Recasting Grasmci and IR

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Recasting Gramsci in international politics

OWEN WORTH*

Abstract. Gramscian theory has had a profound influence on critical and Marxist thoughtwithin International Relations (IR), particularly in bringing an alternative understanding tothe realist concept of hegemony. Despite these developments much Gramscian theoryremains developed within the often narrow sub-discipline of International Political Economy(IPE), with Gramscian scholars such as Stuart Hall, Raymond Williams and Ernesto Laclaufrom diverse disciplines outside of IR largely ignored. This article argues that Gramsciantheory needs to be re-thought so that it moves away from the Coxian dominated ontology

that it is currently situated within, towards one which both provides a more open theory ofglobal hegemony and engages more with civil societal areas that have often been ignored bythose within IPE.

Owen Worth is a Lecturer of International Relations at the Department of Politics andPublic Administration, University of Limerick. He is the author of Hegemony, InternationalPolitical Economy and Post-Communist Russia (Ashgate, 2005) and a number of co-editedbooks. His recent work has been published in journals such as International Politics,Globalizations, Third World Quarterly and Capital and Class (of which he is managingeditor). He can be contacted at: {[email protected]}.

Introduction: recasting Gramsci in international politics

Gramscis entry into international politics appeared as a counter-argument to

conventional thinking both within the theoretical academic discipline of Inter-

national Relations (IR) and those working in the practical realm of high

intergovernmental politics. For those outside the discipline of IR, Gramscis

concept of hegemony had a socio-cultural significance in the manner in which it

explained how class relationships are harmonised under a specific mode ofproduction.1 Hegemony in international politics however has been less quick to

develop the subtlety that Gramsci brought to the concept. Indeed for much

orthodox IR theory, hegemony remains a key concept in understanding how

* An earlier version of this article was presented at a special set of panels at the ECPR conference inPisa, September 2007 to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of Gramscis death. I would liketo thank Mark Mcnally, Pat Devine, Jules Townshend, Adam Morton, Gerry Strange, Barry Husseyand Kyle Murray and the Review of International Studies anonymous reviewers for their usefulcontributions towards an earlier version of this piece.

1 For an illustration of this within the wider area of Political Science, see both Ann Showstack-Sassoon edited collection, (ed.) Approaches to Gramsci (London: Readers and Writers, 1982) and her

explanatory monograph, Gramscis Politics (New York: St Martins, 1980), and also Chantel Mouffe(ed.), Gramsci and Marxist Theory (London: Verso, 1979). For more specialist accounts on the roleof culture in Gramscis work see Stuart Hall, The Hard Road to Renewal (London: Verso, 1988) andRaymond Williams Culture and Materialism (London: Verso, 1980).

Review of International Studies (2010), 36, 120 Copyright British International Studies Associationdoi:10.1017/S0260210510000318

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dominant states shaped and control specific historical system.2 The move or what

has often been called the critical or neo-Gramscian turn in IR towards

widening the understanding of hegemony in global politics should not therefore be

underestimated. Indeed since seminal works by Cox, Gill, van der Pijl, Murphy and

Tooze and Rupert (amongst others) moved Gramsci into the realms of the

international (see the collection by Gill, 1993 in particular), a whole generation ofnew scholars have followed in their footsteps and, as a result have reconceptualised

the notion of power and significantly moved beyond the state-centrism of

traditional IR thinking.3

Despite this positive move, there has been a lack of theoretical innovation in the

development of Gramscian research within IR. Whilst concerns have been made

over its validity,4 its uneasy proximity to liberalism,5 and its Euro-Centricism,6 less

has been made in actually analysing the concepts used themselves. In addition, even

less has been done in looking at the developments of Gramscian discourse in other

disciplines, often resulting in a rather narrow and restricted application of key

Gramscian concepts and in particularly in the central appliance of hegemony. Thisarticle will argue that Gramscian theory in IR has reached a cul-de-sac in its present

form and requires new directions if it is going to adequately analyse the growing

complexities that exist within global politics. In response, this article will suggest a

number of alternative directions for Gramscian methodology in IR. In particular, it

will argue that the idea and concept of hegemony requires re-thinking if it wishes to

serve its purpose and develop an alternative epistemological understanding of global

politics which it originally committed itself to achieve.7

The neo-Gramscian turn

Gramscis arrival in IR is usually traced back to Robert Coxs two hugely

influential interventions written in the early 1980s and Stephen Gills subsequent

2 Whilst there is a wide range of literature on hegemony and leadership in International Relations,perhaps the most renowned is Robert Keohanes After Hegemony (Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1984), which may initially been conceived as a critique of the requirement of a hegemony,nevertheless provides a useful and thorough explanatory account of the notion of conventionalhegemony. For a popular modern-day understanding, see Niall Ferguson, Hegemony or Empire?,Foreign Affairs, 5 (2003).

3 See Robert W. Cox, Approaches to World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996);Stephen Gill (ed.), Gramsci, historical materialism and international relations (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1993); Stephen Gill, Power and Resistance in the New World Order (Basingstoke:Palgrave, 2003);. Mark Rupert, Producing Hegemony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) andIdeologies of Globalization (London: Routledge, 2000); Kees van der Pijl, The making of an AtlanticRuling Class (London: Verso, 1984) and Transnational Classes and International Relations (London:Routledge, 1998); Craig Murphy and Roger Tooze (eds), The New International Political Economy(Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 1991).

4 Randall Germain and Michael Kenny, Engaging Gramsci: International Relations theory and thenew Gramscians, Review of International Studies, 24 (1998), pp. 321.

5 Peter Burnham, Neo-Gramscian Hegemony and International Order, Capital and Class, 45 (1991),pp. 7395.

6 John Hobson, Is Critical Theory Always For the White West and For Western Imperialism? Beyond

Westphilian, Towards a Post-Racist, International Relations, Review of International Studies, 33(2007), pp. 91116.

7 Stephen Gill, Epistemology, Ontology and the Italian School, in Gramsci, historical materialismand international relations, pp. 2148.

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coedited volume entitled Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Rela-

tions. In these early articles Cox distinguishes between what he terms problem-

solving and critical IR.8 The former, he argues, uses an historical analysis to

show how one state asserts its hegemony and stabilises the overall state-system. As

such, British supremacy in the 19th century and contemporary post-war US

dominance provide examples of successful forms of stability, whilst eras whereleading states have competed for hegemonic control have resulted in unrest and

conflict (100 Years War, first half of the 20th Century, etc). The problem-solver

would thus conclude that international stability coincides with periods of where

one state appears to influence and control the international system.9 Cox argues

that such arguments negates the process of history and limited any scope for the

potential of transformation. In response, Cox suggests that a critical position

would examine how dominant states are configured and how they transport ideas

and construct institutional structures that embed and complement such ideas.10

Thus, Gramscis concepts of hegemony and historic blocs are employed to provide

a critical alternative to orthodox readings of state-centric power in InternationalRelations. His main objective was to engage with Gramsci as a means to move

beyond the narrow scope of structural realism that was prominent in IR at the

time11 and develop new forms of normative understanding.

