Hegemony, counter-hegemony and perpheral societies : new approaches to international relations theory

Saurin, Julian Charles Joaquin (1992) Hegemony, counter-hegemony and perpheral societies : new approaches to international relations theory. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Abstract

The thesis is the development of a new approach to the analysis of international relations based upon the rejection of the liberal notion of the state as the basic unit of international relations theory, and the articulation of a concept of the state-society complex which emphasises the economic and ideological unity of a single world system. After an extended theoretical exposition of the expansion of the world capitalist system and the analysis of the Gramscian theory of the state and ideology, these two trends of thought are brought together to explain the organic crisis of peripheral states. The central working premiss of the thesis is that the domestic-international dichotomy is invalid and misleading to explanations of international relations, and that instead there is a continuum of activity which spreads from the local to the global environment. This continuum is expressed most consistently through ideology and class relations. Using Gramsci's theory of hegemony in the context of the development of El Salvador, particularly over the last two decades, the thesis seeks to demonstrate the strength and impact of such continuities. Any social theory must be capable of giving an account of change and transformation, and this is articulated in the concept of counter-hegemony (also developed from the work of Antonio Gramsci) and demonstrated through a study of the challenge of subaltern movements in El Salvador. The organic crisis of the state in El Salvador is interpreted as being of both structural economic derivation (location in the world economy, the nature of dependency, failure of domestic accumulation) and the inability to carry out a hegemonic project, these being consequences of the peripheral status. Throughout the thesis the relationship between economic and ideological order is maintained as the focal point of analysis, and the principal avenue of continuity between global and local forces.

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