Restructuring ‘Hegemony’ in the Age of Neo-liberal Globalization (original) (raw)
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As early as the 1970s, world-systems theorists argued that the United States was in a period of hegemonic decline and claimed that this downward trend would continue in the years to come. With the stagnation of the U.S. economy, its military's defeat during the Vietnam War, and Washington's diminishing influence as evi-denced by the lack of support for its war in Iraq, the predictions of world-systems scholars seem to be coming to fruition. But for students of the world-systems tradition , the U.S. decline isn't so much a prediction as it is the unfolding of a long-term historical process that has been institutionalized in the world-economy since at least the 16 th century. ABSTRACT: Both the world-economy perspective in sociology and the world politics perspective in political science recognize the importance of examining the rise and fall of world powers, and generally agree on the main causal mechanisms responsible for the rise and fall process. However, there is much less convergence between these perspectives on the indicators used to measure the relative power of nation-states. Thus, although in agreement over theory, there is much less agreement on the identity and timing of hegemonies. This article attempts to overcome this impasse by creating a hegemony index to assess the power structure of the capitalist world-system. Though results support the world-economy view of three hegemons since the 16 th century, findings also contradict this perspective and show that England is the most powerful nation during two successive hegemonic sequences. Conclusions highlight the possibility of hegemonic resuccession, while supplementary analysis provides evidence of U.S. re-succession since the 1980s.
Theorizing the Fall of Hegemony: A Neo-Gramscian Perspective 1
Historically, hegemony has been a vital aim and feature of political units and international systems. The search for hegemony is crucial for the achievement of survival and then domination. In the context of international relations, hegemony refers to the dominant position of a particular state or group of states in the global system. The relationship between subaltern states and the hegemon has changed in proportion to their power. For this reason, the cyclical and actor behaviors of the international system that existed in the past and the current structure also contain similar and different aspects in terms of hegemony. This study aims to firstly discuss the conceptual framework concerning hegemony and the decline of hegemony. This discussion will study the fall of hegemony from a neo-Gramscian perspective. In this research work, we assume that hegemony's emergence, survival, and decline are not only based on material elements, but non-material components also play a prominent role. In this sense, we analyze the fall of liberal hegemony from three aspects: i)the weakness of the hegemon's ideology, iii) divergence among the hegemon's allies, and iii) material and non-material warfare. In conclusion, the fall of hegemony can highlight the importance of understanding the material and conceptual dimensions of power and the need to analyze the dynamics of conflict and cooperation in the global system.
Dilemmas of Operationalizing Hegemony
Hegemony in international politics is not " all of a piece. " Rather, it denotes a highly complex phenomenon which exists at a number of asymmetric levels and across a number of different dimensions. Indeed, the term itself can be considered an " essentially contested concept " (Gallie, 1955-56). The very definition of hegemony is contested. Thus any analyst's use of the term will inevitably be value-loaded in terms of both a choice of definition and the methodological implications of applying it to particular empirical phenomena. Furthermore, hegemony is not a homogeneous or holistic phenomenon. It is made up of a range of component parts, and any hypothetical synthesis with predictable implications for real-world behavior is historically educated guesswork. Its application to the complex contemporary world is fraught with hazard. Any attempt to pursue hegemony as a policy, therefore, is open to political and bureaucratic maneuvering, ideological manipulation, serious miscalculations, and potential opportunity costs. Finally, there is no such thing as perfect hegemony; hegemony is always contested by challenges from those who are left out of the hegemonic project or placed in a subordinate position (Haugaard and Newman, this volume). In the contemporary world, both the use of the term hegemony in current international relations theory and analysis, on the one hand, and attempts to operationalize it in foreign policymaking, on the other, are likely to expose the inherent contradictions of hegemony and lead to instability and opportunistic behavior.