Here Cox has been most successful. Not only has there been an explosion of

post-positivist literature within IR itself, but with it a sophisticated development of

Gramscian theory. In the introduction of his highly influential edited volume, Gill

illustrated the need to expand upon simplistic understandings of the state and

state-system by reminding us how Gramsci demonstrated the complexities that

exist between state and civil society and as such are equally as complex at the

international level. As such, a Gramcsian ontology should be able to investigatethese complexities and seek to develop questions on the workings and distribution

of power and ideology within global society.12 Yet despite this, Gramscian theory

has often favoured state-centric forms of analysis that have often ignored some of

the more complex issues behind Gramscis work. Much material has been produced

across Europe to demonstrate how Gramscis perception of hegemony and historic

8 Cox, Approaches to World Order, pp. 8791.9 Ibid., pp. 917; 1024. Commonly referred to as hegemonic stability theory, this position emerged

from International Economics and in particular from Albert Hirschmann and was thus imported to

IR, through its sub-discipline of International Politics Economics (IR), before becoming extended tostudies on international security and defence following the end of the Cold War. Initial debates werecarried in influential mainstream IR/IPE journals such as International Organizations and Inter-national Studies Quarterly, before recently moving to conservative journals such as National Interestand Foreign Affairs. Examples of earlier debates can be seen in Stephen Krasner (ed.), InternationalRegimes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983); Charles Kindleberger, Dominance and Leadershipin the International Economy, International Studies Quarterly, 25 (1981), pp. 24254 and BruceRussett, The Mysterious Case of Vanishing Hegemony: or is Mark Twain Really Dead?,International Organization, 39 (1985), pp. 20731; whilst John Ikenberry, Illusions of Empire:Defining the New American Order, Foreign Affairs, 5 (2004), and Niall Ferguson, Hegemony orEmpire can be seen as being supportive of the latter.

10 Ibid., pp. 13540.11 Kenneth Waltzs Theory of International Politics (Mass: Addison Wesley, 1979) was the most

prominent text in the discipline at the time which argued that states should be regarded merely asunits in a structure (International system), with their relevant dependent upon the way they areordered within that system.

12 Gill, Epistemology, Ontology and the Italian School, pp. 306.

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blocs can be used to explain the internationalisation (and subsequent globalisa-

tion) of the state, through the emergence and consolidation of a transnational

capitalist class.13 Other studies, largely with their origins in North America, locate

the processes of global hegemony and the fashioning of neoliberal common-sense as

one that is constitutionalised at the institutional level within International

Organisations such as from the UN institutions, the World Trade Organisation,the Trilateral Commission, etc.14 Such studies are often empirically rich and

contain interesting ideas, but also make generalisations that in places are guilty of

structural reductionism. In addition, they often do not necessarily expand upon the

theoretical work tentatively offered by Cox and those involved with Gills

collection, or indeed address the shortcomings and problems that they contain.15

In general terms therefore, the work by Cox and Gill have been developed in

two different ways one placing emphasis on the notion of the importance of

World Order and the other focussing on the maintenance of this through the

formation of transnational class formation. An attempt to synthesise current

themes and subsequent criticism, yet placing them back inside an orthodoxMarxist framework has also recently emerged.16 Before demonstrating how and

why it is essential to move beyond these positions, it is necessary to briefly examine

them.

World order

Perhaps the central feature of neo-Gramscian IR theory has been that of World

Order, which is possibly Coxs most influential and original concept.17

The idea ofWorld Order is one in which embedded norms and laws are transposed onto the

international stage. Originally outlined in his early 1980s Millennium articles and

then fully constructed in his 1987 book Power, Production and World Order, a

World Order represents a specific era, or if you like historic bloc, that was

determined through social forces, organised though a combination of production,

ideology and institutionalism. In this way a World Order could account for

international economic social and cultural trends and contributes towards what

Williams termed the hegemonic saturation of everyday life.18 Explained by Cox,

World Order could historically account for transformation at the global level and

also explain the nature and working conditions of international institutions. For as

13 Henk Overbeek, Transnational historical materialism: theories of transnational class formation andworld order, in Ronen Palan (ed.), Global Political Economy (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 16884.

14 See for example, Stephen Gills case study on the formation of the Trilateral Commission, AmericanHegemony and the Trilateral Commission (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); CraigMurphys study on International Organizations, International Organizations and Industrial Change(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); and Mark Ruperts Ideologies of Globalization, thatprovides a focus on the hegemonic role of the World Trade Organization.

15 Owen Worth, The Poverty and Potential of Gramscian Thought in International Relations,International Politics, 45 (2008); Germain and Kenny, Engaging Gramsci; Burnham, Neo-Gramscian Hegemony and International Order; Hobson, Is Critical Theory Always For the WhiteWest and For Western Imperialism?

16

Worth, Ibid.17 Cox, Approaches to World Order, pp. 85144; Robert W. Cox, Power, Production and World Order(New York: Columbia University Press, 1987).

18 Williams, Culture and Materialism, p. 37.

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Murphy explains, contrary to conventional wisdom International Organisations

and Global Governance are not new developments in International Relations but

act in accordance with dominant norms of a specific order.19

Since the end of the Cold War, attention has naturally been given to the

economic dominance of neoliberalism and political dominance of globalisation,

and how these twin developments have re-shaped the contemporary World Order.Thus the contemporary world order is seen as one in which the principles of

neoliberalism have been realised through a combination of inter-related processes,

so that its influence has shaped state and institutional policy in often unchallenging

ways. Gill, for example goes so far as suggesting that the contemporary World

Order is one where a new form of constitutionalism is being fashioned one

which recognises the supremacy of disciplinary neoliberalism and market civilis-

ation as the only viable method of governance.20 Empirical studies have often

reinforced this argument, with studies demonstrating the primacy of neoliberalism

in the form of reconstruction in the developing world,21 and within the UN system

of governance.22 Similarly, Mark Ruperts Ideologies of Globalization hasbeen most successful in demonstrating how neoliberalism has been constructed,

shaped and contested within civil society, through the common sense of

globalisation.23

A less totalising reading to Gills can be seen in the theoretical study of new

regionalism. Here, Coxs notion of World Order is applied to the emerging

development of regional economic and political blocs within international politics.

Writers such as Gamble, Strange and Hettne endorse the historical trajectory that

Cox suggests, but do not necessarily suggest that every structural facet is inspired

through disciplinary neoliberalism although they acknowledge that at present,

the trend within International Political Economy and regional development hasbeen geared towards this in recent years.24 Instead they argue that the nature of

a World Order is an open one, with elements within it consistently contesting its

hegemonic legitimacy. Regionalism may (and equally may not) provide a vehicle

to contest neoliberalism, especially once regional strategies begin to contest the

US-inspired neoliberal legacy. Obvious regional contenders referred to here

include the EU and the emergence of a more integrated and cohesive Latin

America.

19 Murphy, International Organizations and Industrial Change, pp. 4980.20 Stephen Gill, Globalisation, Market Civilisation and Disciplinary Neoliberalism, Millennium, 24

(1995), pp. 399423.21 Enrico Augelli and Craig Murphy, Americas quest for supremacy and the Third World: A Gramscian

analysis (London: Pinter, 1988); Pasha, Mustapha and James Mittelman, Out of UnderdevelopmentRevisited: Changing Global and the remaking of the Third World (New York: St. Martins Press, 1997).

22 Kelley Lee, A neo-Gramscian Approach to international organisation: an expanded analysis ofcurrent reforms to UN development activities, in James Macmillan and Andrew Linklater (eds),Boundaries in Question: New Directions in International Relations (London: Pinter, 1995), pp. 14462;Owen Worth, Health for All?, in J. Abbott and O. Worth (eds), Critical Perspectives onInternational Political Economy (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 13959.

