1

Hegemony and IR Theory

This chapter situates hegemony in the wider context of theories of International Relations (IR), and shows how hegemony can potentially address what remains as a major gap in those theories, namely how international order is best sustained when there is a concentration of power in one actor. It has been suggested that as the concentration of power in a state increases beyond a certain threshold, systemic constraints on its security policy become generally inoperative (Brooks and Wohlforth 2008: 45; Waltz 2009: 31). If so, this is liberating indeed for the dominant state. However, the converse is that it presents a serious dilemma for everyone else about how, in turn, it might then contribute to international order. How can an unconstrained preponderant state be relied upon by the remainder of international society, and is there not a danger that hegemony presages a type of hierarchy that challenges the fundamental ethos of international society (Clark 2009c)? Why should hegemony appear incompatible in this way with international society? There is a widely held, and deeply ingrained, view within IR that international stability is best attained in a relative dispersal of power. In many of these accounts, outcomes result simply from the structural and quasimechanistic consequences of self-help and the balance of power. Those are not the principal focus of this book. Instead, its interest lies in those theories that make a yet further connection between a relative dispersal of power and the practice of international legitimacy, and accordingly present the heightened prospects of stability in terms of the latter. Most famously, perhaps, this realist view is found in Kissingers association of consensus amongst the great powers, and the emergence of stability within the framework of a legitimate order (Kissinger 1977). Unhappily, when international legitimacy is itself understood as a product of a limited consensus amongst otherwise competitive great powers, and hence inherently related to a dispersal of power, the door appears to close on any viable practice of legitimacy should a concentration of power emerge. If legitimacy resides in a consensus amongst rough equals, does this deny the possibility of its attainment in conditions of preponderance (Lee 2010: 45)? Is there any escape from this seemingly

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remorseless conclusion, and the dark shadow it casts over the prospects for present international order? There is, of course, another possibility where the contribution of hegemony has indeed been presented in a much more positive light. This is within that package of theoretical insights, generally referred to as Hegemonic Stability Theory (HST). This theoretical cluster offers a view of hegemony as the most likely condition for international stability, and reached the zenith of its appeal in the 1980s (Eichengreen 1987; Gowa 1989; Grunberg 1990; Lake 1993; Milner 1998; Snidal 1985; Webb and Krasner 1989). HST was directly associated with stability in the international economic order, and grew from Charles Kindlebergers analysis of the causes of the Great Depression (Kindleberger 1986a, 1986b). However, by extension, it has been applied to the wider political and security order as well, particularly through the notion of hegemonic wars developed in the work of Robert Gilpin (1981). This idea of hegemonic stability had, of course, already been around for some time. Carr was convinced that the working hypothesis of an international order was created by a superior power (Carr 1939: 298). Even more to the pointin acknowledging Britains nineteenth-century role in guaranteeing freedom of the seas, encouraging commerce, and providing a single currencyhe avowed generally that every approach in the past to a world society has been the product of the ascendancy of a single Power (Carr 1939: 297). A related precursor can be found also in the work of A. F. K. Organski (1958). He held that an international order led by one predominant state was a normal historical condition: At any given moment, he afrmed, the single most powerful nation on earth heads an international order (Organski 1958: 322). Furthermore, contra the conventional wisdom, Organski suggested that balance was associated with warfare, whilst the periods of known preponderance are periods of peace (Organski 1958: 292; Levy 2008: 12). Nonetheless, any suggestion that HST thereby renders hegemony compatible with international society is unconvincing (Lee 2010: 810). HST is suffused by a rationalist perception of international relations as made up of self-interested actors trying to overcome their collective action problems: their interests precede their social interaction, and remain unaffected by it. This viewpoint makes no allowance for any extant international society, nor for the interests of the member states being shaped by their belonging to, and being bound by, that society. It may well be the case, as the theory posits, that HST does address some key problems of collective action, and prescribes conditions that facilitate it, but this does not by itself rescue hegemony for international society. The conception found in HST may incidentally result in the hegemon furthering the interests of the other, and lesser, states in the system (Brawley 2003/4: 347). However, it does not embed hegemonic leadership in the society of states, and hegemony is not constituted by that society: hegemony remains exogenous to international society, and is a function of

Hegemony and IR Theory

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material resources, and of the willingness to use them. This says nothing about how international society chooses to view that leadership, or about the basis of any acceptance of it. Accordingly, it is the potential for a much more fundamental project than is on offer through HST that will be examined during the remainder of this study. Another way of expressing this central dilemma is to ask whether international order can support both hegemony and anarchy at the same time. Waltzian neorealism and international-society approaches are both equally committed to anarchy as their starting point: the former issues in a systemic theory, the latter in a social theory. Also noteworthy is that each faces problems in theorizing what is to be done about unusual concentrations of power. The reason is that, if a concentration of power were indeed to result in authoritative decision-making, this would herald an incipient hierarchy. In turn, this might be taken to undermine the anarchical nature of the system or society. This is relevant to the present argument insofar as hegemony is routinely depicted as a type of hierarchy. Accordingly, this chapter asks how far international society can travel down the road of hierarchy (towards hegemony), while still remaining basically anarchical (Dunne 2003). We had already been encouraged to reclaim hierarchy as an interesting and variable characteristic of international relations (Lake 1996: 30). What had made it seem so specically was the onset of unipolarity after the Cold War, as a result of which, we were told, international hierarchy is once again in the news (Lake 2007: 48). Does a concentration of power signal a move to hierarchy, and is this the reason that international society has such a profound distaste for hegemony? Specically, this chapter asks whether the recent degree of concentration is still capable of supporting practices of international legitimacy. It focuses upon hegemony as one potential such practice, and thereby contributes to how IR theory thinks about concentrations of power. With the exception of HST, IR theory has so far not actively engaged with this topic. In fact, both Waltzian neorealism and international-society approaches have been strikingly evasive on this very issue: a concentration of power is to be avoided, and, if it occurs, represents an unnatural condition, a system or a society failure. Neither troubles to say anything very interesting about how best to cope with such an outcome, should one eventuate. Each offers a theory for avoiding concentration; neither develops a theory of hegemonic management. This is a major gap. The following argument is presented principally through a structured opposition between primacy and hegemony (Berger 1999; Betts 2005; Chomsky 2003; Ikenberry 2002b, 2008a; Kupchan 2002, 2004; Lake 2006; Layne 2002/3, 2006a; Lebow 2003: 314; Lebow and Kelly 2001: 593; Lind 2007; Nye 2002, 2004; Walt 2005). IR thinking about the concentration of power has been expressed almost exclusively through the language of material distributions of power, and

