944 Ideology, Hegemony and Political Subjectivity David Howarth Staffordshire University Theorising Hegemony

David Howarth

Introduction
It has been recognised by numerous political scientists that the concept of hegemony constitutes an invaluable tool of analysis for understanding and explaining a wide range of empirical phenomena. However, despite this centrality, rigorous theorisation of the concept has not been forthcoming. In comparison to a range of family resemblance concepts such as power, domination, leadership, and force (not to mention other key concepts of political theory such as freedom, obligation, social class and the state), theoretical labour on hegemony has remained underdeveloped. One recent exception to this generalisation is the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. They have drawn on post-structuralist and post-modernist themes to articulate a novel conception of hegemony (See Mouffe, 1979; Laclau & Mouffe, 1985; Laclau, 1990). Though this theorisation has attracted a good deal of commentary both positive and negative the discussion has tended to be of a typically either/or variety: either their work has resolved all the problems associated with the concept, and requires very little further investigation, or it has no relevance at all in advancing theory in this eld, and should be immediately abandoned. In the too rapid desire to praise or condemn, usually for short-term political advantage, much of the richness of Laclau & Mouffes problematic has been lost, while careful analysis of its sources, and the unanswered questions it raises, foreclosed. In this paper, I shall situate and contextualise their innovative theorisation of the concept of hegemony, while at the same time pointing out a series of difculties and weaknesses which still need to be claried if their approach is to be theoretically coherent and empirically applicable.

The Classical Precursors

The emergence of the concept of hegemony in the Marxist tradition can be traced back to debates in Russian social democracy from the late 1890s to 1917 (Anderson, 1976). Nevertheless, echoes of the problem which generated the concept, can be found in Marx and Engels. The question of politics in Marx and Engels writings generally concerns the role of the state and ideology in the maintenance of class domination, in which the state is understood principally as an agent of coercion, and ideology as the inculcation of false consciousness. There are, however, at least two important supplementary dimensions to their theorisation. In the rst place, the working class must transcend its own particular interests to become a universal class in any succesful social revolution; second, the organisation of class rule involves more than narrow state coercion and ideological deception but the creation of an ideal, though illusory, community to justify its particular mode of existence, and a set of state institutions designed to supervise, regulate and enmesh the private lives of individuals (See Marx, 1977, pp.169, 316).

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Despite these supplementary additions to the class domination theory of politics and ideology, it was left to later Marxist thinkers to elaborate upon the complexities of class rule and the strategic prerequisites of succesful political class struggle. Foremost amongst these was Gramsci. Most commentators have emphasised the central role of hegemony in his political thought, though this concept has a number of different and at times contradictory meanings (Anderson, 1976; Femia, 1981; Hoffman, 1984; Mouffe, 1979). In brief, there are at least four dimensions of hegemony in Gramscis writings. Firstly, in contradistinction to a Leninist conception of class alliances, it designates a particular type of political practice in which a social class endeavours to become hegemonic by winning the consent of forces external to it and in so doing exercising leadership over them (Gramsci, 1971, pp.180-185). Secondly, it represents a type of political form in which supremacy is characterised by the predominance of consent and leadership over force and domination (Gramsci, 1971, p.55 n.5). Thirdly, it refers to the liberal democratic historical bloc which is structured by the normal exercise of hegemony, that is, hegemony is equated with a historical bloc in which there is a proper balance between consent and coercion (Gramsci, 1971, p.80 n.49). Finally, and this is paramount to many Leninist readings of Gramsci, hegemony is made equivalent to class supremacy as such, in which all political rule comprises a combination of the exercise of leadership over allies, and the domination of enemies (See Buci-Glucksman, 1980, pp.47-68). This explication of the concept must be seen against the backdrop of Gramscis rethinking of Marxist political theory more generally. This consists in Gramscis twofold expansion of the category of political society (or the state) to include those aspects which Hegel had bracketed under the name of civil society, on the one hand, and his transformation of the functions of class domination (especially evident in the institutions of civil society) to encompass the manufacture of consent, and the exercise of leadership through ethico-political and intellectual and moral means. Both of these developments were predicated on a sharp separation between the East, where the State was everything, [and] civil society was primordial and gelatanious, and the West, where there was a proper balance between State and civil society, a division which meant that in the West there ought to be a prioritisation of the war of position over the war of movement as the most appropriate political strategy for advancing socialism by the working classes (Gramsci, 1971, pp.229-238).

