(Re)introducing world hegemony into the ‘global organic crisis’

Abstract

Liberal international relations scholars, such as G. John Ikenberry, blame contemporary global turmoil on the collapse of the 'liberal international order'. Outside the mainstream, neo-Gramscian scholars claim we are in the midst of an 'interregnum', submerged in what they call a 'global organic crisis' since 2008. This article examines neo-Gramscian research carried out in this area, highlighting the many important contributions. In doing so, however, it detects certain theoretical oversights which prevent them from fully explaining either the dynamics of the contemporary global system or, more specifically, structural change itself. This paper aims to offer a more convincing explanation of the current conjuncture. In contrast to the transnational neo-Gramscian perspective, it recognises the continuing relevance of 'world hegemony'. Drawing on world-systems analyst Giovanni Arrighi, the article argues that the 'global organic crisis' is actually an expression of a deeper systemic crisis affecting US world hegemony and the regime of neoliberal accumulation that it helps to underwrite globally. Unfortunately, for progressives, the only hegemonic project that currently seriously challenges the primacy of neoliberalism is the right-wing populism of Trump, Orbán, Milei, etc. but that has yet to set out a coherent alternative accumulation regime. Hegemony has never been based solely on consensus - coercion and militarism are integral to it - yet this paper questions the sustainability of world hegemony increasingly dependent on political and military means (including against its allies in Western Europe) to overcome what are in reality 'incurable structural conditions'.