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this has been its main shortcoming (Hurrell 2007a: 38). In fact, theories about the concentration of power need also to bring out the complex constitution of power: they must not treat it as a given, nor dwell solely on its distributional consequences. Ideas of legitimacy and hegemony are two interconnected ways of enriching our understanding of power, and hence also of its distribution. There is, however, a possible tension between anarchy and hegemony, given that any hierarchical ordering principle might be thought incompatible with an anarchical society. This prompts the wider question whether practices of legitimacy are at all sustainable in conditions of exceptional predominance. If not, hegemony scarcely warrants further theoretical attention. We must begin with a fuller analysis of the nature of the hegemony that is under consideration. Its starting point, it must be clearly stated at the outset, is that no such hegemony presently exists.

HEG EMONY
Hegemony, we are told, lacks settled denition, but its terms of debate have revolved largely around two principal meaningsdomination and leadership (Lentner 2006: 1078). There are interesting differences about the supposed relationship between these two conditions: are they opposed conceptualizations, giving rise to two separate accounts of hegemonyeach equally valid, but one resting on material predominance, and the other constituted by normative cohesion (Dent 2008c: 280; Lee 2010: 2)? Or does one give rise to a condition of hegemony, and the other to something else? The rst idea is relatively straightforward, and is found at the core of most conceptions of hegemony. It refers to the predominance of one state over its peers (Stiles 2009: 23), the dominance of one state over others (Cox 1993: 264), preponderance of military and economic capabilities (Ikenberry and Kupchan 1990: 49), or the hierarchical order among rival great powers (Vitalis 2006: 26). Its focus is upon domination, as measured both by the aggregate resources possessed by a single actor across a wide range of capabilities, and also by the degree of concentration of these resources in terms of their international distribution. As far as HST is concerned, Keohane tells us, hegemony is preponderance of material resources (Keohane 1984: 32). This resulting dominance, however, is not to be understood in purely bilateral or relational terms, but can be expressed also through systemic rules. Accordingly, a hegemonic power is dened as one powerful enough to maintain the essential rules governing interstate relations, and willing to do so (Keohane 1989: 234; OBrien 2002: 34). Hegemony therefore manifests itself through these rules, and their successful creation is subject to two conditions only: sufciency of power, and willingness to exercise it.

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What then is the scope for any second meaning of hegemony, such as leadership (Rapkin 1990b)? One answer requires us to identify what it is that is unusual about such a condition in the rst place. For Brilmayer, hegemony gives rise to a need for political morality, for the very reason that the dominance of one actor in the system violates the cardinal expectation that all actors should be treated equally (Brilmayer 1994: 224). What is intriguing about this suggestion is that it represents a clear shift away from an exclusive focus on the hegemon, and towards the needs and expectations of the other actors (Crawford 2004; Lee 2010: 23). Leadership, in this perspective, is not just something that the hegemon does or has, but something that international society sees. This implies that hegemony requires something extra, beyond the capability and willingness of the would-be hegemon. In these terms, material preponderance is understood as a necessary, but not sufcient, condition of hegemony, and cannot amount to a self-contained concept of hegemony in its own right. It is at this point that various IR theories, and wider social theories, compete for our attention. Waltzian neorealism, for instance, derives its account of the leadership of the great powers directly from the capabilities possessed by them. International politics is the realm of coordination, not superordination, and so [n]one is entitled to command; none is required to obey (Waltz 1979: 88). The consequence is that such authority as there is derives immediately from the capability underlying the claim to it:
Whatever elements of authority emerge internationally are barely once removed from the capability that provides the foundation for the appearance of those elements. Authority quickly reduces to a particular expression of capability. (Waltz 1979: 88)

The underlying logic here is that, in the absence of deployment of the capabilities of the strongest powers, no enforcement mechanism would exist (Brilmayer 1994: 1001), and the system would lack any authority at all. Leadership is dened by capability, and by the absence of any alternative to it. Others start from a similar dilemma, but develop the analysis in a different direction. If we take hegemony as a specic form of power, it has been suggested, what we wish to theorize is how power has a consensual aspect that facilitates relations of domination (Haugaard 2006b: 50). The main forms of neo-Gramscian discussion notably develop this particular perspective. In other words, while there is certainly domination in the relationship, there must also be an element of consent. Hegemony is a relation, when viewed this way, not of domination by means of force, but of consent by means of political and ideological leadership (Simon 1982: 21). How might that be so? This confronts directly the relationship between legitimacy and hegemony (Brooks and Wohlforth 2008: 207; Grifths 2004: 65; Ikenberry and Kupchan 1990: 51; Paupp 2009: 4667; Rapkin and Braaten 2009: 119). For much