Laclau & Mouffes Critique of the Marxist Tradition

While Laclau & Mouffe presuppose and build upon Gramscis theory of hegemony (See Laclau, 1977; Mouffe, 1979), they are critical of the Marxist ontology and epistemology underpinning it. In short, there are two fundamental assumptions which they criticise. These are Gramscis commitment to a fundamental social class in capitalist societies the working class bringing about important social change, as well as the centrality of a decisive economic nucleus as the object of political struggle and the ultimate determinant of the character of the political and ideological superstructures. Both of these assumptions require the Marxist notions of a unied and expressive social totality with a set of predetermined laws of motion and development. In this sense, Gramscis innovative theorisation of

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hegemony, and his introduction of concepts such as a historical bloc mediating between, and condensing, the different moments of a social formation, remains constrained by a linear theory of history (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, pp.65-71). This critique of Gramsci is symptomatic of Laclau & Mouffes overall deconstruction of the Marxist tradition. In this respect, they posit an ineradicable tension between what they call the logic of necessity and the logic of contingency (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985). These two logics are traced back to the writings of Marx and Engels, and are manifested, according to Laclau & Mouffe, in two competing theories of historical change: one, epitomised in the 1959 Preface to The Contribution to Political Economy, , in which social change is determined by the contradiction between the forces and relations of production, and the other, manifest in The Communist Manifesto, in which there is the primacy of class struggles in the production of historical transformation (Laclau, 1990). While, according to Laclau & Mouffe, both logics are present in Marxist theory they do not have an equal status. Instead of a mutual co-existence and contamination of the two logics, Marxist theoreticians have posited a sharp separation between them, and have prioritised the logic of necessity. (Though structurally undecidable, to use Derridean terminology, Marxist discourse subordinates contingency to necesssity, making it a supplement of the latter.) Hence, the logic of contingency which, according to Laclau & Mouffe, is synonymous with questions of political subjectivity, strategy, the role of the state and ideological efffects (in short, the political par excellence) has a restricted eld of application, which is both theoretically indeterminate, in that it is beyond rigorous and scientic analysis, and ultimately reducible to the necessary laws of economic development (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, pp.47-48).

Laclau & Mouffes Post-Marxist Alternative

Laclau & Mouffes post-Marxist alternative and their retheorisation of the concept of hegemony is predicated on an ontology of the social in which there is an interweaving of the logics of necessity and contingency, rather than a prioritising of the former over the latter. To do so, they introduce a theory of discourse where there is no ontological separation between an extra- discursive and objective reality, on the one hand, and the particular discourses which constitute the social meaning of reality on the other. They also refuse a sharp distinction between a realm of ideological practices, on the one hand, which can be counterposed to other practices, such as those pertaining to the economy on the other, while also rejecting any attempt to concede an a priori primacy to any particular set of practices. In addition, and importantly, Laclau & Mouffe stress the contingency of identity, insofar as any particular discursive formation is always limited by the existence of other discourses. In this sense, discourses are never completely able to domesticate a particular eld of meaning (sometimes referred to as the eld of discursivity), such that any particular discursive identity is surrounded by what they call a surplus of meaning, which prevents its full closure. The structural inability of a discourse to dominate meaning means that social identities are never determined by an underlying logic of historical development, but are always precarious historical and political constructions, vulnerable to the destabilising effects of discourses external to them (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, pp.110-114). This theory of discourse draws upon Derridas deconstruction of structuralist

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linguistics (and Western metaphysics more generally). That is to say, though Laclau & Mouffe accept Saussures relational conception of linguistic value, they weaken his view that there is a rigid xity between signier and signied, which is itself the product of the total linguistic system. Instead, following Derrida, they argue that the production of identity always involves the deferring of certain differences. This dual process of differing/deferring both stabilises identity, while exposing it to the effects of exclusion. According to Derrida, this is consequent upon the nature of the linguistic sign which must, in principle, always be repeatible in different linguistic contexts (or systems of signication), if it is to perform the function of a linguistic sign (Derrida, 1971). According to Laclau & Mouffe, the contingency of social identity is shown in the experience of antagonism. Antagonisms represent the political moment par excellence, namely, the moments of struggle, decision and subjectivity. In this capacity, they are both constitutive of social relations, while revelatory of the impossibility of any total closure of identity upon itself. What are social antagonisms in Laclau & Mouffes perspective? In opposition to traditional conceptions of social conict, which represent antagonism as the clash of social agents with fully constituted identities (such that the task of the political analyist is to describe the causes, conditions and resolution of conict), Laclau & Mouffe insist that social antagonisms occur because of the failure or inability of a social agent to attain its identity, in which case the task of the analyst is to explore the different forms of this impossibility, and the mechanisms by which the blockage of identity is constructed as antagonistic by social agents. As they put it: [I]n the case of antagonism, we are confronted with a different situation: the presence of the Other prevents me from being totally myself. The relation arises not from full totalities, but from the impossibility of their constitution ... Insofar as there is antagonism, I cannot be a full presence for myself. But nor is the force that antagonizes me such a presence: its objective being is a symbol of my non-being and, in this way, it is overowed by a plurality of meanings which prevent it being xed as full positivity (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, p.125). In this sense, antagonisms are witness to the nitude of identity in that they show the limits of any social objectivity. Furthermore, antagonisms are also essential for stemming the relational ow of differences which make up the social eld. They thus actively form identity by requiring the institution of political frontiers which divide social agents into opposed camps and discursive formations. In the latter sense, they perform an ontological role, that is, they are vital for the very constitution of identity, while paradoxically showing the limits and precariousness of identity (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, p.125). This brief contextualisation of Laclau & Mouffes social ontology enables us to make sense of their conceptualisation of hegemony. There are two different models of hegemony at work in their writings. Let us examine each in turn. Model 1 In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Laclau & Mouffe present the concept of hegemony as a particular type of articulatory practice a political type of relation

