Hegemony

Davide Nicolini

Hegemony is the form of political leadership based on the skillful mix of force and consent. The consent of those being led is secured through a variety of material, discursive, and institutional apparatuses through which the worldview of the ruling class is rendered universal and accepted as common sense. Hegemony refers not only to the political and economic practice used to obtain dominance, but also to the outcome of such a process, or to the particular historic condition of class supremacy achieved through a balance of coercion and consent. The term hegemony (from the Greek hegeisthai , to lead) has been used since antiquity for describing the dominance of one nation over another. Its modern use, however, derives from the 1930s analysis by the Italian Marxist political leader and scholar Antonio Gramsci. Deviating from the prevailing Marxist view of the time, which viewed ideology as a set of values and ...

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