Joseph Laniel in the context of René Coty

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 Moderate 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.

The Republican Party of Liberty (French: Parti républicain de la liberté, PRL) was a centre-right to right-wing French political party founded after the Liberation of France on 22 December 1945 by Joseph Laniel, André Mutter, Édouard Frédéric-Dupont and Jules Ramarony. It was the only significant right-wing conservative political party in the late 1940s. Key elements in this program were enacted, including the exclusion of the Communist Party from power, closer relations with the United States, and amnesty for Marshal Philippe Pétain's supporters. It was absorbed by the National Centre of Independents and Peasants (CNI) in 1951.

The PRL's aim was to unite French conservatives, who had been totally discredited in 1944 due to the numbers of Vichy collaborators in their ranks, and the role they played during the interwar period. Bernard Frank mocked "this right which suddenly discovered in itself a love for the Republic and liberty." The PRL's tentative approach failed, most conservative leaders trying to conserve their autonomy or to recreate parties of the Third Republic such as the Democratic Alliance, the Republican Federation or the Republican Social Party of French Reconciliation (Parti républicain social de la réconciliation française).