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social science, the idea of hegemony already comprehends that of legitimacy. The concept of hegemony, it is typically observed, is normally understood as emphasising consent in contrast to reliance on the use of force (Joseph 2002: 1). For example, Keohanedespite his materialist denition of hegemonyhad been mindful also that theories of hegemony needed to explore why secondary states defer to the leadership of the hegemon. That is, they need to account for the legitimacy of hegemonic regimes (Keohane 1984: 39). Others too restrict the term hegemony specically to a situation where a substantial element of legitimacy is present (Mastanduno 2002: 1813). Does hegemony, conceived in this way, then hold any possible attraction for the anarchical society? The core problem raised by this question is whether or not the hegemon can serve as a source of order, or only as a threat to it (Hinnebusch 2006: 284). The danger of unbalanced power, as Hurrell reminds us, is that it will permit the powerful to lay down the law to the less powerful (Hurrell 2006: 16). In short, it poses the pressing question [h]ow is it possible to make a hegemon accountable to weaker states? (Brilmayer 1994: 221). This question has added force when the hegemon is not otherwise subject to external constraints, and much therefore hinges upon its own degree of self-restraint (Lebow 2003: 2834). How reliable a safeguard self-restraint might be depends largely, in turn, on how the hegemony works. Ian Hurd suggests two alternative possibilities. The rst sees hegemony as entrenching the dominant position of the already most powerful, and therefore as objectively entirely in the favour of the strong. This view is represented in the suggestion that US hegemony is self-interested, not altruistic, and that what underpins its stability is the disproportionate gains that the USA derives from it (Norrlof 2010: 3, 56). This is quite different from Hurds other model, where legitimacy functions as a constraint also on the strong, not simply on the weak. In this case, successful maintenance of hegemony requires that the strong subscribe to a minimum standard of compliance with the legitimized rule or institution. The result is that the strong . . . may be induced to alter their behaviour by the effects of legitimated rules (Hurd 2007a: 789). The outcome, in this second version, is to increase the autonomy of all parties, not to compromise the autonomy of the less powerful in order to increase the autonomy of the more powerful (Haugaard 2006a: 4). What is distinctive in this approach is the emphasis on the institutional dimensionthe empowerment of the institution of hegemonyrather than any simple enhancement of the power of the hegemon. At the heart of these debates is exactly what it is that merits the compliance of the followers. On this, there remains a deep-seated ambiguity, even when hegemony is regarded as necessarily rooted in legitimacy. This ambiguity is puzzling, because it seems to leave us with a notion of legitimacy derived solely from self-interest. The puzzle then is that legitimacy is normally understood to

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constitute a ground for compliance different, in principle, from self-interest, just as it is taken to be different from one predicated upon coercion (Hurd 1999). And yet when it comes to discussions of hegemony, the most commonly identied source of legitimacy is satisfaction of self-interest, particularly in the favorable-outcomes model, which provides a hypothesis about why those who benet from a system might see it as legitimate (Hurd 2007a: 69). This is demonstrably so in the case of HST, where the other actors are thought to benet from the public goods provided by the hegemon, and presumably to accept its rules for that very reason. The hegemon, in this interpretation, delivers a sufcient ow of benets to small and middle powers to persuade them to acquiesce (Keohane 1989: 78). According to HST, other states will cooperate with a benign hegemon because they benet strategically and economically (Layne 2006b: 17). Is this provision of benets sufcient on its own to fashion an institution of hegemony, based in social legitimacy? This question is equally problematic for neo-Gramscian accounts, although here the issue is even more complex, given the considerable range of interpretation (Adamson 1980; Burnham 1991; Cafruny 1990; Cox 1996; Fontana 1993, 2006; Gill 1993a; Rapkin 1990a; Sassoon 1982). Hegemonic legitimacy is a construct of the powerful, and the ruled are somehow seduced into the belief that their interests are thereby served. This follows from Lukess diagnosis that the most effective and insidious use of power is to prevent such conict from arising in the rst place (Lukes 2005: 27). In this event, the question of what gives rise to the hegemons legitimacy still remains. Frequently, the implicit answer scarcely reaches beyond the assumed satisfaction of self-interests. To become hegemonic, Cox proposes, a state would have to found and protect a world order which was universal in conception . . . an order which most other states . . . could nd compatible with their interests (Cox 1996: 136). The principal characteristic here is then the consensual nature of the resulting order. It means dominance of a particular kind, Cox elaborates, where the dominant state creates an order based ideologically on a broad measure of consent, functioning according to general principles that in fact ensure the continuing supremacy of the leading state . . . but at the same time offer some measure or prospect of satisfaction to the less powerful (Cox 1987: 7). What emerges then in HST, as in much neo-Gramscian analysis, is a view of hegemony as based in the consent of the ruled (and hence in voluntary compliance), but in which this consent derives purely from self-interest and benet (Lee 2010: 810). In these schemes, there is no separate logic of appropriateness extending beyond those interests, and this is their principal omission (March and Olsen 1998: 949). At the very least, there must be some acknowledgement of the possibility that those interests can come to be redened in the context of such a legitimate order (Hurd 2007a: 734): interests do not only shape legitimacy, but in turn can be reshaped by it.

