The Integral State and Construction of Hegemony: Gramsci and

The engagement between agents in the Nigerian state and civil society during the struggle for the end of military rule and establishment of democracy from the 1980s to the current elective civil rule fits into Gramscian war of position. Demands on military rulers to establish democratic civil rule elicited backlash from forces controlling the state. In the current post military era, entrenchment of democracy beyond institutional parameters also warrants relations of forces with either a pro-democratic or an anti-democratic agenda. In the struggle for democracy, clusters of interests operating in two broad directions of democratisation or de-democratisation seek to extend their values and control on the state. Gramsci explains this by showing the interstices and linkages between state and civil society in the process of articulating or contesting hegemony. Democratisation in itself is related to the hegemonic processes. Connecting the thesis of Antonio Gramsci to various strategies of pro-democracy groups and the corresponding effort to squelch them by contrary forces both in state and civil society, I argue that the struggle for establishment of civil rule and consolidation of democracy is a war of position