In an age of increased academic specialization where more and more books about smaller and smaller topics are becoming the norm, this major new series is designed to provide a forum and stimulus for leading scholars to address big issues in world politics in an accessible but original manner.A key aim is to transcend the intellectual and disciplinary boundaries which have so often served to limit rather than enhance our understanding of the modern world. In the best tradition of engaged scholarship, it aims to provide clear new perspectives to help make sense of a world in flux.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies, 2019
Somewhere in between unipolar and imperial orders, hegemonies divide the continuum from anarchy to hierarchy in world politics, connoting interstate systems of the highest concentration of authority. However, depending on the author, hegemony might denote the concentration of relative capabilities in a single state, the presence of a state that seeks international leadership, general consent in the international society regarding subordination to a central order, or a combination of these phenomena. Similarly, scholars debate the extent to which the relation of authority entailed by hegemony should encompass the economic, military, and/or ideational domains. Given this multiplicity of meanings, this review of extant definitions illuminates some issues that must be addressed explicitly when dealing with this concept. Although hegemony might mean different things for different intellectual traditions, these understandings are interconnected in a family resemblance structure that has facilitated mutual intelligibility. A mapping of this network of meanings suggests that special attention needs to be paid to how scholars have thought about the capabilities that would-be hegemons have, the roles they play, and the type of response they elicit from subordinate states. It also suggests the economic, military, and ideational dimensions of hegemony should be explicitly considered in theoretical discussions. Finally, it highlights the importance of avoiding ambiguity by connecting theory with empirics and providing clear measurement strategies. Measurement is essential to delineate the geographical and temporal scope of hegemonies with more precision, to compare them, and to evaluate their effects on certain outcomes. Debates about hegemony have undergone important empirical progress throughout the decades rendering this a promising area for future research.
Hegemony and decline : Reflections on recent American experience
Sens Public, 2005
n recent decades fashionable American foreign policy analysis has oscillated between triumphalism and declinism. By triumphalism-American style-I mean the belief that our increasingly integrated world is « unipolar », that is, oriented to and led by a single political, economic and military superpower-the United States. In other words, triumphalism implies American global hegemony. By declinism-American style-I mean the belief that the United States is politically, economically, militarily and morally « overstretched », to use a term popularized by the Yale historian, Paul Kennedy, overstretched through the exertions of attempting to play the world's hegemon or « hyperpower », to use a word favored here in Paris. The linkage leading from hegemony to decline has certainly been amply studied in recent years. It has been commonplace to speak of a « declinist school » of writers. Numerous studies expatiate on the linkage between hegemony and decline. For a start, there is Paul Kennedy's grand historical argument, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, published in 1987. Decline, he recounts, has been the fate of the would-be hegemon, from Habsburg Spain, to Bourbon and Napoleonic France, to liberal Britain, and perhaps now America. Broadly speaking, the basic reasons are similar in each case. Burdened by heavy military spending and debt, the hegemonic power grows « overstretched ». It neglects and distorts and thereby weakens its economy and society. Ultimately its military strength ebbs as well. I A parallel view can be found in the writings of the noted economic historian, Charles Kindleberger. In numerous writings, perhaps most notably in The World in Depression: 1929-1939, published in 1973, Kindleberger depicts the declining hegemon as a victim of « freeriding ». For Kindleberger, exercising hegemony means providing public goods to the « world system ». Militarily, the hegemon is the ultimate upholder of security-law and order-around the world. Economically, the hegemon is the world's buyer and creditor of last resort-ready and able to step in to halt global capitalism's periodic market crises. As Kindleberger sees it, the benefits of these « public goods » are shared by all, but paid for disproportionately by the hegemon. Inevitably, over time, the free-riding beneficiaries grow relatively stronger while the overtaxed hegemon grows relatively weaker. Eventually the hegemon is no longer powerful enoughrelative to the others-to maintain its old primacy. Its beneficiaries challenge it, further increasing
From Hegemony to Post-hegemony and Back: Extimate Trajectories
Res Publica. Revista de Historia de las Ideas Políticas, 2022
Throughout the last two decades, discussions around "post-hegemony" have stimulated exchanges around different theorizations of "hegemony" and their limits-not only the one by Antonio Gramsci, but also the predominantly discursive reformulation put forward by Laclau & Mouffe. Very recently, a new article by Peter Thomas on post-hegemony (2020) is triggering new debates on the issue. In this paper, Thomas's contribution is, first, presented and discussed. In the second section, certain issues that have been recently raised from a post-hegemonic perspective vis-à-vis Thomas's intervention and beyond are thematized. These two exercises provide an opportunity to clarify further, by way of conclusion, certain issues at stake in the ensuing debate from an Essex School perspective.