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or form of politics as they put it. It is made possible in a very specic set of conditions: rstly, the existence of antagonistic forces and, secondly, a social eld in which there is the presence of a vast area of oating elements, that is to say, the availability of a proliferation of meanings not stabilised into a system of differences, which can be articulated into opposed hegemonic projects (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, pp.135-136). Given this situation, hegemonic articulations consist in the practice of partially condensing and stabilising social meaning around privileged signiers, which Laclau & Mouffe call nodal points. Alongside the ontological openness of social identities, which makes the hegemonic practice possible, is the abandonment of any privileged social agent peforming the function of the hegemonic subject. Contra the Marxist positing of the working class as the universal agent of progressive historical change, Laclau & Mouffe argue that any social agent can assume this role depending on specic historical circumstances. Similarly, they argue that hegemonic practices always involve a dislocation between hegemonic tasks and the social actors supposed to carry them out. In other words, hegemonic operations require there to be no necessary link between a social class and its natural tasks; this implies that hegemony has a metonymical form involving the displacement of actions from a certain shere to another.

Model 2 In New Reections on the Revolution of Our Time, Laclau presents a purported radicalisation of the concept of hegemony (Laclau, 1990, pp.28-31). This corresponds to three levels of the necessity/contingency relationship. In the rst level of radicalisation, and this is the model presented in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Laclau & Mouffe stress the contingency of the elements which make up the social, arguing that in times of organic crisis, these signiers take on a oating character, and become the objects of contestation amongst competing hegemonic projects. The difculty with this model, according to Laclau, is the transparency of those projects which attempt to hegemonise the available oating signiers. A second level of theorisation recognises the incomplete and contingent character of the projects which endeavours to hegemonise a eld of signiers. Though, according to Laclau, this movement deepens the degree of contingency in political analysis (and simultaneously begins to weaken the duality of structure and agency), it remains trapped within a perspective dominated by the notion of equivocity that is, following Aristotle, the idea that terms can be used differently in separate situations rather than authentic ambiguity, such that the ideal of a pure contextual transparency is not placed in question (Laclau, 1990, p.29). Laclaus solution is to move to a third level of radicalization in which ambiguity operates within structures themselves. Drawing again on Derrida, Laclau argues that structures are necessarily undecidable in their formal constitution, with the result that hegemonic operations always involve acts of radical construction, actualising possibilities inherent in formal structures. In this case, hegemonic practices always involve the emergence of political subjects whose task is to reconstitute structures in new forms (Laclau, 1990, pp.30-32).