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One sophisticated attempt to address this problem has been provided by Ned Lebow, in his elaboration of the Greek notion of hegemonia (Lebow 2003). His central claim is that successful hegemonia requires acquiescence by allies or subject states, and this in turn rests on some combination of legitimacy and self-interest (Lebow and Kelly 2001: 595). In this version, legitimacy is indeed separated out from self-interest, albeit that its source is then still left indeterminate. What might it then be? At this point, attention is drawn to the quality of leadership (Augelli and Murphy 1993: 130; Cox 1993: 264; Fontana 1993: 140; Gill and Law 1993: 93; Stiles 2009: 10). In these neo-Gramscian treatments, the motif is less the provision of benets, and more the moral quality of leadership itself. Hegemony is a creation of a specic intellectual and moral dimension (Buci-Glucksman 1982: 120), or the exercise of political and moral direction (Augelli and Murphy 1993: 130). This edges analysis away from satisfaction of self-interests, narrowly construed. In his own account of hegemonia, Lebow had indeed specied just this need for agreed principles going beyond the distribution of benets to subordinates. Of equal importance, he had stipulated, was that the hegemon behave in ways consonant with its own principles. Those principles impose constraints on what would otherwise be unrestrained behaviour, since the most powerful states are not externally bound. Hence, there is great need for self-restraint: Internal restraint and external inuence are thus closely related. Self-restraint that prompts behaviour in accord with the acknowledged principles . . . both earns and sustains the hegemonia that makes efcient inuence possible (Lebow 2003: 2834; Walt 2002: 153). If the hegemon sets the rules, it is obliged also to abide by them. For example, Pericles had understood that, to maintain Athenian hegemonia, Athens had to act in accord with the principles and values that it espoused (Lebow 2003: 126). When the working denition of hegemony deployed in this book then makes reference to the state (or states) with the resources to lead, this condition should be understood to encompass more than material resources alone, and to include also qualities of leadership of this kind. At this point, it is helpful to adapt insights derived from the neo-Gramscian literature, and to rework them in an English School (ES) direction. Why is this necessary? As we have seen, the problem left over from this neo-Gramscian position, as it mostly itself acknowledges, is a negative side to the resulting hegemonic order: it continues to be characterized by domination, despite any false consciousness it engenders to conceal it (Lee 2010: 13). While the hallmark is that hegemony is sustained by socialization into ideas and values, rather than by material coercion alone, there remains some degree of seeming deception in the relationship. Positively expressed, the process can be described as one whereby states internalize these new norms and become

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socialized in the community formed by the hegemon and those states that accept its leadership position (Ikenberry and Kupchan 1990: 55). But this lends itself just as well to the more negative reading: Lukes notes generally, with regard to power as securing the consent to domination of willing subjects, that this raises important issues about real interests and false consciousness (Lukes 2005: 1089). The implication is that any apparent consent may be misplaced, insofar as hegemonic ideological structures limit the capacity of the ruled to imagine alternatives (Onuf and Klink 1989: 160). This much is candidly admitted in Coxs own account when he insists that the consensual element distinguishes hegemonic from nonhegemonic world orders, but, at the same time, concedes that this also tends to mystify the power relations upon which the order ultimately rests (Cox 1996: 556). One possible way out of this bind is to repackage the consensual dimensions of hegemony in an ES version (Chapter 2). Such a move is already implicit in Coxs analysis. This must be prefaced with the reminder that, for Cox, a hegemonic order reaches far beyond any purely interstate construct, and has deeper global civil society dimensions: hegemonic orders are world orders, not simply international orders (Cox 1996: 136; see Gill 1993b: 3940; Worth 2009: 21). That said, although Cox is resistant to the idea that hegemony can be reduced to institutions, he does go so far as to suggest that there is a close connection between institutionalization and what Gramsci called hegemony, in that institutions provide ways of dealing with conicts so as to minimize the use of force (Cox 1996: 99). This is fully compatible with an ES position. Viewed from this perspective, it is shared societal norms that constitute hegemonic power by dening the range of legitimate behaviour that will cause other actors to recognise a states identity as a leader (Lee 2010: 16).

PRIMACY AND H EGEMONY

This begins to set out the core elements of hegemony. To develop this further, however, requires a very clear delineation between primacy grounded in material resources only, and hegemony grounded also in legitimacy (Brooks and Wohlforth 2002; Haas 1999). This has been sadly lacking in most IR commentary. Specically, what we have witnessed over the past two decades is an unhelpful conation of the two concepts. Too often, the United States is described as the current hegemon, when nothing is intended beyond its enjoyment of degrees of material primacy. Thus whereas some distinguish between two competing theories of hegemony (one resting on material power, and the other on norms) (Lee 2010: 154), the claim of this book is instead that only a normative account provides a convincing concept of hegemony in

