Concept of Hegemony

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THE CONCEPT OF HEGEMONY AND HOW IT WAS APPLIED TO BRITAIN’S INTERNATIONAL ROLE IN THE 19TH CENTURY Hegemony is a concept used in much of the critical social sciences, but in International relations, it has historically been associated with realist theories of International relations . This paper aims to explain the concept of hegemony and how it was applied to Britain’s international role in the 19th century. But first, one needs to have a balanced understanding of the concept and how it was developed. Historically, the term hegemony was used by Marxists such as Vladimir Lenin to show the political leadership of the working class in a democratic revolution . However, the analysis of the concept was formulated and developed by Italian writer and philosopher, Antonio Gramsci, who produced one of the best known account of hegemony. The importance of structural hegemony was originated from his works and in the writings of later writers like Immanuel Wallerstein. In his writings, Gramsci explain why predicted communist revolutions had not occurred where they were most expected in industrialised Europe. He argued that the failure of the workers to set up an anti-capitalist revolution was due to the successful capture of the workers’ ideology, self-understanding and organizations by the ruling(hegemonic) culture . To Gramsci, hegemony consists of socio-political power that flows from enabling the spontaneous consent of the populace through intellectual or moral authority as employed by the subalterns of the state . Wallerstein later applied Gramsci’s idea of hegemony to the international system. ‘‘He described the system that existed in the 16th century as a capitalist world economy of different polities in which elites in core states manage economic and political relations between states in such a way as to maintain their position relative to semi-peripheral and
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