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- Oxford Public International Law - Hegemony (Oct. 17, 2026)
hegemony
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What does the word 'hegemony' mean in political science?
In political science, "hegemony" refers to the dominance of one group over others, often reinforced by accepted ideas and norms. The term describes a situation where a particular set of ideas becomes so dominant that they are seen as common sense, making it hard for alternative ideas to spread or even be considered.
The concept of hegemony is used to describe the controlling power or influence that one group or idea has over others. It is associated with ideas of ascendancy, domination, and supremacy.
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How can one country have hegemony over others?
Hegemony is when one group has dominance over others, often supported by widely accepted ideas. A country can achieve hegemony through military strength, economic influence, and the propagation of its cultural and political values. This involves establishing rules and norms that benefit the dominant country, often facilitated by international organizations. The hegemon may also use its power to ensure the stability and security of the international system, further solidifying its hegemonic position. Hegemony can be maintained through consent and intellectual leadership, where the dominant power's ideas are seen as normal.
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What is the difference between hegemony and direct control (like colonization)?
Hegemony is the dominance of one group over another, often maintained through consent rather than force. It involves the spread and acceptance of certain ideas until they become common sense, making alternative ideas difficult to consider.
Direct control, such as cultural imperialism, involves the active imposition of one community's culture on another, often through military intervention, law, and education. Colonizers believe in the superiority of their own way of life and seek to eradicate the culture of the colonized.
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What are some ways countries show or achieve hegemony besides military force?
Hegemony, or dominance, extends beyond military force through intellectual and moral leadership, where a dominant group gains consent from others by shaping ideas and norms that become common sense. This involves understanding various groups' interests and disseminating ideas beyond narrow interests. Hegemonic stability can arise when a dominant state formulates rules and norms, often through international organizations, influencing global economic, political, and social structures. Control over mass communication and the propagation of popular culture also play a significant role.
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Can hegemony exist in areas besides politics, such as culture or the economy?
Yes, hegemony extends beyond politics to culture and economics. Hegemony is the dominance of one group over another, often reinforced by accepted ideas that make the arrangement seem normal.
Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci examined how capitalist states maintain power through consent rather than just force. This is achieved through intellectual and moral leadership, where dominant ideas are spread and accepted as common sense.
In international relations, hegemony involves economic, political, and social structures that enable specific production patterns in the global economy. These structures operate through established rules and norms, often legitimized by international organizations, particularly in monetary and trade relations. Examples of hegemony include the prevalence of American popular culture worldwide.
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How have examples of hegemony changed throughout history or in modern times?
Hegemony refers to the dominance of one group over another, often maintained through legitimizing norms and ideas. The term originates from the Greek word for "dominance over" and was notably discussed by Antonio Gramsci, who explored how capitalist states maintain power through consent rather than just coercion.
Historically, the British Empire in the 19th century exemplifies hegemony through its vast control over territories and populations, facilitated by its economic, political, and social influence. In modern international relations, the United States' post-1945 role as a hegemon demonstrates how a dominant state can shape the international system and its rules. These examples illustrate the evolution and application of hegemonic power across different eras.
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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 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 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.
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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. 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.
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.