Today, Ireland holds a general election for the Dáil Éireann, the lower house of its legislature, which will be responsible for nominating a prime minister on March 10. The vote comes just over a month before the hundredth anniversary of the failed 1916 rebellion that sought to win the country’s independence.

The significance of the Easter Rising centenary has been felt across the island, but perhaps nowhere as acutely as within the ranks of Sinn Féin. A visible, though initially abstentionist, political presence in the North since the early 1980s, the party has enjoyed new success in the Southern republic.

Though it remains the most progressive — and certainly the most staunchly republican — of Ireland’s mainstream political parties, Sinn Féin seems to be in a process of reinvention. Far from its long-perceived status as an Irish Republican Army mouthpiece, the party leadership is now compelled to reach a hesitant electorate by renouncing their radical political affiliations on nationally televised debates.