23 Rupert, Ideologies of Globalization.24 Andrew Gamble, Regional Blocs, World Order and the New Medievalism, in Mario Telo (ed.),

European Union and the New Regionalism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), pp. 2139; B. Hettne,

Regionalism and World Order, in Mary Farrell, Bjorn Hettne and Luk van Langenhove (eds),Global Politics of Regionalism (London: Pluto, 2005), pp. 26987; Gerard Strange, The Left againstEurope? A Critical Engagement with New Constitutionalism and Structural Dependency Theory,Government and Opposition, 41 (2006), pp. 197229.



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Transnational classes

If World Order provides a general framework to understand how hegemony is

framed within international politics, then the concept of the transnational capitalist

class is used as a method to explain how a particular order is constructed. Here,

empirical research is given to how a capitalist class in one particular state forgeslinks with another, creating mutual interests and as such consolidate specific class

divisions. Historically, much work is given to the Anglo-American business and

banking groups that emerged at the turn of the 20th century and pluralised their

Lockean visions of the separation between state and civil society.25 Simply put

therefore, international hegemony is referred to as a form of class rule based on

consent rather than coercion and on accommodation of subordinate interests

rather than on their repression.26 Transnational classes have in recent years moved

towards embarking upon a coordinated project based upon the neoliberal model of

globalisation, championed by Anglo-American elites in the 1980s. Such a class

was not merely situated in the US/UK, but has historically emerged within anumber of industrial countries and cemented through elitist international organi-

sations, ranging from the masons to the Bildenberg Conferences and the Trilateral

Commission.27 However its development and hegemonic influence has been more

notable since its internationalisation has become more prominent through the

emergence of neoliberal economics. Thus, for those that subscribe to the logic of

the transnational capitalist class, international hegemony is processed through the

consensual relationship forged between the transnational elites and respective

national subordinate classes.

Like the more explicitly Coxian interpretations of World Order, the concept of

the transnational capitalist class has been used to understand regional integration,yet unlike the former their arguments complement Gills New Constitutionalism.

Here, the EU can be seen as a construction that was initially conceived by

American-European elites to starve off the threat of Communism during the Cold

War,28 before emerging as a transnational class struggle between neo-mercantilist

and neoliberal forces. The recent development of EMU, the Copenhagen criteria

for EU membership and subsequent enlargement suggests that the latter has not

only gained supremacy, but has managed to institutionally embed this, minimising

potential alternatives.29

One of the problems with analysing the rise of such a transnational class is that

much of the historical development of the concept seems to be based uponmeta-narrative assumption, rather than on any substantial claim of how such

classes have been formed across national barriers into a coherent whole.30 The

25 Kees van der Pijl, Transnational Classes and International Relations.26 Henk Overbeek, Transnational historical materialism: theories of transnational class formation and

world order, p. 175.27 Kees van der Pijl, Transnational Class Formation, in S. Gill and J. Mittelman (eds), Innovation and

Transformation in International Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 1237.28 van der Pijl, The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class.29 Baastian van Apeldoorn, Transnationalisation and the Restructuring of Europes socio-Economic

Order, International Journal of Political Economy, 28 (1998), pp. 1253; B. van Apeldoorn, J.

Drahokoupil and L. Horn (eds), Contradictions and Limits of Neoliberal European Governance(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008).

30 This was one of the charges levelled by Germain and Kenny. Indeed much of van derPijls later claims made in Transnational Classes and International Relations demonstrate these

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most interesting and ambitious account that attempts to address these problems

has come from William Robinson and his notion of the transnational state and it

is this departure point that might offer one avenue of alternative exploration.

Robinson argues that one way of understanding the composition of transnational

classes is to view them from within a transnational state. As globalisation has

provided the basis where global markets and super-structural institutions have beenformed, then one can conceive of a transnational state. The deregulation of the

economy by states has thus allowed for an establishment of a corporate elite that

has forged different hegemonic relationships with national subaltern classes across

the global spectrum.31 What Robinsons analysis of transnational classes differs

from those drawn on the lines conceived by van der Pijl as it attempts to move

beyond the state-centricity of the Hobbesian/Lockeian hegemonic rivalry towards

a more international openness of class analysis. Whilst there are obvious problems

with the rejection of the nation-state in an analysis of international hegemony,32

Robinsons work has allowed us to do is to imagine a new method of looking at

international hegemony vis--vis the structure of transnational classes in a way thatmoves beyond the configuration of the state-system and something alternative

usages of Gramsci might wish to revisit.

Back to basics

Whilst there have been a number of criticisms levelled against neo-Gramscian

accounts within IR, the response has been to re-instate Gramsci back within the

realms of Marxist orthodoxy.33

This move has obviously differed from develop-ments in other subjects within Humanities and the Social Sciences, where the

invention of British Cultural Studies and the input of bottom-up research from

Thompson et al. became influential.34 However some neo-Gramscian critiques in

IR argued that hegemony at an international level could not be conceived of in

the same manner as it was in the nation-state as the international arena lacked

a concrete hierarchical form in which hegemony could be constructed.35 This

is a reasonable point as both the conceptualisation of World Order and the

shortcomings even more. See Worth, Poverty and Potential of Gramscian Thought in International

Relations.31 This is demonstrated across Robinsons work and explored perhaps most precisely in William

Robinson, Social theory and globalization: The rise of a transnational state, Theory and Society,30 (2001), pp. 157200.

32 These are perhaps best covered in Robinsons replies to various authors, including van der Pijl, seeWilliam Robinson, Global Capitalism and the Nation-State centric thinking: What we dont seewhen we do see Nation States. Responses to Arrighi, Mann, Moore, van der Pijl and Went, Scienceand Society, 65 (2002), pp. 50008.

33 This is perhaps best explained and examined in Andreas Bieler and Adam Morton, Globalisation,the state and class struggle: a Critical Economy engagement with Open Marxism, BritishJournal of Politics and International Relations, 5 (2003), pp. 46799 and further developed anddebated in Andreas Bieler, Werner Bonefeld, Peter Burnham and Adam Morton (eds), GlobalRestructuring, State, Capital and Labour: Contesting Neo-Gramscian Perspectives (Basingstoke:

Palgrave, 2006).34 E. P. Thompson, The Poverty of Theory & other essays (London: Merlin Press, 1978).35 Burnham, Neo-Gramscian Hegemony and International Order, pp. 779; Germain and Kenny,

Engaging Gramsci: International Relations theory and the new Gramscians, pp. 1012.



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transnational capitalist class fails to adequately explain how and where hegemony

is yielded. In response to this, new revisions have called for a neo-Gramscian

account of international politics that engages more empirically with the traditions

of open Marxism on the one hand and with the work of the French

structuralism of Louis Althusser and in particular of Nicos Poulantzas on the

other.36 In this way, it is argued a more concrete hierarchical foundation can bedeveloped to account for the processes of hegemony at the national and

international levels.

