1Gramsci’s concept of hegemony at the national and international level.

The work of Antonio Gramsci has been very influential in the field of International Political Economy. Not only has the Italian revolutionary’s body of thought been taken as a starting point for conceptualising hegemony at the international level – something this paper is mostly concerned with – it has also provided a source for a critical understanding of the International in general. Given my aim, the first part of the paper will look at how Gramsci’s concept of hegemony has been understood by influential scholars in the field of IR such as Arrighi and Cox. Secondly, relying on more recent literature on Gramsci, engaging with the critical edition of the Quaderni and dwelling on some important tenets of his body of thought, I will outline another interpretation. Differently from the above scholars, hegemony will be understood as being economic, civic and political and defined as dialectical unity between leadership and domination, including both the moments of consensus and coercion. In due course I will look at how a ‘fundamental class ’ can realise hegemony and identify structural, economic causes for why it can run into crisis. The third part of the paper then turns to the International and presents how Arrighi, Cox an