The Orléanists, who favoured constitutional monarchy and economic liberalism, were opposed to the Republican Radicals.
Emmanuel Macron, a former member of the Socialist Party, launched En Marche!
Economic liberalism in France was long associated more with the Orléanists and with Opportunist Republicans (whose heir was the Democratic Republican Alliance), rather than the Radical Party, leading to the use of the term radical to refer to political liberalism.
Intellectuals played a powerful role in all the movements, for example a major spokesman for radicalism was Émile Chartier (1868–1951), who wrote under the pseudonym of "Alain".
In 1978 both the Republican Party (successor of the Independent Republicans) and the Radical Party were founding components, along with the Christian-democratic Centre of Social Democrats, of the Union for French Democracy, an alliance of non-Gaullist centre-right forces.