This back to basics move has been heavily influenced by Adam Morton who

has suggested, sometimes in collaboration with others, a new direction for

Gramscian thought in international politics. Morton engages with Burnhams

argument that Coxian-inspired neo-Gramscian readings suffer from a non-Marxist

form of pluralism, in accounting for World Order. As a response, Morton insists

that Gramscian research needs to place traditional concepts such as class struggle

back into its focal analysis, in order to restate the primacy of the economic base

in determining the productive arena for such a struggle. Thus, any attempt attransposing Gramsci to the international needs to be adequately backed by an

understanding of state and civil structures on the one hand, and of class struggle

as the engine room of production on the other.37 The result however, is a move

towards a form of critique that concerns itself more with abstract economism than

it does with agency or civil consciousness. Mortons work with Bieler for example,

seems more pre-occupied with the open-Marxist model of social reproduction than

it does with Gramsci. This, despite the very fabric of the open Marxist tradition

was rooted in an economism firmly opposed not just to the French tradition of

Structuralism, and later Regulationism, but in the super-structural realm of

Gramsci himself.38 Yet, Bieler and Morton have argued that Gramscian researchneeds to engage with the competing poles of open Marxist economism and

structural Marxism in order to supplement a new form of Marxist orthodoxy, in

order to halt contemporary critical accounts slipping towards bourgeoisie

pluralism.39 As a consequence, Gramscian theory appears to have gone full circle.

For what started out as a response to World Systems inspired accounts of

structuralism in international politics40 has returned, via several debates on

hegemony, class and the state, back towards the bounded confines of reductionist

Marxism. As Germain recently argued, whilst Morton makes pains to stress the

36 It should be explicitly stressed here that open Marxism emerged not as a complementary form, butas a response to structural Marxism and in particular to the functional-structuralism of Althusser,whereby the latter is criticised for failing to stress that capitalism is built upon the sum of therelationship between the state, capital and labour, rather than on its institutional structural parts.Class struggle therefore becomes the dialectical engine for change. For an overview see JohnRoberts, From reflections to refraction: opening up Open Marxism, Capital and Class, 78 (2002),pp. 87116.

37 Adam Morton, The grimly comic riddle of hegemony in IPE: where is class struggle?, Politics, 26(2006), pp. 6272.

38 Werner Bonefeld, Richard Gunn and Kosmas Psychopelis (eds), Open Marxism Volume 1 (London:Pluto Press, 1992). For a rounded Gramscian critique of the open Marxist position on this point,see Ian Bruff, The Totalisation of Human Social Practice: Open Marxists and Capitalist Social

Relations, Foucauldians and Power Relations, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 11 (2009), pp. 33251.

39 Bieler and Morton, Globalisation, the state and class struggle, pp. 48991.40 The best and most poignant example of this remains Coxs Power, Production and World Order.

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need to avoid such vulgar class reductionism, his approach remains curiously

wedded to such a caricature.41

Hegemony whats in a name?

If therefore, Gramscian research in IR has not substantially reached its explanatory

potential, then which fresh direction should it take? Firstly, as outlined by many

of its critiques, it needs to develop a coherent and innovative concept of hegemony.

As it is, van der Pijl, and Augelli and Murphy have all made useful attempts in

accounting for the variety of practices of socio-cultural hegemony inherent within

the world system, but they do not place this within a wider conception of

international hegemony.42 Indeed, one of the main criticisms of neo-Gramscian

theory is not that such a theory has to be placed within the distinct conditions of

an international state, but that a suitable one needed to be constructed that canadequately account for the complexities inherent within (global) civil society.43

Against the arguments put forward by Morton, I argue that these complexities can

only be understood if hegemony is seen as a concept that is more-open and less

rigid in its understanding of the relationship between capital and production and

the highly complex issues of culture, identity and class that are played out at

different levels within international society.

Part of the problem with the concept of hegemony can be seen in the manner

in which it entered the literature as an explanatory tool that accompanied the wider

notion of World Order. As outlined above this was supposed to offer an alternative

to theories of leadership and dominance in problem-solving theory. Yet, for Cox,like for the problem-solving orthodoxy, a World Order does not necessarily have

to be hegemonic. Highly volatile periods, where no one state is powerful enough

to forge a hegemonic project capable of internationalising, are dubbed as being

non-hegemonic,44 often resulting in a hegemonic crisis, often accompanied by

economic and military conflict.45 This in itself does not differ much in essence from

the ideas of hegemonic leadership and stability put forward in orthodox IR. Whilst

Coxs World Order may wish to demonstrate the social, economic and cultural

dimensions towards inter-state power, it remains highly state-centric in its

conclusions.46

To illustrate this further it might be of use to look at Robinsons categorisa-tions of hegemony, which he has used in his critique of Cox. Robinson argues that

hegemony is generally used in four ways towards understanding the international,

as: a) a realist model of leadership; b) as a state within the core, as argued by

41 Randall Germain, Critical Political Economy, Historical Materialism and Adam Morton,Politics, 27 (2007), p. 132.

42 See respectively, Augelli and Murphy Americas quest for supremacy and the Third World and vander Pijl, Transnational Classes and International Relations.

43 Germain and Kenny, Engaging Gramsci.44 Cox, Approaches to World Order, pp. 1356.45 Gill, Power and Resistance, p. 56.46

Indeed in his monograph Power, Production and World Order, Cox, in line with orthodox accountson the International Political Economy, argued that American-inspired hegemony had reached itsend, although he did indicate a number of alternative world orders that would replace it. See Power,Production and World Order, pp. 273391.



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world-systems theorists; c) as ideological or consensual forms of control or d) as

the inspiration and leadership for a specific form of world order, within a historical

bloc.47 Whilst b) makes certain reference to Gramsci in its application,48 d) is

generally the favoured usage by Cox and for students of World Order and the

transnational capitalist class. Whilst it provides a novel and unique approach to

understanding the processes of hegemony at the international level through aGramscian lens, it does remain state-centric in its analysis. This is not to say that

Gramsci himself would not have favoured the approach to the international used

in d), or that this approach employs Gramscian terms in a misleading manner,49

but that its application of hegemony remains pre-occupied with understanding how

class relations within national blocs and alliances are configured so that they

conform to the hegemonic instigated by the leading classes within the dominant

state (or in terms of the trans-Atlantic alliance, dominate states).50 However, it is

approach c) that remains the most Gramscian, if only at least in the national-civil

generic sense and it is this approach that has been developed in depth outside the

discipline in IR.As noted above Robinson favours using a transnational state analysis to

develop this more generic account of hegemony by borrowing from Sklair to argue

that in terms of class organisation, globalisation has replaced the nation state in

the spatial construction of civil society.51 Thus, hegemony at the global level

should be approached in the same manner as it should at the level of the national

and the fashioning of a hegemonic relationship can be understood without the

preoccupation of territoriality. In doing so, Robinson allows us to consider the

subordination of subaltern groups closer than those that are concerned more with

the construction of state-led world orders or transnational elites.52 For hegemony,

at least in its purest Gramscian sense, is primarily a theory of the subaltern, thatis constructed at every civilisation level where a sets of norms and rules exist,

however formal/informal they may be.53 Yet, for me, there remain a few too many

47 William Robinson, Gramsci and Globalisation: From Nation-State Transnational Hegemony,Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 8 (2005), pp. 55960.

48 See for example, Thomas Ehrlich Reifer, Globalization, Hegemony & Power: Anti-systemicMovements and the Global System (Bolder: CO: Paradigm, 2004).