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international society, and this requires a sharp distinction be made between primacy and hegemony. The conation is readily apparent in the many claims to the hegemonic status of the United States in recent times. For example, there are broadly three types of story commonly told about US hegemony since 1945: the tale from continuity; the tale from structural discontinuity in 1990; and the tale from agential discontinuity at the beginning of the 2000s (Clark 2009a). According to the rst of these, US hegemony stretches back unbroken to 1945 (Cumings 1999). Having emerged as a hegemon in waiting in the early decades of the twentieth century, it then fully embraced this role after 1945, and has continued to play it ever since (Subacchi 2008). For the US power elite, being on top of the world has been a habit for 60 years. Hegemony has been a way of life (Golub 2007). From this perspective, the United States remains a hegemon still, whatever the future may now hold. The second position contrasts sharply, in some fundamental respects: as against continuity, it attests to discontinuity. At some nite point around the early 1970s, the United States ceased to be the hegemon (Hippler 1994). The argument then focuses upon the restoration of US hegemony after 1990. Whatever became of that earlier hegemony during the 1970s and 1980s, it was the end of the Cold War that created the opportunity for its renewal (Bacevich 2002; Cox 2001; Parchami 2009: 1845): under the new conditions of unipolarity after 1990, it was possible for that role to be resumed, or a new phase to be initiated. Finally, those accounts that trace the origins of a new American hegemony post-2001 simply extend the same logic: the incoming Bush administration exploited the potential of the new distribution of power to a much greater degree than had been attempted during the 1990s (David and Grondin 2006; Gaddis 2002; Jentleson 2007; Jervis 2005; Nuechterlein 2005). However, the emphasis now shifts away from hegemony as a structural outcome, and towards hegemony as an agential design. In the specic terms advanced in this book, little of this history refers to any kind of hegemony at all, but simply to stages in primacyits quest, realization, and possible loss. This is made fully explicit in Posens remark that those who recommended a policy of primacyessentially hegemony . . . have carried the day (Posen 2003: 5). Likewise, the conation is apparent in the suggestion that US hegemony is the result of objective material conditions, while the perpetuation of US primacy is a matter of policy (Layne 2006b: 12). Any understanding of the wider theoretical signicance of US predominance needs rst to disentangle these two concepts of primacy and hegemony. This distinction can be further underlined in the ambivalent accounts of the two pivotal years of 1971 and 2001. Understood simply as exercises of material power, both demonstrated considerable leverage on the part of the leading state, inasmuch as the United States on both occasions was able to reinterpret the international rules in ways that favoured its own interests: it was able to

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revise, unilaterally, its own preferred international order. In 1971, the United States challenged and overturned its own Bretton Woods creation (Cohen 1977; Hirsch and Doyle 1977); in 2001, it began to revise the multilateral political and security order of which it had long been the foremost champion. If hegemony is interpreted to mean no more than the wide scope for the unilateral exercise of national power, then both cases represented the apogee of US hegemony, rather than any evidence for its dissipation. Looked at through the other end of the telescope, however, the events appear strikingly different. Hence, both periods have been associated also with decline, or demise, of that hegemony. In 1971 Washington breached the economic rules, but arguably at considerable cost to the international economic order. What we were left with was a system operating after hegemony (Keohane 1984). In similar vein, the response to US unilateralism after 9/11 suggested a collapse in condence in the benevolence and reliability of the leading state. Both, to that extent, have been associated with hegemonic crises of legitimacy. To have the capacity to exercise such revisionism was testimony to the continuing material powers of the United States; it was the response to those exercises that left the future prospects of American hegemony in doubt. The Bush Doctrine, as a further example, was widely depicted as falling short of the requirements of successful legitimation (Harries 2004; Jervis 2004). In consequence, as even Robert Kagan conceded at the time, America faced a crisis of international legitimacy (Kagan 2004). This judgement was widespread (Brooks and Wohlforth 2008: Ch. 6). The notable decit was that the key ingredients of consent and legitimacy are missing from US national security policy (Grifths 2004: 72). International society, on the face of it, had not been persuaded by US demands to recognize its exceptionalism, or to grant it special privileges (Wheeler 2003: 211; Dunne 2005: 76). If we dene hegemony such that a consensual legitimacy is an essential elementrather than just an optional extrathen this phase of US strategy amounted to no kind of hegemony at all. At best, it was a tale of hegemony lost. In terms of a social theory of hegemonywhereby hegemony becomes an accepted institution of international societythere has then been no recent American hegemony, its material-power primacy notwithstanding. The focus must now shift from the attributes of the putative hegemon, and the resources at its command, towards the perceptions and responses of the followers. These debates reect the confused usages of the concept of hegemony. Stretching the conceptual spectrum in this way is highly problematic. Adopting a stricter concept allows us to see that there has been no recent American hegemony. Indeed, it was precisely the attempt to push through a materially based policy of primacy that did most to impede its realization. Paradoxically, those supporters who consider 2001 to represent a new hegemony, and those who see it instead as a collapse of hegemony, both point equally to the very

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same conjuncture in support of their respective positions: those new features that marked the ascendancy of hegemony also contributed to its collapse. The symptom of this failure was the ensuing crisis of legitimacy of US hegemony (Bello 2005). More specically, the problem this highlighted was that there is no formal institution of hegemony which exists independently of the state that exercises world leadership (Brilmayer 1994: 19), and the challenging question is what would be necessary to create one. Issues of legitimacy are central to any answer (Brilmayer 1994: 14). Even so, this basic understanding is quite contrary to the prescriptions of many neorealists. For them, concentration of power is the problem, and can be addressed only by its reduction: there is no possibility of its being institutionalized in any other acceptable way. Surprisingly, even those who have held wholly opposing views on the likely durability of US primacy nonetheless agree on this conclusion. Those who have seen primacy as unstable, and likely to be short-lived, insist that the problem is not a behavioural one. The United States has a hegemony problem because it wields hegemonic power. To reduce the fear of US power, the United States must accept some reduction in its relative hard power (Layne 2006b: 40). Those, on the other hand, most condent about the durability of US primacy tend nonetheless to concur, suggesting that there will be unease no matter what Washington does: Nothing the United States could do short of abdicating its power would solve the problem completely (Brooks and Wohlforth 2002: 289). Primacy, along with its resulting discontents, is evidently a function of capabilities, not of diplomatic behaviour. Prophylactic multilateralism, we are therefore warned, cannot inoculate the United States from counter-hegemonic balancing (Layne 2006b: 24). This again, however, brings out the conation between primacy, and the quite different social relationship of hegemony. In Walts terms, the hegemons problem is not simply what it has, but what others think it will do (Walt 2002: 136). Hegemony offers a distinctive strategy for addressing the problems engendered by primacy, going beyond any solution that relies simply upon the USA divesting itself of some of its material capabilities, or in which other states manage to balance successfully against it. This shift of perspective to hegemony as a social institutionrather than as something structurally determined by the distribution of power aloneopens up a series of related analytical questions. Specically, how does this enable us to impose limits on the concept? Dismissing the suggestion that hegemony is simply the exercise of raw military, economic and political power, Agnew presents it instead as a new form of power, resting on the enrolment of others in the exercise of your power by convincing, cajoling, and coercing them that they should want what you want (Agnew 2005: 12). While this takes us part of the way towards the narrowing of the concept, it nonetheless still encompasses a very broad range of types of inuence: does it then make no difference what is the resulting balance between the elements of convincing, cajoling,

