HEGEMONIC POWER

Hegemonic Power

Is the US still a hegemonic power?

Hegemonic Group

A hegemonic group is a commanding group that exercises its authority over others against their will. This term can be used in a perspective of international relations in which multiple nation-states are involved. In this case, a nation-state is considered to be hegemonic when it implements an inconsistent amount of cultural, economic, and political power over others.  A hegemonic group does not exert its power by simply superimposing its ideology over society at large. Hegemony involves non discursive processes, but most importantly it is the ruling of society as a whole. A hegemonic class is one that has succeeded in bringing about a settlement of varied aims. Hence, hegemony is an all-encompassing mode of leadership that manifests itself in ideological, political, and economic realms (Lake, 1996, 1).

Gramsci Theory

In the late 1800s Marxist brought the concept of hegemony. His conceptions focused on the political management and dominance by the ruling of subordinate class through systems related to politics, economics and material distribution. The term hegemony was coined by Antonio Gramsci in his work named 'Selections from the Prison Notebooks'. This work was completed between 1929 and 1935. Meanwhile, Gramsci was imprisoned because he participated in the development of the nation's communist party. He extended the work of Marxist by focusing more on capitalist struggle, analysis of intellectual struggle and the role of external forces such as mass media. He suggested that the majority should remain in their exploited situation because society didn't allow them to change their way of living. Due to the lack of conception, they were unable to find out a way to challenge the current situation. Gramsci freed Marxist concept of economic determinism as permitted autonomic people and placed them within a system of open authority that encompassed the state, the media, and societal relations (Rosamond, 2006, 1).

Gramsci's concept of hegemony without damaging the fundamentals of Marxist theory involves a good deal of theoretical reconstruction. First, the notion of hegemony contradicts economic determinism. Conferring the economic system a critical role, economic determinism considers the superstructure of society as phenomenal, playing a minimal role in the social-historical process. Gramsci saw that politics, idea systems, religion, and the state are more than mere reflections of the economic structure. Consequently, to give ideational and related institutions their proper place, Gramsci made a distinction between two levels of superstructure: civil society and political society. Sometimes Gramsci refers to the state as an institution in which elements of both civil and political societies are incorporated (Gill, 1990, 1).

Second, the concept of hegemony undermines a simplistic approach to constructing a substitute social order. Among other things, it dispels the illusion of transforming society by just conquering the state, especially under circumstances where civil society has become a formidable social terrain and where the state vigorously maneuvers to win the active consent of the ruled. Borrowing military metaphors, Gramsci, accordingly, spelled out two distinct strategies: war of maneuver and war of position. War of maneuver refers to the process of conquering political power; war of position is a multidimensional course ...