This largely came down less to ideology and rather their preference in coalition partner: the Socialist Party to their left or the secular conservative-liberals of the centre-right Democratic Alliance.
Several of France's most powerful political figures were Independent Radicals, including Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and President Gaston Doumergue.
[2] The tendency was described by André Siegfried (Tableau des Partis en France) for the case of Franklin-Bouillon's dissidents: "a group largely of former Radical-Socialists who from a sense of National Unity, preferred to side with Poincaré [the liberal centre-right] over the Cartel [Socialist Party], and who ended up turning vaguely into nationalists.
[citation needed] Over time the boundaries between the Independent Radicals and the Left Republicans group (caucus of the Democratic Alliance) grew less clear.
In 1936 an attempt was made by the liberal former-premier Pierre-Étienne Flandin to merge the two groups under the label Alliance of Left Republicans and Independent Radicals (ARGRI).