Hegemony
Hegemony is the political, economic, and military predominance of one state over other states, either regional or global.
In Ancient Greece, hegemony denoted the politico-military dominance of the hegemon city-state over other city-states. In the 19th century, hegemony denoted the "social or cultural predominance or ascendancy; predominance by one group within a society or milieu" and "a group or regime which exerts undue influence within a society".
In theories of imperialism, the hegemonic order dictates the internal politics and the societal character of the subordinate states that constitute the hegemonic sphere of influence, either by an internal, sponsored government or by an external, installed government.
The term hegemonism denoted the geopolitical and the cultural predominance of one country over other countries, e.g., the hegemony of the Great Powers established with European colonialism in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
In international relations theories, hegemony is distinguished from empire as ruling only external but not internal affairs of other states.
Etymology
From the post-classical Latin word from the Greek word, related to the word ἡγεμών,,. Leadership, translated into Greek, renders hegemony; an alternative translation is archia – Greek common word for empire. Many scholars use the term "hegemony" interchangeably or synonymously with "empire" or "domination" and they are referred in the respective articles.Political science
In the historical writing of the 19th century, the denotation of hegemony extended to describe the predominance of one country upon other countries; and, by extension, hegemonism denoted the Great Power politics for establishing hegemony, that then leads to a definition of imperialism.In the early 20th century, the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci used the idea of hegemony to talk about politics within a given society. He developed the theory of cultural hegemony, an analysis of economic class and how the ruling class uses consent as well as force to maintain its power. Hence, the philosophic and sociologic theory of cultural hegemony analysed the social norms that established the social structures to impose their Weltanschauung —justifying the social, political, and economic status quo—as natural, inevitable, and beneficial to every social class, rather than as artificial social constructs beneficial solely to the ruling class.
From the Gramsci analysis derived the political science denotation of hegemony as leadership; thus, the historical example of Prussia as the militarily and culturally predominant province of the German Empire ; and the personal and intellectual predominance of Napoleon Bonaparte upon the French Consulate. Contemporarily, in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe defined hegemony as a political relationship of power wherein a sub-ordinate society perform social tasks that are culturally unnatural and not beneficial to them, but that are in exclusive benefit to the imperial interests of the hegemon, the superior, ordinate power; hegemony is a military, political, and economic relationship that occurs as an articulation within political discourse. Beyer analysed the contemporary hegemony of the United States at the example of the Global War on Terrorism and presented the mechanisms and processes of American exercise of power in 'hegemonic governance'.
International relations
In the field of international relations, hegemony generally refers to the ability of an actor to shape the international system. Usually this actor is a state, such as Britain in the 19th century or the United States in the 20th century. A hegemon may shape the international system through coercive and non-coercive means. According to Nuno Monteiro, hegemony is distinct from unipolarity. The latter refers to a preponderance of power within an anarchic system, whereas the former refers to a hierarchical system where the most powerful state has the ability to "control the external behavior of all other states."The English school of international relations takes a broader view of history. The research of Adam Watson was world-historical in scope. For him, hegemony was the most common order in history because many provinces of "frank" empires were under hegemonic rather than imperial rule. Watson summarized his life-long research: There was a spectrum of political systems ranging between multiple independent states and universal empire. The further a political system evolved towards one of the extremes, the greater was the gravitational pull towards the hegemonic center of the spectrum. Paul W. Schroeder drew a similar generalization that most empires involve informal, indirect rule.
Hegemony may take different forms. Benevolent hegemons provide public goods to the countries within their sphere of influence. Coercive hegemons exert their economic or military power to discipline unruly or free-riding countries in their sphere of influence. Exploitative hegemonies extract resources from other countries.
A prominent theory in International Relations focusing on the role of hegemonies is hegemonic stability theory. Its premise is that a hegemonic power is necessary to develop and uphold a stable international political and economic order. The theory was developed in the 1970s by Robert Gilpin and Stephen D. Krasner, among others. It has been criticized on both conceptual and empirical grounds. For example, Robert Keohane has argued that the theory is not a proper theory because it amounts to a series of allegedly redundant claims that apparently could not be used predictively.
A number of International Relations scholars have examined the decline of hegemons and their orders. For some, such decline tends to be disruptive because the stability that the hegemon provided gives way to a power vacuum. Others have maintained that cooperation may persist in the face of hegemonic decline because of institutions or enhanced contributions from non-hegemonic powers.
There has been a long debate in the field about whether American hegemony is in decline. As early as in the 1970s, Robert Gilpin suggested that the global order maintained by the United States would eventually decline as benefits from the public goods provided by Washington would diffuse to other states. In the 1980s, some scholars singled out Japan's economic growth and technological sophistication as a threat to U.S. primacy. More recently, analysts have focused on the economic and military rise of China and its challenge to U.S. hegemony.
