It operated in the center-right, primarily to oppose the left-wing Republican coalition led by Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau and Émile Combes who pursued an anti-clerical agenda designed to weaken the Catholic Church, especially its role in education.
The Liberal Action was founded in 1901 by Jacques Piou and Albert de Mun, former monarchists who switched to republicanism at the request of Pope Leo XIII.
From the Churches perspective, its mission was to express the political ideals and new social doctrines embodied in Leo's 1891 encyclical "Rerum Novarum".
Action libérale was the parliamentary group from which the political party emerged, adding the word populaire ("popular") to signify this expansion.
All but forgotten during World War I because of the Union sacrée, it re-emerged in 1919, with only its administrators, but still exerting an important moral influence on the Catholic electors.