Founded in 1924, it represented the trend of French social Catholicism, while remaining a party embodying the ideology of centrism.
[6] The PDP had its roots in French Catholicism and various Christian movements inspired by Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais and later continued by Marc Sangnier's Le Sillon, the Young Republic League and the Popular Liberal Action (ALP), the party of republican Catholics founded in 1902 and dissolved in 1919.
Faced to the governing left-wing Cartel des Gauches, the PDP ranked itself in the parliamentary opposition but stayed outside of the National Catholic Federation (FNC), founded by General Édouard de Castelnau as a reaction to the perceived anti-clerical legislation passed by Édouard Herriot's cabinet.
The PDP supported the ministries of Raymond Poincaré, seduced by his stabilizing of the economic situation, but hostile to the lack of social legislation.
If the majority of the parliamentary party voted full powers to Marshal Philippe Pétain on 10 July 1940, the PDP, however, provided the largest contingent of opponents against full powers within the right (Pierre de Chambrun, Auguste Champetier de Ribes, Paul Simon).