposition tostatism andcollectivism). The theme of gradual reform was seen by the Alliance as the antidote to the opponents of the Republic, that is the collectivists (theFrench Section of the Workers' International and theFrench Communist Party)
Its creation reflects the will to oppose the polarization due to the progressive division during theDreyfus affair and impose a three-party system leading to the Republic of the just-middle theorized byFrançois Guizot.
The ARD was created by the progressives who supported CaptainAlfred Dreyfus and opposed those who followedJules Méline in opposition to thePresident of the CouncilPierre Waldeck-Rousseau. At the instigation of the latter, the Democratic Republican Alliance was founded on 23 October 1901 by engineer Adolphe Carnot (brother of former French PresidentSadi Carnot), the deputies Henry Blanc, Edmond Halphen and publicist Charles Pallu de la Barrière. The Alliance built strong support networks with theLigue des droits de l'homme (includingPaul Stapfer), the League of Education and former political networks aroundJules Ferry,Léon Gambetta andLéon Say.
Its initial recruitment is that of the Parisian elite (including scientists) and the provincial notables. Even if the party's principal leaders were often related to business, the majority of its elected officials opposed the wishes of businessmen, in particular on social policies.