Hegemony And International Relations - Essay Example

Normally, countries will ‘inherit’ this dominating characteristics or factors from its history. However, certain countries will go in search of certain factors. That is, dominating factors like status, reputation, economy, etc. will be normally sought by all countries, but these are the key factors that would make countries dominate in the negative sense, and thereby have hegemony. This concept of hegemony was studied and interpreted by many thinkers all over the world, particularly in relation to international relations.

So, this paper will discuss Antonio Gramsci’s notion of hegemony and how it is useful for the study of International relations. Antonio Gramsci’s experiences in Russia made him realize that Marxist theory of power was based on force and coercion to control and govern people. So, he took an opposite stance and hypothesized that most of the time, political power in liberal democracies is exercised not through government use of force, but through a dominant world-view, or ideology. However, he continues and takes a common stance by stating that a country needs both these controls for it to survive and stand up, with Hegemony being the subtle end result.

“Domination, which referred to direct physical coercion by police and armed forces and hegemony which referred to both ideological control and more crucially, consent” (Burke 1999). In the narrow sense, it applies mainly to a nations political domination over another nation or group. It is a set of strategies implemented through various means like violence, media power, economic power, etc, etc… by the dominant groups in order to secure the consent of the subordinate groups directly or indirectly, legally or illegally.