Although it is not yet a topic of everyday debate on either side of the Irish border, the idea of Irish reunification is gaining a strange kind of momentum. Books on the question seem to be printed on a monthly basis, all registering stern words of warning about the gravity of the choices that lie ahead. Even in the realm of civil society, we are witnessing ripples of yearning for what is evasively called “constitutional change.”

A moderate, tentatively multiparty civic nationalism is beginning to flower across the island. And for this tendency, Brendan O’Leary, an Irish political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, is fast becoming an intellectual and strategic polestar. O’Leary’s latest book, Making Sense of a United Ireland, draws mainly on the findings of surveys and focus groups on the constitutional future of the island that he helped supervise.

While he is drawing up blueprints for a united Ireland, the campaigning organization Ireland’s Future — cross-party in composition but skewed heavily toward Sinn Féin — is seeking to make gains on the political front. Both embody a form of liberal civic nationalism that is steadily engulfing the intellectual debate on Irish reunification.