Scholars differ as to whether bipolarity or unipolarity is likely to produce the most stable and peaceful outcomes. Kenneth Waltz and John Mearsheimer are among those who argue that bipolarity tends to generate relatively more stability, whereas John Ikenberry and William Wohlforth are among those arguing for the stabilizing impact of unipolarity. Some scholars, such as Karl Deutsch and J. David Singer argued that multipolarity was the most stable structure.
Scholars disagree about the sources and stability of U.S. unipolarity. Realist international relations scholars argue that unipolarity is rooted in the superiority of U.S. material power since the end of the Cold War. Liberal international relations scholar John Ikenberry attributes U.S. hegemony in part to what he says are commitments and self-restraint that the United States established through the creation of international institutions. Constructivist scholar Martha Finnemore argues that legitimation and institutionalization are key components of unipolarity.
Media and communications studies
Adopted from the work of Gramsci and Stuart Hall, in media studies and cultural studies hegemony refers to individuals or concepts that become most dominant in a culture. Building on Gramsci's ideas, Hall stated that the media is a critical institution for furthering or inhibiting hegemony.Communications studies scholars have argued that in the praxis of hegemony, imperial dominance is established by means of cultural imperialism, whereby the leader state dictates the internal politics and the societal character of the subordinate states that constitute the hegemonic sphere of influence, either by an internal, sponsored government or by an external, installed government. The imposition of the hegemon's way of life—an imperial lingua franca and bureaucracies —transforms the concrete imperialism of direct military domination into the abstract power of the status quo, indirect imperial domination. J. Brutt-Griffler, a critic of this view, has described it as "deeply condescending" and "treats people ... as blank slates on which global capitalism's moving finger writes its message, leaving behind another cultural automaton as it moves on."
Culturally, hegemony also is established by means of language, specifically the imposed lingua franca of the hegemon, which then is the official source of information for the people of the society of the sub-ordinate state. Writing on language and power, Andrea Mayr says, "As a practice of power, hegemony operates largely through language." In contemporary society, an example of the use of language in this way is in the way Western countries set up educational systems in African countries mediated by Western languages.
Historical examples
30th–27th centuries BC
The political pattern of Sumer was hegemony shifting from city to city and called King of Kish. According to the Sumerian King List, Kish established the hegemony yet before the Flood. One of the earliest literary legacies of humankind, the Epic of Gilgamesh, is a case of anti-hegemonic resistance. Gilgamesh fights and overthrows the hegemon of his world.8th–3rd centuries BC
In the Greek world of 5th century BC, the city-state of Sparta was the hegemon of the Peloponnesian League and King Philip II of Macedon was the hegemon of the League of Corinth in 337 BC. Likewise, the role of Athens within the short-lived Delian League was that of a "hegemon". The super-regional Persian Achaemenid Empire of 550 BC–330 BC dominated these sub-regional hegemonies prior to its collapse. Ancient historians such as Herodotus. Xenophon and Ephorus pioneered the use of the term hēgemonía in the modern sense of hegemony.In Ancient East Asia, Chinese hegemony existed during the Spring and Autumn period, when the weakened rule of the Eastern Zhou dynasty led to the relative autonomy of the Five Hegemons. The term is translated as lord protector, or lord of the covenants, or chief of the feudal lords and is described as intermediate between king of independent state and Emperor of All under Heaven. The hegemons were appointed by feudal lord conferences and were nominally obliged to support the King of Zhou, whose status parallel to that of the Roman Pope in the medieval Europe.
In 364 BC, Qin emerged victorious from war and its Duke Xian was named hegemon by the King of Zhou. Qin rulers did not preserve the official title of hegemon but in fact kept the hegemony over their world: "For more than one hundred years Qin commanded eight lands and brought the lord of equal rank to its court." One of the six other great powers, Wei, was annexed as early as 324 BC. From the reign of Duke Xian on, "Qin gradually swallowed up the six states until, after hundred years or so, the First Emperor was able to bring all kings under his power."
The century preceding the Qin's wars of unification in 221 BC was dominated by confrontation between the hegemonic horizontal alliance led by Qin and the anti-hegemonic alliance called perpendicular or vertical. "The political world appears as a chaos of ever-changing coalitions, but in which each new combination could ultimately be defined by its relation to Qin".
The first anti-hegemonic or perpendicular alliance was formed in 322 BC. Qin was supported by one state, Wei, which it had annexed two years previously. The remaining five great warring states of China joined in the anti-hegemonic coalition and attacked Qin in 318 BC. "Qin, supported by one annexed state, overwhelmed the world coalition." The same scenario repeated itself several times.) until Qin decisively moved from hegemony to conquests and annexations in 221 BC.