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Theorising Hegemony
Before I turn to a critical evaluation of Laclau & Mouffes concept of hegemony, it is important to clarify what is in need of theorisation. It is possible, I think, to isolate three important senses of the concept. First, hegemony is a kind of political practice involving the drive to break down and reconstruct historically constituted social and political forms. Second, hegemony refers to a substantive political and social formation; that is, it refers to a particular political project which at any particular time has succesfully become hegemonic. Third, hegemony designates a practice and form of political rule which involves more than the simple exercise of force or domination. This is to say that hegemony always has a normative dimension in that it implies a politics which goes beyond the imposition of one force over another, and requires the construction of consent, and the exercise of leadership and authority by one group over another. (As Gramsci suggests, hegemony thus operates on the terrain of civil society, as opposed to political society, and crucially involves the cultural dimension of social life.) Each of these dimensions of the concept raises a precise set of theoretical questions in need of further investigation. Let us consider to what extent Laclau & Mouffes theorisation of hegemony resolves each of them. (a) Hegemony as a form of political practice With respect to the rst dimension, Laclau & Mouffe present hegemony as a practice of disarticulation and rearticulation, a practice which is only possible given the availability of a proliferation of oating signiers, and a social eld crisscrossed by the existence of social antagonisms. This is the strongest and most convincing aspect of their theorisation, though it is not without some difculties. It is predicated on their controversial theory of discourse in which all social identity is structurally incomplete and unxed, that is, penetrated by contingency. My main question in this regard centres around Laclau & Mouffes theorisation of structural incompleteness: What do they mean by the concept of structure here? And when do structures become incomplete? On a general historical level, Laclau & Mouffes answer to the latter question is to assert that the unsutured nature of identity, and with it the centrality of hegemonic politics, only becomes dominant at the beginning of modern times, when the reproduction of the different social areas takes place in permanently changing conditions which constantly require the construction of new systems of differences ... Thus the conditions and the possibility of a pure xing of differences recede; every identity becomes the meeting point for a multiplicity of articulatory practices, many of them antagonistic (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, p.138). However, apart from their devastating attacks on the Marxist notion of structure, they provide no positive account of structure other than it being synonymous with their theorisation of discourse. The suspicion is that Laclau & Mouffes conception of a generalised structural incompleteness (or unsuturedness) remains too abstract and formal to be used unproblematically in concrete social and political analysis. This criticism can be amplied if we consider Laclaus radicalisation of the concept of hegemony in Model 2. In New Reections, Laclau introduces the concept of structural undecidability by presenting an example of rule following inspired by Wittgenstein:

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If I begin the counting the numerical series, 1, 2, 3, 4 and ask someone to continue, the spontaneous answer would be 5, 6, 7, etc. But I can adduce that this is wrong, since the series I have in mind is 1, 2, 3, 4; 9, 10, 11, 12; 17, 18, 19, 20; etc. But if my interlocuter believes that s/he has now understood the rule and tries to follow it by continuing the series in the stated way, I can still adduce that s/he is wrong, since the series I have in mind was merely a fragment of a different series for example, one comprising the numbers 1 to 20, 40 to 60, and 80 to 100 etc. And obviously, I can always change the series in a different way [my emphasis]. As can be seen, the problem here is not that the coherence of a rule can never be fully realized in empirical reality, but that the rule itself is undecidable and can be transformed by each new addition. Everything depends, as Lewis Carroll would say, on who is in command. It is a question of hegemony in the strictest sense of the term. But in this case, if the series is undecidable in terms of its very formal structure [my emphasis], the hegemonic act will not be the realization of a rationality precedeing it, but an act of construction (Laclau, 1990, p.29).

There are, it seems to me, a number of problems with this formulation. First of all, it is not clear whether or not the example constitutes an instance of undecidability (at least in the Derridean sense); the issue raised by the example is not the ambiguity of the rule as such, but the inability of the interlocuter to grasp what the rule really is, as the rule is being constantly altered by the person in power. In this sense, for the interlocuter, the game becomes one of attempting to determine which rule is being employed, that is, instead of a structural ambiguity, there is an increasing complexication of the rules which are being formulated. As it stands, the example seems to confer to Laclau the power to determine at will what the rule shall be, whereas presumably in a hegemonic struggle both parties will be attempting to x the precise form and meaning of the rule. (Besides, if every rule was as structurally undecidable as Laclau suggests, it would seem to undermine the very idea of a rule, in that it would be impossible to determine in any particular case whether or not a particular act was in accord with a rule, and without this minimal normativity, it would be impossible to rule out instances of incorrect rule following.) Further, it is not clear what it means to say that a social structure is undecidable. There are two aspects to this problem, which relate to the extension of the concept of undecidability to social and political systems, and the question of political subjectivity respectively. Let us examine each in turn. Aspect 1 Here, the concept of undecidability has two related meanings: on the one hand, it is a function of an antagonistic relation, that is, it is the revelatory moment when the outside which both forms and threatens introduces contingency or undecidability into social objectvity; on the other hand, as we have seen in the rule following example given above, it is a property of social structures themselves. In what sense are these two aspects undecidable? To answer this question, we need rst to remember that for Derrida (to whom Laclau explicitly refers) undecidability

