Hegemony and the dynamics of power: a Gramscian update for the study of power in IR

Abstract

The study of power in IR has produced insightful typologies, but the persisting paradigmatic divisions induce problems that stifle further progress. The fungibility problem concerns the missing links between the categories in the typologies as well as between typologies. The fragmentation problem arises from the difficulties of analysing diffuse agency. This article proposes a closer dialogue with Gramsci’s work and embeds the resulting inputs into a process-centred conceptualisation of power that can accommodate the dialectic analysis of social transformations from the Prison Notebooks. The intellectual exchange engenders an understanding in which different modalities of power can be linked together as mechanisms interfering with each other in an iterative open process. The conundrum of fragmented agency is revisited through the perspective of an integral power process that entangles actor interests and identities. These interventions create opportunities for meaningful interaction between studies into the different faces of power.