political (constitutional) and despotic (dominating) rule
hegemony may be seen as an alliance or association of groups
that share similar interests, a consensual alliance under the
leadership of a group pursuing the interest of the associated
“domination/leadership.” A group exercises “leadership” over
“allied” groups, and exercises “domination” (“even with armed
force”) over antagonistic groups.
opposed to dictatorship, where the latter represents domination
and force, and the former represents consent/persuasion and the
formation of opinion. Underlying such a notion is the reciprocal
relation between force and consent, such that hegemony may also
delineate a balanced “equilibrium” between force and consent,
where force does not prevail “too greatly” over consent.
Alliance formation based on consent and on the autonomy of the
constituent coalition partners requires the formation of a
political-social group that is able to transcend narrow,
particular interests (of a class, nation or other social group)
to more general universal ones. Thus hegemony describes a
movement from the economic to the political.
What this means is that hegemony describes the ways and
methods by which consent is generated and organized, which, in
turn, is directly related to the mechanisms and processes by
Convention