49 For example both Rupert and Cox make convincing textually-based arguments that any Gramscianinvolvement with International Politics must be seen only as an after-thought from the politics ofthe national. This follow Gramscis oft. quoted remarks that International Relations followsfundamental social relations, but the point of departure remains national in context, see Cox,

Approaches to World Order, p. 133 and Rupert, Producing Hegemony, pp. 2234.50 Robinson, Gramsci and Globalisation, pp, 5612.51 Leslie Sklair, The Transnational Capitalist Class (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001).52 The most recent accounts that illustrate this include (amongst many others) Andreas Bielers The

Struggle for a Social Europe: Trade Unions and EMU at Times of Global Restructuring (Manchester:Manchester University Press, 2005); Alan Cafruny and Magnus Ryner, Europe at Bay: In the Shadowof US Hegemony (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2007); Phoebe Moore, Globalisation and LabourStruggle in Asia: A neo-Gramscian critique of South Koreas Political Economy (London: I. B. Tauris,2007); Nicola Short, The International Politics of Post-Conflict in Guatemala (London: Palgrave,2008). From a variety of different geographical case-studies, each provide detailed empirical accountsof how states, regions and institutions have been cooperated into the US-led neoliberal project. Yet,these accounts largely focus on the construction of elites from the top, rather than on the variouscultural practices and processes used and articulated within the subaltern classes in order to achieve

this hegemonic consent.53 See this emphasised across both edited selections of his Prison Notebooks. See Antonio Gramsci,Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971) and Further Selections

from the Prison Notebooks (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1995).

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assumptions in Robinsons use of the transnational state in order to examine this.

I do not think that hegemony needs to be assessed in such structural conditions in

the way all facets of IR like to claim, but instead should focus more upon how

relationships of consent that are construction and deconstructed at every level of

interaction. For as outlined throughout his Prison Notebooks, Gramscis studies of

hegemony appear in multi-regional and multi-disciplinary forms. Beginning withhis starting point of Sardinian integration within the Kingdom of Italy, Gramscis

applies hegemony at different levels to Italy, England, France, Europe and the US

without limiting these experiences to national exceptionalism.54 Within these he

assesses the educational (hegemonic) binding evident within individual cultures,

transnational cultures and religion, as well as the more obvious social studies of the

economy and production. Yet these studies do not appear separate or static, but

are interrelated through a wider understanding of the relationship between the

dominant and subaltern, exploited, or to put it more explicitly the exploited and

exploited at each junction. Hegemony is thus inter-connected, but far reaching and

articulated in different forms and in different contexts. As Raymond Williamsclassically argued:

We have to emphasize that hegemony is not singular; indeed that its own internalstructures are highly complex, and have continually to be renewed, recreated and defended;and by the same token, that they can be continually challenged and in certain respectsmodified. That is why instead of speaking simply of the hegemony a hegemony, I wouldpropose a model which allows for this kind of variation and contradiction, its sets ofalternatives and its processes of change.55

International or Global hegemony like any other form, does not require a

distinct formulated set of institutional bodies in order to preside and oversee the

settlement of civil society, but is bound through a multilayered process. Thehegemonic outcomes are not defined solely by specific super-structures, but by the

larger relationship between the dominant and subordinate classes, which in turn is

shaped by production.

There are several avenues where such an approach can develop within the field

of IR, each largely taken or at least influenced by other disciplines. The first of

these can be seen in Jonathan Josephs work on hegemony. Arguing against the

Coxian approach to hegemony (or on point d) in Robinson analyses), Joseph

suggests that hegemony is not merely a process carried out through a simple

reproduction of state and civil society, or internationally between the transporta-

tion of this reproduction from the dominant state. Borrowing from Roy Bhaskarsform of critical realism, Joseph argues that hegemony is a process that exists at two

levels a conscious level, whereby ideas are conceived and a structural one that

embeds and secures the unity of the contradictions that arise from the various

practices that emerge from such ideas. In global politics therefore, there exists a

multitude of both structural and conscious hegemonic configurations/projects and

the overriding process of hegemony is to restore equilibrium at every level.56 This

54 Ibid.55

Williams, Culture and Materialism, p. 38.56 Jonathan Joseph, Hegemony: A realist analysis (London: Routledge, 2002); See also JonathanJoseph, Hegemony and the structure-agency problem in IR, Review of International Studies, 34(2008), pp. 10928.



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indeed builds upon Gramscis own assertions on the complex and contradictory

relationship between structure and agency within the fashioning of hegemony.57

What Josephs engagement with the tradition of critical realism58 does for the

concept of international hegemony is that it gives a wider explanation of how

certain groups and structures at various levels manage to rearrange and adapt to

certain overriding material conditions. For example, it can explain how certainreligious groups can become structurally organised in order to be compatible with

the processes of neoliberal capitalism. Conversely, it can explain how certain

groups/parties/states/regional bodies in the West can construct different projects

and forms of interpretation to legitimise a wider economic practice. Therefore it

provides an avenue where Gramscis often sketchy accounts of the different levels

of hegemony can be transposed onto a larger scale.

Whilst Josephs critical realist account of hegemony offers a potential way into

international politics that does not rely on the dictates of World Order, there is

also a danger here that hegemony can be misinterpreted more as a form of

dominance impressed through a relationship between structure and agency, ratherthan as one which constantly seeks to explain and understand the hegemonic

saturation between classes. This is seen more in Laclaus often controversial

reading of hegemony, which could equally be conceived on the global stage. For

Laclau, hegemony is not a relationship that is formed through a re-positioning of

class relations, but is an organic whole that articulates itself through complex

interactions with the social sphere. Laclaus most contentious claim is to explicitly

move beyond the realms of both critical and structural Marxism and into the arena

of post-structuralism, by moving hegemony beyond the confines of class struggles

towards a new form of hegemony that abandons the principles of what he (albeit

along with Mouffe) terms a relationship based around a distinct hegemoniccentre.59 This represents a distinct problem in international politics, as no matter

how far you shed traditional forms of structuralism, the realities of economic

production in shaping the processes of social relationships still remain.

However rather than dismiss Laclaus reading of hegemony out of hand as

unfounded, unformulated or even somehow sacrilegious to the Marxist canon,

there is much in his work to suggest that there is some currency in his

interpretation of international hegemony. In particular, his work on articulation

provides us ways and means in which we can extend our understanding of

identity, hegemony and resistance within global society. Laclau argues throughout

his work that systemic (hegemonic) wholes depend on the articulation of conceptswhich are not logically interlinked.60 As such, hegemonic consent is reached

through a variety of different ways and under a number of different meanings,

and is characterised through its articulation. This again gives us a novel approach

to account for the complex ways in which identity, nationhood, religion and

culture (indeed the main areas of study that Gramsci himself was focussing on)

can articulate itself, both within the nation-state and within the more

general realm of global civil society. Again, as Laclau continues in his Making

57 Joseph, Hegemony and the structure-agency problem in IR, p. 121.58

For a wider introduction to Critical Realism see Andrew Brown, Steve Fleetwood and John Roberts(eds), Marxism and Critical Realism (London: Routledge, 2002).

59 Ernesto Laclau and Chantel Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London: Verso, 1985).60 Ernesto Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory (London: New Left Books, 1977), p. 10.

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of Political Identities, both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic practices articulate

a wide variety of competing identities and ideologies, but each need to be located

into broader categorisations as either consenters or contesters.61 Indeed in a

discipline where patterns of hegemonic resistance in the form of the

anti-globalisation movement, the rise in transnational terror movements and

ethnic conflicts are gaining ever more significance, a wider concept of hegemonyshould be welcomed.