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and coercing in that outcome? What this implies is that hegemony is sufciently broad to include this entire spectrum. In the same way, Posen (2003) had identied a debate about which variant of a hegemonic strategy the United States should pursue. One version, he considered as leaning towards unilateral, nationalistic, and military means; the other was marked by a greater tendency to be multilateral and liberal, and to demonstrate more concern with international legitimacy (Posen 2003: 6). However, both were presented as equally hegemonic, even though their styles contrasted so profoundly. Within such a framework, the policies chosen by the George W. Bush administrations were deemed to represent simply a shift from one type of hegemony to another, rather than any shift to or from hegemony, and in relation to something else (Persaud 2003/4). This is far from persuasive: rather than denote two types of hegemony, it surely makes for greater clarity to see this as conrming the distinction already drawn between primacy and hegemony. These concerns, in turn, relate to more fundamental accounts of power, the material, and the social. The materialist viewpoint regards primacy as based on a substantive power that is possessed, rather than as something that is social and bestowed by others. In one such formulation, hegemony is about raw, hard power . . . US hegemony is the result of objective material conditions (Layne 2006b: 1112). There is on this view no distinction to be made between hegemony and primacy, as both describe the same material distributions. According to John Mearsheimer, a hegemon is a state that is so powerful that it dominates all other states in the system (Mearsheimer 2001: 40). Such material accounts of primacy stand in sharp contrast to those that emphasize the essentially social, or recognized, status of hegemony. Even if this rests on material power, that alone is not sufcient. The brute material condition of having one state holding a preponderance of military resources may produce great inuence and strength for that state, observes Hurd, but without a successful strategy of legitimation the social relation of hegemony or Great Power status is not created (Hurd 2007b: 204). Simpson goes further: hegemony is a juridical category dependent on the recognition of rights and duties and the consent of other states in the system (Simpson 2004: 70). It is this understanding of hegemony as socially bestowed, not unilaterally possessed, that is critical, and the concept of hegemony is best conned to this usage alone. Only on the basis of this distinction can we begin to appreciate that a whole range of current international problems resides exactly in the widening divergence, in recent years, between US primacy and any possible US hegemony, since this disjuncture between the power structure and the social order is becoming rather stark (Buzan 2004b: 148). Accordingly, we must take seriously those two contrasting readings of power. One regards primacy as an attribute of the leading state, and denotes what it has; the other treats hegemony, and the power of which it is

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constituted, as something acknowledged by others, and with reference to how it is socially regarded. Otherwise expressed, in the latter view, hegemony is a state or condition of the system itself, and not a property belonging to the hegemon (Cerny 2006: 68). In order further to anchor this distinction, this book makes appeal to the underlying logic of ES theory, and invites the conclusion that hegemony be treated as one possible institution of international society.

ANARCHY AND HIERARCHY I N INTERNATIONAL S OCIETY

Hegemony is arguably the ultimate litmus test for international legitimacy. It is the very hard case. Practices of legitimacy take place within an international society and successful legitimation, so it would seem, has been most likely when there has existed some semblance of equilibrium (Clark 2005: Ch. 12). To the extent that legitimacy rests upon an acquired consensus, this has been most readily attainable within a relatively even distribution of power that respects checks and balanceswhat early nineteenth-century practitioners called a just equilibrium. To regard hegemony as a possibly legitimate status may then appear paradoxical or self-contradictory. How, in short, is the legitimacy that arises within equilibrium to be replicated in conditions that, by denition, are its antithesis? Can the anarchical society (Bull 1977) tolerate any legitimate hegemony? This unease is driven by the perception of hegemony as an expression of hierarchy, and hence as potentially inconsistent with anarchy. Hegemony, so it might seem, necessarily erodes both legitimacy and anarchy, as traditionally conceived within international society. This chapter rejects both of these conclusions. In order to esh out this initial theoretical statement, the following section systematically traces a series of linkages between some principal concepts: anarchy, hierarchy, and hegemony. Its ultimate question is about the compatibility of hegemony and international society. To get there, we need to pose intermediate questions about the compatibility of hierarchy with international society, and whether hegemonyif it is indeed a form of hierarchy (and not anarchy)is beyond international societys pale. In Dunnes words, how far is an international society composed of a plurality of sovereign states compatible with hierarchy? (Dunne 2003: 304). Dunne had given voice to the worry that trends in the early 2000s might portend a form of hierarchy that was threatening to international society. While acknowledging that, in the past, the sovereign states system has historically admitted many formal and informal hierarchies, he remained

