24/01/2023, 00:51 Hegemony | Definition, Theory, & Facts | Britannica

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By Ben Rosamond • Article History

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hegemony, Hegemony, the dominance of one group over another,

often supported by legitimating norms and ideas. The
term hegemony is today often used as shorthand to describe the
relatively dominant position of a particular set of ideas and their
associated tendency to become commonsensical and intuitive,
thereby inhibiting the dissemination or even the articulation of
alternative ideas. The associated term hegemon is used to identify
the actor, group, class, or state that exercises hegemonic power or
that is responsible for the dissemination of hegemonic ideas.

Hegemony derives from the Greek term hēgemonia (“dominance

over”), which was used to describe relations between city-states. Its
use in political analysis was somewhat limited until its intensive
discussion by the Italian politician and Marxist philosopher
Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci’s discussion of hegemony followed from
his attempts to understand the survival of the capitalist state in the

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most-advanced Western countries. Gramsci understood the

predominant mode of rule as class rule and was interested in
explaining the ways in which concrete institutional forms and
material relations of production came to prominence. The
supremacy of a class and thus the reproduction of its associated
mode of production could be obtained by brute domination or
coercion. Yet, Gramsci’s key observation was that in advanced
capitalist societies the perpetuation of class rule was achieved
through largely consensual means—through intellectual and moral
leadership. Gramsci’s analysis of hegemony thus involves an
analysis of the ways in which such capitalist ideas are disseminated
and accepted as commonsensical and normal. A hegemonic class is
one that is able to attain the consent of other social forces, and the
retention of this consent is an ongoing project. To secure this
consent requires a group to understand its own interests in relation
to the mode of production, as well as the motivations, aspirations,
and interests of other groups. Under capitalism, Gramsci observed
the relentless contribution of the institutions of civil society to the
shaping of mass cognitions. Via his concept of the national-popular,
he also showed how hegemony required the articulation and
distribution of popular ideas beyond narrow class interests.

Gramsci’s analysis of bourgeois hegemony was grounded in detailed

historical analysis, but it also carried clear implications for
revolutionary socialist strategy. The acquisition of consent before
gaining power is an obvious implication, and here Gramsci offered a
distinction between two strategies: war of maneuver (in essence a
full frontal assault on the bourgeois state) and war of position
(engagement with and subversion of the mechanisms of bourgeois
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ideological domination). But it is important to recognize that

Gramsci understood hegemony not simply in terms of ideas but also
in relation to processes of production.

One of the most extensive applications of Gramsci’s conception of

hegemony has been to the analysis of international relations and
international political economy, via the so-called transnational
historical materialism. Scholars within this tradition have been
careful to distinguish their project from the way hegemony has been
used within orthodox (predominantly) realist international
relations, or IR (see international relations, study of). In state-
centred IR analysis, hegemony denotes the existence within the
international system of a dominant state or group of states. In the
branch of realist analysis known as hegemonic stability theory, the
presence of a hegemon (say, Britain in the 19th century and the
United States after 1945) generates patterns of stability within the
international system. The hegemon has a self-interest in the
preservation of the system and is, therefore, prepared to underwrite
the system’s security with its military might. At the same time, the
hegemon is responsible for the formulation of the rules that govern
interaction within the international system.

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The transnational historical materialist school sees states as

important components of hegemonic orders but associates
hegemony with the economic, political, and social structures that
facilitate particular patterns of production within the world
economy. These world orders function via the propagation of rules
and norms, many of which are given legitimacy through
international organizations and institutions and of which the most
crucial tend to govern the conduct of monetary and trade relations.
International institutions are thus seen as either conduits for the
legitimation of particular regimes of capitalist accumulation or
devices to absorb potentially counter-hegemonic ideas and social
forces. Thus, for instance, the hegemonic order of the 19th century
was underwritten by institutions such as the gold standard and
norms such as free trade, as well as by British military power and
the global reach of the British imperium.

Ben Rosamond

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