Laclaus hegemony does have some relevance in its construction, but as an

overall concept it cannot escape the charge of post-modernist insignificance, or as

Joseph aptly put it, taking hegemony to the winds of arbitrary significance. Indeed,

his later work on hegemony takes the concept even further beyond the level that

he did with Chantel Mouffe in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, further down the

often confusing cul-de-sac of radical discourse theory. However, his notion of

articulation is one worth pursuing and one which can be seen more in the work

of the British Cultural Studies theorist, Stuart Hall. Hall came to prominence in

the 1980s in Britain when he looked at the variety of contradictory practices withinThatchers Britain.62 Hall maintains the Laclauian concept of articulation and also

acknowledges that no fixed ideological relationship exists between classes vis--vis

production.63 Despite this, he rejects the notion that these can in any way operate

free of a larger defining structure of economic materialism. Instead for Hall,

hegemony is constructed in a more loosely bounded manner where a multiple set

of cultural, social and economic agents serve to both consolidate and contest

avenues on common-sense upon an open terrain, but all are nevertheless shaped

and influenced by, to use Laclaus phrase, the hegemonic centre.64

Theoretically and methodologically, Halls main input to Gramscian (or

Gramsican Marxist) theory is in his philosophy of Marxism without Guaranteesor determinism in the first instance. For Hall, hegemonic relationships and classes

are not ordered or structured upon the lines that either reductionist Marxism or

French Structural revisionism dictated, but are moulded only in the first instance

by economic materialism. It is in the open and complex terrain of civil and social

society which institutions, structures, cultures and ideologies are formed and

consolidated. It is also within this sphere that identity is formed and hegemony is

constructed and consented. As Hall argues in response to Althusser:

Marxism without guarantees establishes the open horizon of Marxist theorizing determinacy without guaranteed closures. The paradigm of perfectly closed, perfectly

predictable systems of thought is religion or astrology, not science. It would be preferable,from this perspective, to think of the materialism of Marxist theory in terms ofdeterminism by the economic in the first instance, since Marxism is surely correct, againstall idealisms, to insist that no social practice or set of relations float free of the determinate

61 Ernesto Laclau, The Making of Political Identities (London: Verso, 1994); Owen Worth and CarmenKuhling, Counter-hegemony, anti-globalisation and culture in International Political Economy,Capital and Class, 84 (2004), pp. 3142.

62 Hall will possibly be most remembered for his work in editing the highly influential journal MarxismToday with Martin Jacques.

63 Stuart Hall, The Problem of Ideology: Marxism within Guarantees, in D. Morley and K-H. Chen

(eds), Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 347.64 Such an observation is perhaps best summed up through Halls collection of essays on the hegemonicnature of Thatcherism in Britain in the 1980s. See Stuart Hall, The Hard Road to Renewal (London:Verso 1988).



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effects of the concrete relations in which they are located. However, determination in thelast instance has long been the repository of the lost dream or illusion of theoreticalcertainty.65

This loose or open approach to Marx is why Gramscis hegemony remains highly

applicable to the multilayered discipline of Cultural Studies and equally can explain

the complexities inherent with the equally multilayered processes of globalisation.Indeed certain accounts in IR are tentatively using the arguments put forward by

Hall to analyse hegemony in a wider global context.66

Yet many capitalist-state theorists, who draw from their own brand of self

proclaimed open Marxism, lamented Hall in the late 80s/early 90s for ignoring

that the state appears primarily in the form of a capital accumulator.67 As a result,

hegemonic relationships do not merely have the time to form and consolidate and

indeed form complex models of articulation in the light of changes to state

capitalist strategies.68 As such it is hard to envisage how Gramscis ideas provide

any relevance to such theorists. However, it is exactly this type of orthodox state

determinism that the recent back-to-basics accounts have called for to avoidslipping into pluralistic ways.69 Such a move falls into the trap of what Williams

defined as simplistic base-superstructure when insisting upon the complexity of

hegemony as a model. Instead of this, I have tried to explain in this section that

Halls brand of Gramscian Marxism and subsequent hegemony gives us a far more

comprehensive understanding of how hegemony might work at an International

Level. In addition, both Josephs critical realism and Laclaus (admittedly often

problematic) theory of articulation compliment this model in certain areas. From

this, it is necessary to look at how this account of hegemony could be applied to

the spheres of global politics, again looking at related work that is not always

associated with international issues.

New directions for Gramscian research

One of the main peculiarities in Gramscian studies within IR is that the

overwhelming bulk of empirical accounts are predominately located within the

sub-disciplines of International Political Economy (IPE). Gramsci has thus been

used alongside established Political Economists such as Polanyi, Braudel and

Schumpeter. Yet whilst Gramsci may have written on the concept of what hetermed Critical Economy,70 much of the brief work he did on International

65 Stuart Hall, The Problem of Ideology, p. 45.66 Mark Rupert, Ideologies of Globalization; Owen Worth, Hegemony, International Political Economy

and Post-Communist Russia (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 4167.67 As argued by Burnham in Neo-Gramscian hegemony and International Order, and also by Simon

Clarke, Overaccumulation, class struggle and the regulation approach, Capital and Class, 42 (1990),pp. 5993.

68 David Lockwood, Review of Hegemony, International Political Economy and Post-CommunistRussia, Slavic Review, 65 (2006), 62022.

69 Bieler and Morton, Globalisation, the state and class struggle, pp. 4819.70

In one of the many metaphorical references that cover the many translations of the PrisonNotebooks, the term Critical Economy is widely seen as reference to Marxist/Marx-inspiredEconomics, but was like many other concepts, given another name due to potential censoring. Assuch much of his writing on the economy was drawing up vague comparisons between critical and

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Political Economy was generalised, often journalistic and presented as a commen-

tary.71 Ironically, in this area Gramsci also deploys terms especially his use of

hegemony in the traditional way, rather than placing them within his wider

philosophies.72 Cox himself certainly did not intent his usage of Gramsci to be

located within the sub-discipline of IPE and favoured the use of Vico, Sorel and

even E. H. Carr, alongside Gramsci and the more social aspects of Polanyi, as abroad historical critique for the field of IR as a whole.73 In addition, Gills

influential 1993 collection was geared for inclusion as a wider research project

within International Relations and certainly many of the contributors (for example

Murphy and Augelli) did not see Gramscis use in the discipline as one that was

restricted towards IPE.74 Therefore, its inclusion within IPE initially emerged

through practical reasons and from individuals like Susan Strange who was keen

to exploit exclusions within conventional readings that were evident at the time.

Therefore, despite the use of Gramsci was not originally intended solely for

studies within IPE, the sub-discipline itself very much began to claim it as its own

as a way of critically understanding the dynamics of power emerging in anincreasingly globalised political economy.75 As a result, neo-Gramscian studies

have, albeit with certain notable exceptions, become less and less keen to embrace

new avenues of research in the same manner as their founding predecessors did and

have become increasingly entrenched within what Overbeek terms as the transna-

tional historical materialist approach to political economy.76 Yet it does need to

be stressed that Gramsci was not in any way first and foremost a political

economist, although admittedly he was equally not solely interested in the

workings and positioning of the subaltern/dominant classes, through socio-cultural

constructions as some might argue. His influence within IPE is important,

especially in areas such as globalisation and the internationalisation of the state,dealt with above, but if IPE is to delve into the study of social and cultural

movements within global society, then broader studies within IR would also benefit

from a Hall-inspired understanding of hegemony for a theoretical departure

point.

