It peaked at seven seats in 1999, due to mistrust of politicians failing to resolve the pensions gap,[18] before falling back to four today.

The ADR wishes to implement Swiss-style direct democracy and advocates and promotes intensely the preservation and use of the Luxembourgish language in state institutions and society.

[22][23][24][25] The ADR has its roots in a demonstration in Luxembourg City on 28 March 1987, held to protest at the disparities between the 5/6ths final salary scheme enjoyed by civil servants and the basic state pension received by everyone else.

[27] In the 1989 election to the Chamber of Deputies, on 18 June 1989, the party achieved remarkable success by attracting votes from far beyond its core support base.

[27] In December of the same year, the prominent deputy Fernand Rau defected from the Christian Social People's Party (CSV) after it broke its pledge to make him European Commissioner, increasing the ADR's representation back up to four.

The results put the ADR back into fourth place, but the Greens managed to hold on to their seat in the simultaneous European elections.

[31] It was the only parliamentary party that actively campaigned against the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, which was put to a referendum and narrowly passed with 56.5% of voters in favour.

[27] Significantly, for the first time, the name makes no reference to pension reform, signalling the eagerness of the ADR to further solidify its position as a major party in national politics.

[citation needed] On 8 June 2010, the ADR joined the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe, a Euro-Realist Europe-wide political party.

With each question being rejected by between 70% and 80% of the electorate,[35] this event represented a big political win for the ADR in face of the incumbent Government.

3 years after the Referendum, on 2 March 2018, the ADR announced that it would be co-operating with the citizen's movement Wee 2050 - Nee 2015, which had been founded pre-referendum to campaign for the "3 x No".

In 2020-2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the ADR was the only political party in Luxembourg to oppose governmental measures like closing restaurants, claiming the restrictions infringed upon personal freedoms.

The focus on pension reform allowed it to make it the core campaign issue of all five elections in the first ten years of its formation.

[39] Luxembourgish former foreign minister and socialist politician Jean Asselborn has stated that as of the year 2020 ADR is not a far-right political party.

[40][contradictory] The party places great importance on promoting the Luxembourgish language, and its electoral success in the 1999 election pushed the CSV-DP government to make knowledge of it a criterion for naturalisation.

[50] This was the case only until 2014, when the party achieved a slightly better score than it had in the early 2013 national elections, managing to beat the LSAP in the majority of communes.

[59] The party is most popular amongst people earning less than €30,000,[57] and has attracted support from the part of the CSV's core electorate that have been left out of recent economic growth.