NY State Political Science Associaton Conference, 2019
What follows is an exploratory piece making connections between different usages of hegemony and seeking answers to the following questions: First, how is hegemony used in the literature? Second, how is Gramscian hegemony reflected in the historical development of hegemony at the transnational level? Third, noting there is no transnational state that has a monopoly of political violence/coercion, how would one characterize the networks of influence and the ensemble of institutions that perform the functions of the state at the transnational level? Fourth, what functions does the hegemon (individual state or historic bloc) perform that deems it worthy of prestige? Fifth, what are salient examples of hegemonic failures? Sixth, looking specifically at the US, what periods do we see? Seventh, has the current administration and its more recent predecessors squandered American Hegemony? In addition, I offer a tentative framework for categorizing all of this in form of a chart or 4 x 3 table. On one axis are the 3 dimensions of the state – relative power vis-a-vis other states (called 'height'), organizational capacity (called 'depth' referring to institutional density more than secret cabals) and the extent and strength of domestic support (called 'breadth'). On the axis are the 4 aspects of hegemony: the politico-military, the poltico-economic and the poltico-cultural, plus the wild card of technology. Here are the approaches I use to provide approximate answers to these related questions: First, expanding on William I Robinson (2005), who identifies 4 overlapping conceptions of hegemony, I add the original Greek conception and include both Hegemonic Stability Theory and Gramscian IPE frameworks. This results in 6 or maybe 7 ways in which the term is used, depending on how you count and categorize. Second, focusing on Gramsci's insight that the division between 'Civil Society' and 'State' is merely analytical, not organic and that is a methodological misstep to take this as a concrete aspect of reality, I begin to work towards a unified concept of hegemony. The ultimate aim: the GUT of Hegemony. Third, using Gramsci's idea of an extended state or integral state and applying the concept at the Transnational level. Fourth, drawing on Gramsci's definition of hegemony as“spontaneous” consent that is“historically” caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group Brian Ford; bpford1@gmail.com / NYSPSA 2019 – “Comparing Theories of Hegemony from the Greeks to Gramsci and Beyond: Towards a Grand Unified Theory” / Page 4 of 95 enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production, I extend to security and other concerns which can also lead to a spontaneous consent. This thus leads back to unifying the concept of hegemony. Fifth, describing hegemonic failures from Athens during the Peloponnesian Wars to Europe in the early 1900s to the United States since the 1980s, I make a lot of half-bake suggestions that I hope will improve with a little bit more time in the oven. Sixth, suggesting 5 periods of American Hegemony: Reluctant Hegemon – 1915 to 1932; Retreat – 1930 to 1941; Leader of the Free World – 1939 to 1991; Leader of Free Markets– 1980 to 2008; The Essential and Overextended Country – 2001 to present, I argue that American hegemony is certainly diminished, but its end is hardly a foregone conclusion. Seventh, providing a simple answer – the current administration is not squandering but disavowing American Hegemony. As for previous administrations, they all have ways in which they have squandered this role and I explore this, hoping to glean lessons from the future, but focusing on what the British called the Great Game Finally, providing a framework to help pull this all together in the form of a 3 by 4 box, one axis devoted to a metaphor – the three dimensions of the state. Its 'height' ua the dimension by which we compare it to other states. Its 'depth' is its ability to build up its organizational apparatus. Its 'breadth' is the degree to which it has support among. The other axis is broken up by the functional areas of the state – politico-strategic, politico-economic, politico-educational and, lastly, its interactions with technology. Wish me luck.