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concerned that those recent developments might have a more disruptive signicance (Dunne 2003: 304). One way of expressing this is that he feared a US-imposed hierarchy might be emerging exogenously to threaten international society. The alternative perspective, addressed here, is whether a legitimate hegemony could be developed endogenously, and without such anti-social implications. The standard objection is that hegemony is ab initio incompatible with international society. This rests upon the syllogism that hierarchy is a different ordering principle from anarchy, hegemony is an expression of hierarchy, and therefore hegemony cannot be a form of anarchy. Waltz had famously associated hierarchy with domestic politics, and anarchy with the international. The ordering principles of the two structures are distinctly different, he maintained, indeed, contrary to each other (Waltz 1979: 81, 88). It followed then that to move from an anarchic to a hierarchic realm is to move from one system to another (Waltz 1979: 100). These categorical separations have been regularly questioned, and often presented as forming a continuum rather than a dichotomy (Lake 1996: 7, Fig. 1; Wendt and Friedheim 1995: 696). Some have challenged the validity of anarchy as a general representation of all international politics in the rst place, pointing out that it has not been empirically tested, simply assumed (Hurd 2007a: 1857; Cronin and Hurd 2008a). Others again have offered the more fundamental challenge that anarchy and hierarchy do not amount to organizing principles at all (Donnelly 2009). Waltz, of course, had clearly stressed that these ordering principles are ideal-types and, in practice, all societies are mixed. Elements in them represent both of the ordering principles (Waltz 1979: 11416). There are very few pure cases (Lake 1996: 10). Part of the problem, it has been suggested, is IRs enduring xation with formal-legal conceptions of authority, and the rigid denitions of anarchy that result from them (Lake 2007: 53). It is now generally accepted that these two principles can indeed be mixed, and that many political systems are effectively hybrids. Accordingly, we have been encouraged to think instead of hierarchy under anarchy (Wendt and Friedheim 1995: 689) or hierarchy in anarchy (Donnelly 2006: 141), while yet others urge us to explore the social logics of hierarchy that exist alongside, but cannot be explained by, the logic of anarchy (Hobson and Sharman 2005: 92). It is precisely such a social logic of hierarchy that is potentially illuminating with respect to hegemony. This requires us to think of hierarchy in its consensual form, and as issuing from relational authority that rests on a bargain between the ruler and the ruled premised on the formers provision of a social order of value sufcient to offset the latters loss of freedom (Lake 2007: 54). If this is once accepted, it gets us over any absolutist rejection of hierarchy as inconsistent with international society. A focus upon legitimacy

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opens up the possibility of genuine hierarchy, and not simply inequality under anarchy (Wendt and Friedheim 1995: 698). The challenging questions to emerge from these conceptual schemes are just how much hierarchy the anarchical society can tolerate, and how much hierarchy does hegemony actually entail. There is no doubt that some see hegemony amounting to a new organizing principle, and hence as a structural change (Layne 2006b: 4). It denotes a shift from anarchy. This is because hegemony, we are told, is a hierarchical political arrangement (Brilmayer 1994: 19). Ikenberry concurs: in a hegemonic order, the relations of power and authority are dened by the organizing principle of hierarchy (Ikenberry 2001: 267). This appears to place hegemony beyond the pale of the anarchical international society. Others are more exible, and end by viewing a hegemonic order as a particular conguration of anarchy and hierarchy (Nexon and Wright 2007: 256). On this latter reading, the anarchical society can evidently persist, even in conditions of hegemony. It is this version that will carry forward into the remainder of this discussion: even if a form of hierarchy, hegemony remains consistent with the overall anarchical ordering of international society. Although the formal principles of anarchy and hierarchy remain distinct, their embodiment within a particular political system needs not be mutually exclusive, but can be mixed, as Waltz had already suggested. This echoes the claim that in some areas of international politics, international authority and international anarchy do coexist (Cronin and Hurd 2008b: 4). Even if hegemony does indeed denote an element of hierarchy, it is no more inconsistent with international society than are those many other institutions historically developed within it. As Bull had accepted, the general idea of the special rights and duties of the great powers itself had already embodied a principle of hierarchy (Bull 1979/80: 438). On those grounds, there can be no principled objection to hegemony, as a form of hierarchy, as necessarily incompatible with an otherwise anarchical society.

B E Y O N D P R I M A CY : L E G I T I M A C Y AND HE GE M ONY
How then do legitimacy and hegemony help us to think about concentrations of power? It is highly revealing that general theoretical disagreements about which material distribution of power is more conducive to stability have come to be largely replicated in the literatures on international legitimacy and hegemony. Over the past half century, there have developed two disparate clusters of theory that address stability from the seemingly distinct routes of legitimacy and hegemony. These express similarly contested judgements about which distributions best foster stability. At a glance, they appear