With certain exceptions, Gramsci has played less of a role in critical security

studies and equally little figures in studies on nationalism, ethnicity and ethnic

conflict. This is despite that such areas have obviously become increasingly

prominent within the post-Cold War era of IR. Indeed as indicated by Wyn Jones,

Gramsci has often found a way into the political economy of world politics, but

has been less prominent in other areas of IR, despite paradoxically being far from

orthodox economics and looking at building upon Marxs Capital often referred to as the variousvolumes of the Critique of Political Economy.

71 Indeed, much of the sketchy material that Gramsci did write on critical economy was oftenencouraged and enhanced by Piero Staffa, who felt that Gramsci needed to develop hisunderstanding of economic science so to provide a critical understanding that complemented hismore developed work on civil society. For a general overview of Gramscis material on PoliticalEconomy, see Antonio Gramsci, Further Selections of the Prison Notebook, pp. 161278.

72 Ibid., pp. 23060.73 Robert Cox, Approaches to World Order, pp. 2730.74 Gill, Epistemology, Ontology and the Italian School, p. 22.75

Jason P. Abbott and Owen Worth, The many worlds of Critical International Political Economy,in Jason P. Abbott and Owen Worth (eds), Critical Perspectives on International Political Economy(Basingstoke: Palgrave), p. 3.

76 Overbeek, Transnational historical materialism, pp. 1689.



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being merely a political economist himself.77 These shortcomings have been

developed in other disciplines. For example there have been a number of studies

in Cultural Studies that give great attention to identity and nationhood which

might allow us in IR to think of alternative ways that the Gramscian ontology

might move beyond its IPE centrality. One such study is Raymond Williams

posthumous collection Who Speaks for Wales? Drawing from Culture, Literature,Politics and History, Williams draws upon the contradictions, mythologies and

class formations that are constructed within his native Wales, and then

demonstrates how contested forms of articulation combine to construct a form of

common-sense that historically account for a nation without a voice functioning

in a larger non-national state.78 Williams critique of Nationalism (The Culture

of Nations) in the collection provides a similar novel approach to the Nation,

State and territoriality, by employing a similar understanding of open hegemony

to that of Hall and placing a multitude of competing ideas that make up the

social fabric of a nation under the larger material conditionality of international

capitalism. Interestingly, Williams main intention from much of what he writeson the nation and internationalism is to illustrate to those in Cultural Studies

the importance to consider wider implications of neoliberal globalisation in

understanding national cultural trends. For Gramscian scholars in IR, the reverse

is required when understanding Williams implications that bottom-up

studies widen our epistemological understanding of the global environment,

especially in an era that tends to favour macro and uniformed explanations and

solutions.

If Williams show us new avenues to explore identity, then Hall himself adds to

this potentially rich material through his work by relating Gramscian theory to

race and ethnicity. Gramscis work on Italian higher philosophy and Catholicismprovides a basis for much of Halls work on ethnicity. In every hegemonic

construction of the Italian nation, a balance between potential divisions be they

cultural, social or ethno-political, was ironed out by higher intellectual reasoning

that came from the institutions above. As aptly put by Gramsci:

The relationship between common-sense and the upper-level of philosophy is assured bypolitics, just as it is politics that assures the relationship between the Catholicism of theintellectuals and that of the simple.79

In applying this to questions of ethnicity, Hall argues that the same conditions

apply to the mechanisms of the modern multi-cultural nation-state and to extendthis to the realms of globalisation and global society. For ethnicities are bounded

together in an often unequal form to reflect the historical dominance of one specific

ethnicity. These are then reflected through the functional institutionalisation of

both state and civil bodies. As a result Gramscis work on hegemony, nation-

building and civil society can, for Hall, point us to an inequitable understanding

of ethnic relationships within a variety of nation-states. Equally, it can point us to

new directions in ethnic conflict, especially within the literature of the post-colonial

77 Richard Wyn Jones, Introduction: Locating Critical International Relations Theory, in R. Wyn

Jones (ed.), Critical Theory & World Politics (Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001), pp 56.78 Raymond Williams, Who Speaks for Wales? Nation, Culture, Identity (Cardiff: University of WalesPress, 2003), pp. 1912.

79 Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, p. 331.

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weak state.80 New conflicts that have occurred in the post-Cold War era have often

resulted from an organic crisis within state/civil societal relationships where an

ethnic-political project has failed to find hegemony in its relationship.81

Through a Gramscian lens, Hall and Williams show us a way in which we

might use Gramsci as a form of explanation within global society that moves well

beyond the current readings offered in IPE. Indeed one of the problems with themany neo-Gramscians is their reluctance to engage with some of the more complex

areas of the super-structure, preferring to leave such complexities in the hands of

the various post-modern and social constructivist accounts that have tended to

dominate contemporary accounts of identity and ethnicity in IR.82 Yet the realities

of world politics in the post-Cold War era have revealed an environment where

civil society has been defined through a complex mix of competing identities that

hold great resemblance to the Gramscian readings of Hall and Williams. I would

venture to suggest that it is here and away from the confines of the study of the

economic base that Gramscian-inspired studies need to go, not just to broaden

their own horizons, but to re-instate a sophisticated Marxist theory back into thebroader realms of International Relations and in particularly in the growing

discourse of international/global civil society.

If Gramscian accounts have often been slow to engage with Hall and Williams

and with the use of Gramsci in Cultural and Literary Studies, then another area

which is neglected in contemporary global society is Gramscis work on religion.

Whilst religion is picked up upon in many of contemporary accounts of Gramscis

work,83 there is little drawn from it in IR, save from footnoting the importance

Gramsci placed on Catholicism as a hugely influential agent in the development of

the Italian state-civil complex and in the emergence of fascism. Yet, Gramscis

notes on religion were empirically rich in their analysis, with studies being given toreligion in individual European countries and the US, in South America and in

India, Japan and the Middle East.84 The main objective for Gramsci here was

firstly to identity the role of religion as a hegemonic agent within civil society

vis--vis the state, and how the need for spirituality and belief in an organic form

is required in order for the politics of counter-hegemony. In the first instance, great

emphasis was given to how both Catholicism and Protestantism were central in the

formulation of educative, cultural practices and in forging the boundaries of

common-sense. Likewise, similar notes are discussed in the manner of the

territorial expansion of such practices, though the influx of missionaries.85 On the

second point, Gramsci broke with much of the rational materialism inherent withinMarxism at the time, by insisting that spiritual belief, free from hegemonic

80 Stuart Hall, Gramscis relevance for the study of race and ethnicity, in Morley and Chen (eds),Stuart Hall, pp. 41140.

81 Ibid., pp. 43540.82 For the best representation of these, see David Campbell and D. Michael Dillon (eds), The Political

Subject of Violence (Manchester: Manchester University Press); James der Derian (ed.), InternationalTheory: Critical Investigations (Basingstoke: Palgrave); Jeffrey T. Checkel, The Constructivist Turnin International Relations, World Politics, 50 (1998), pp. 32448; Nicholas Onuf, World of OurMaking (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press).

