The party emerged in 2001–2002 by the merger of Su Cuncordu, a separatist platform animated by three Sardinian intellectuals living in Rome, and a splinter group from Sardinia Nation led by Gavino Sale. The latter and his followers left SN because of its alliance with the Sardinian Action Party, which did not support independentism fully at the time and was engaged in alliances with Italian parties.
In January 2010, during a party congress, Ornella Demuru was elected secretary of the party, replacing Gavino Sale, who was elected president, and representing a power shift within the party from the old guard and younger activists. Notwithstanding the good results of the party at the 2010 provincial elections, the relation between Sale and Demuru was tense from the beginning. In October Demuru threatened her resignation and reclaimed more internal democracy within the party. Sale, for his part, replied that he rejected an intellectual-chic party as that imagined by Demuru and her supporters, who included the three founding members Franciscu Sedda, Frantziscu Sanna and Franciscu Pala, plus younger intellectuals such as Michela Murgia. During a grassroots' meeting on 12 December, Sale accused Demuru and the young guard of conspiring against him and, after this accusation, he was expelled from the party by the executive composed by Demuru's loyalists. By the end of December Sale was sure to have won the power struggle and suspended the members of the executive who had expelled him. A few days later, on 2 January 2010, the group of Demuru and Sedda finally decided to leave the party and launch a "Republican Constituent Assembly". In February the new party took the name of Project Republic of Sardinia. Moreover, on 10 February, Claudia Zuncheddu left the Red Moors, party of which she was president, and joined iRS. Zuncheddu was a regional councillor, thus the party was represented in the Council for the first time. In May 2011 Zuncheddu ran for Mayor of Cagliari and gained a mere 2.4% of the vote, but better than Demuru, who stopped at 0.4%. Zunchedda would later form her own party, Free Sardinia.
Alliance with the centre-left
In the 2014 regional election the party chose to join forces with the Italian centre-left for the first time, instead of forming a coalition with other independentist parties. Consequently, iRS lost much of his electoral support and won a mere 0.8% of the vote, but, thanks to the alliance, Sale was elected to the Regional Council. It was the first time that the iRs was able to elect a regional councillor on its own, but it lasted just a year: in July 2015 the Italian Council of State invalidated the election of four councillors, including Sale.