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downright contradictory. The rst emphasizes a relatively even dispersal of power as a precondition of (consensual) legitimacy, and hence of stability. The other, especially in its variant of HST, is committed instead to the benets of a concentration of power in the single hegemon. This is a puzzle. Can both be right? Tellingly, despite initial appearances to the contrary, neither is exclusively a theory of international distribution. Thus far, too much of the ongoing debate about the post-Cold War structure of power has been about its distributional pattern, and the likely durability of United States primacy. Its conation of primacy and hegemony has led to other signicant dimensions of power becoming squeezed out. Once we bring them back in, the interesting question is how a legitimate order, normally associated with consensus amongst a number of states in relative equilibrium, might possibly be replicated in conditions of predominance. Legitimacy and hegemony, it then transpires, have much more in common with each other, despite their opposed preferences about distributions of power, and both invite reections on our anarchical understanding of international society. To date, those arguments that focus upon legitimacy assume that stability arises where power is dispersed in a roughly equal manner. They understand legitimacy to pertain to agreement and consensus, at the very least amongst the major powers, and thus to require some acknowledgement of the equal status of those powers. The rst cluster includes those many political theorists who have long claimed a direct correlation between legitimacy and stability. This is because legitimacy denotes an acceptable, or authoritative, set of political conditions, and is less likely to meet resistance, or to require maintenance by coercive or other means of inducement. Such a view has been prevalent since Max Webers seminal discussion (Weber 1968: II, 31; Beetham 1991; Bukovansky 2002; Clark 2005; Hurd 2007a). This relationship was imported into IR most famously via the work of Henry Kissinger (1977). Historically, that relationship was demonstrated in the post-1815 period: the period of stability which ensued was the best proof that a legitimate order had been constructed (Kissinger 1977: 5). This connection between legitimacy and stability has since been further explored by various international historians and theorists (Holsti 1991; Osiander 1994; Schroeder 1994; Watson 1992). On these views, international stability derives from more than the material distribution of power alone: the critical intervening variable is the attainment, or otherwise, of a shared conception of international legitimacy. Those arguments that dwell on hegemony, by contrast, consider stability as derivative of the concentration of power. The second cluster dwells instead upon hegemony as the most likely condition for international stability, and HST is the best known of its sub-theories. HSTs core proposition is that hegemonic structures of power, dominated by a single country, are most conducive to the development of strong international regimes whose

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rules are relatively precise and well obeyed (Keohane 1989: 75). HST evidently starts from the concentration of power. This was most readily discernible in the interest shown in any putative American decline, as likely to impact adversely on future stability, because as the distribution of tangible resources . . . becomes more equal, international regimes should weaken (Keohane 1989: 78). Fragmentation of power . . . leads to fragmentation of the international economic regime, insisted Keohane, and this is the logical corollary of HSTs premise that concentration of power contributes to stability (Keohane 1989: 78). Stability, so it would appear, is most likely when there is available a hegemon, both able and willing to play this role. How is it that two theories, both concerned with distributions of power, have reached such diametrically opposed conclusions? One answer is that, while interested in distributions of power, neither theory sees these as the sole determinant of international stability. The former introduces one intervening variablelegitimacybetween material power and stability. The latter injects an alternative variablehegemonythat is again distinct from purely distributional concepts. Despite the sharp disagreement between them as to their respective preferences for dispersal or concentration of power, they in fact share a highly signicant common belief that stability is a function not of material distributions alone, but also of degrees of acceptance within the relevant social constituency. It is this common feature that offers the prospect of a theory of international societyapplicable to conditions of primacy combining the virtues of both legitimacy and hegemony. Although HST starts from material distributions of power, it does not end exclusively there. The concentration of power is necessary, but not sufcient. Gilpin himself had insisted that hegemony . . . is based on a general belief in its legitimacy (Gilpin 1987: 73). What this suggests is that legitimacy-based and hegemony-based theories of stability are not as radically opposed as their initially differing assumptions about preferable distributions of power. Indeed, if both distributional accounts were equally valid, we might reasonably conclude that legitimacy has the potential to trump any specic balance of power. In itself, this helps to open the door to an institutional view of hegemony, in conditions otherwise characterized by primacy.

CONCLUSIO N
Legitimacy-based and hegemony-based accounts share much in common, even if traditionally pulled apart by divergent prescriptions about the most desirable distribution of power. Both provide additional insight into the kind of power that characterizes anarchy. Neither hierarchy, nor hegemony as an instance of it, is incompatible with an anarchical society. What is more likely

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incompatible with international society is any unchecked primacy. One major problem at the moment is then the tension between the seeming fact of US primacy, and its (in)ability to translate this into a socially acceptable hegemony. This rejects that view of hegemony, criticized by Reus-Smit, as simply the material capacity of a dominant state to dictate the rules of the international system (Reus-Smit 2004: 634). Instead, it argues that the most appropriate theoretical departure point is that already provided by the ES, precisely because of its potential to view hegemony as a social institution. Within such a conception, the advantages of hierarchy need to be calibrated with the demands of anarchy, in the exceptional conditions of primacy. Historically, tolerable degrees of consensus have most readily been attained in conditions of relative equilibrium. The challenge, in a situation of primacy, is to reconcile the particular needs and interests of the leading power with those of international society at large. If, as ES theorists believe, the great powers traditionally have been allowed to enjoy special rights and responsibilities within international society, what follows likewise is the need to negotiate special rights and responsibilities for the hegemon as well. The central puzzle is how to develop this analogous role of great-power management, given the simultaneous absence of equilibrium, and in a setting correspondingly more redolent of the unacceptable face of hierarchy. This involves dealing with two interconnected conceptual, and political, problems. Firstly, since international society has always manifested some tendency to resist the emergence of a hegemon, how is this concern best allayed in present conditions? This can come only from the social expectations generated by the institution of hegemony, and the manner in which the hegemons behaviour manages to satisfy them. Secondly, while international society has shown past willingness to accept the special role of a group of great powers, how is it to be persuaded to accord this role to a single great power? The answer, in this case, must presumably include a shared acceptance of the need to work from the distribution of power we have, rather than from one we might otherwise prefer. An ES appreciation of hegemony as an institution of international society allows for the possibility of hierarchy in anarchy, responding to a social logic, unaccountable in terms of anarchy alone. It is to a fuller development of such a theoretical perspective that the next chapter will turn.