83 See for example John Fulton, Religion and Politics in Gramsci: An introduction, in Sociological

Analysis, 48 (1987), pp. 197216 and Otto Maduro, Religion and Social Conflicts (New York: Orbis,1981).

84 Gramsci, Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks, pp. 1137.85 Ibid., pp. 1158.



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constraint, make up a necessary component of transformation. Here, Gramsci

turns to the radicalism of the reformation as an example of one where the

historical development was challenged and sets out the importance of such radical

theological engagement in the New Prince.86

Since the events of September 11th there has quite logically been a collec-

tion of new material on the importance of religion and of the predictableHuntington-inspired logic given to the clash of civilisation thesis. Gramscian-

scholarship needs to fill a gap in the theoretical literature as a response to this. 87

The move against secularisation, the transportation and conditionality of

education/social welfare from the West to parts of the developing world, the

fundamentalist contestation of globalisation from elements within the Islamic and

Christian faiths all point for a need to look at Gramscis reading of religious

grouping, their organisational power and their involvement in civil society more

closely. Part of this was looked into by some in IPE when looking at the growth

of American structural power. Augelli and Murphy, for example examined how

many evangelical civil groups within the US became highly influential in thedevelopment of newly independent states in Africa, during the Cold War.

Empirical emphasis was placed on the financial incentives given by such civil

groups towards the practice of education, government loans and other forms of

soft power in exchange for the adoption of respective religious programmes.88

However, little has followed this. The challenge for Gramscians is to reclaim these

areas of civil study which the IPE School have been slow and reluctant to make

an impact.

From the work of cultural studies and from Gramscis own writings on factors

such as religion, I have argued in this section that there should be more potential

for Gramscian research to develop than its current agenda, which appears lockwithin the confines of IPE. If the theoretical approach towards hegemony is

broadened then it is also necessary to broaden its scope of study, especially within

the contemporary complexities inherent within the politics of globalisation.

Conclusion

This article has argued that at present the deployment of Gramsci within IR is

under-developed. Whilst the work of Cox and Gill et al. have created a space for aGramscian ontology to develop, it has largely been shaped by the principles of

World Order and the transnational capitalist class. In addition, whilst Cox, Murphy,

Rupert and others that were initially involved in the engagement with Gramsci

aimed to propel accounts of World Order towards other areas of IR, neo-Gramscian

accounts have generally been rooted within IPE. There has also been a general

reluctance to adequately look at the development of Gramscian thought in other

subjects. Those that have used Gramsci from other disciplines have been developing

the existing state-centric models, rather than look at how their different focus of

86

Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebook, pp. 1314.87 Mustapha Pasha, Islam, Soft Orientalism and Hegemony: A Gramscian Rereading, CriticalReview of International Social and Political Philosophy, 8 (2005), pp. 54358.

88 Augelli and Murphy, Americas quest for supremacy and the Third World.

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study might provide new avenues.89 The reluctance to break with state-centrism and

to adopt an approach that is largely (in its different forms) in tandem with what

Robinson termed as ideological leadership through a powerful state (see above) is

partly due to the observation that the move towards Gramsci was indeed initially

used as a counter measure to discuss some of the historical developments of

state-led hegemony within the international economic.90

Recent debates surrounding the viability of Gramscian theory have expressed

further concerns over the possibilities of projecting the notion of hegemony onto

an international level. As a result, recent Gramscian approaches have favoured a

highly structured approach in order to stave off such criticism and as a means to

maintain its Marxist credentials. However the result of this is an approach that is,

in my opinion, highly deterministic in its application and one that does not allow

for the many social interactions that occur on the open terrain of civil society or

for the process of hegemony to be articulated. As both Hall and Williams note,

hegemony is a fluid, complex process and is not formulated around a static

structured approach of base-superstructure determinism that is favoured by bothstate capitalist theorists and French Structuralism. As a response I have argued

here that IR needs to be far less parochial in its study if it is to get the best out

of Gramsci. Furthermore, it firmly suggested here that scholars of International

Politics move beyond Coxian ontology and look to other readings of hegemony so

to expand upon the openings already made. This isnt to say that a more generic

account of hegemony is necessarily what Gramsci himself would have in mind

when looking at the international, or that Coxs own reading of Gramsci through

World Order is not an accurate assessment of hegemony, but that by looking at

accounts of hegemony from different academic fields and objects of study, we

might be able to provide alternative readings to the complex realm of globalpolitics.

It is also argued that Gramscians should not be restricted as some have argued

from some engagement with Laclaus brand of post-structuralism. However, whilst

I believe that there is much interest in such a reading of hegemony, especially in

appliance to the variety of analytical levels that exist within the various parts

within IR as a discipline, it does not mean that this should warrant a move to free

Gramsci from materialism. As Halls reading of Gramsci shows us, all empirical

studies of civil societal developments need to be mindful of the larger material

boundaries that they work within. Gramscis own position here could perhaps best

be expressed in his own criticisms of Croces brand of post-Marxism, where heconstantly berates Croce for misunderstanding how Marxism (or the philosophy of

praxis) treats the social and civil sphere.91 Indeed here Adam Morton is to a

89 For example, Morton has argued elsewhere that in order to apply Gramsci, one needs to engage withcontrasting accounts of Gramsci within the social sciences and recommends the method employedby Hall which aims to think in a Gramscian way rather than rely solely upon textual analysis. Hedoes not however show how such a method can move us beyond current theoretical developmentswithin Gramscian IPE, favouring instead on using it to defend such developments. See AdamMorton, Historicizing Gramsci: situating ideas, Review of International Political Economy, 10(2003), pp. 13440.

90

Susan Strange, The Persistent Myth of Lost Hegemony, International Organization. 41 (1987),pp. 55174.

91 In response to Croces question of how Marxism can account for ethico-political history, Gramscisimply replies, It is an arbitrary and mechanical hypostasisation of the moment of hegemony. The



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certain degree correct when he notes that Laclau (and Mouffe) occupy a similar

position to Croce himself, when attempting to move away from materialism.92

Finally, this article has tentatively offered new avenues of study for Grasmcian

research in IR in order that it breaks from the cosy world of IPE. The attraction

of areas such as ethnicity, religion, conflict and nation-hood is equally appealing

as it would also bring critical Marxism back into areas that it has neglected.Widening studies in greater empirical areas would equally expand the Gramscian

scope for explanation. To neglect this would limit such potentially rich work on

(global) civil society and leave it in danger of moving towards an increasingly

narrow abstraction. As Gramsci himself observed while commenting on the

dangers of relying on Economism:

Research must (therefore) be directed towards identifying theirs strengths and weaknesses.The economist hypothesis asserts the existence of an immediate element of strength i.e theavailability of a certain direct or indirect financial backing and is satisfied with that. Butthis is not enough. In this case too, an analysis of the balance of forces at all levels can

only culminate in the sphere of hegemony and ethico-political relations.93

Philosophy of Praxis does not exclude ethnic-political history. The opposition between Croceshistorical doctrines and the philosophy of praxis lies in the speculative nature of Croces conception.

Gramsci, Further Selections of the Prison Notebooks, p. 330.92 Adam Morton, A double reading of Gramsci: beyond the logic of contingency, Critical Review ofInternational Social and Political Philosophy, 8 (2005), pp. 43954.

93 Gramsci, Selection from the Prison Notebooks, p. 167.

20 Owen Worth

Recasting Grasmci and IR

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