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refers to those infrastructural concepts such as differance or the supplement which resist, bafe and weaken the preordained decisions and oppositions of metaphysical thought. Hence they open philosophy to its own constitutive exclusions without closure or decision, and in this sense embody an ethical refusal to decide. As Derrida remarks in Positions, to call conceptual infrastructures undecidable is to stress that they are unities of simulacrum, [of] false verbal properties (nominal or semantic) that can no longer be included within philosophical opposition, resisting and disorganising it, without ever constituting a third term, without ever leaving room for a solution in the form of speculative dialectics (Derrida, 1971, p.43). In what sense is this commensurate with Laclaus usages of undecidability for political theory? With respect to Laclau & Mouffes theorisation of antagonism, we have seen how in this relation identity is shown to be dependent on an other for its consitution. This opens the purity of identity to that which is external, but it is not clear why this relation is necessarily undecidable. Undecidability in this context requires, it seems to me, something additional: the positing of an ethical relation between self and other, that is, an opening of self to other. It is is not clear why this is so in the case of an antagonistic relationship. What then of the case in which social structures themselves are deemed to be undecidable? While Laclau & Mouffes argument against social structures having an essence is plausible, and results in a relational and contextualised conception of social relations, it is not clear why and how undecidability is an inherent possibility (or necesssary possibility) of the structure? It cannot mean, simply, that social structures are vulnerable to social historical change, or that they are internally contradictory, for this is the Marxist conception of structure which Laclau & Mouffe have severely criticised. Instead, structures are made analogous to instances of intrinsically ambiguous rule following. This idea of rule following captures, a la Winch, the idea of structures as institutionalised social habits and customs, but as we have seen it is not clear why they are inherently ambiguous, nor why this model of undecidability is generally applicable to social relations and structures as such. As it stands, the idea is too formal to capture the intricate network of constraints and facilitations (to borrow from Giddens) which operate in particular kinds of historically specic social structures. In short, as against Laclau & Mouffes too thin and abstract conception of structure which is universally applicable to all societies, we need (following Ryle and Geertz) a thicker conception of the structure, which allows for a fuller contextualization and historicization. Aspect 2 An essential correlate of Laclaus concept of undecidability is his rethinking of political subjectivity. Here he argues that the dislocatory logics of modern societies continuously disrupt social structures, thereby revealing their essential undecidability. These dislocatory effects open up the possibility of political agency as subjects attempt to reconstitute dislocated social structures. As these subjectivities cannot be derived from the previously dislocated forms, new political subjectivities are seen to emerge in the space between the dislocated structure and the decisions of agents (Laclau, 1990; Laclau & Zac, 1994). In this sense, all social

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structures are political constructs in that they are ultimately the product of founding acts or decisions which involve the exercise of power. This claim adds further weight to the idea that all structures are in the nal analysis undecidable. That is to say, if social forms are constituted by irreducible choices, and these decisions are not algorithmic, then there must be a plurality of options from which to choose. This reasoning proposes an interesting resolution to the so-called structure/agency debate without apparently privileging either a determining social structure or an autonomous, self-determining subject, but it is not without some difculties. The major question mark surrounds the decisionist and voluntarist connotations of Laclaus theorisation of the subject. As it has been suggested, Laclau distinguishes between subjects positioned within a discursive structure, and political subjects which actively produce structures. Apart from the problem of assuming a unied and homogenous subjectivity with clearly articulated intentions, the difculty with the latter conception is the positing of an unconditional subjectivity which is literally able to create meaningful structures out of itself. This latter view is seemingly appropriate for what we may call extreme or limit situations such as revolutionary conjunctures (or the total breakdown of social and political orders) when a thorough restructuring of social relations is possible, but even this must be qualied if we accept that the most revolutionary movements and subjectivities are conditioned by previously existing ideological traditions and organisational infrastructures. (This qualication is implicitly acknowledged by Laclau when he introduces the concepts of availability and credibility to explain the discursive raw materials which movements and subjectivites rely upon in order to attempt to construct new social orders (Laclau, 1990, pp.65-67). A second difculty concerns the question of taking a decision itself. In this regard, Laclau establishes an equivalence between taking a decision, the emergence of a strong political subjectivity, and the creation of a new social order. This is, however, to collapse the distinction between different kinds of decisionmaking. A distinction needs to be made between decisions taken within a structure and decisions taken about a structure. With respect to the former, it is evident, I think, that consumers in free markets, or politicians in parliaments, are continuously taking decisions without ever questioning or creating new structural contexts in which those choices are made. The latter sense of taking a decision covers the kinds of cases in which structures fail and new structural forms emerge. With the kind of qualications noted above, these are the situations in which Laclaus novel theorisation of structure and agency becomes applicable. What this means is that rather than a general theory of a radical political subjectivity, we need to remain sensitive to the specic historical contexts in which different kinds of subjectivity come into play. The criterion for this analysis is dependent on the kinds of decision which get taken, and the circumstances in which these decision are taken. (b) The formation of hegemony Having examined hegemony as a type of political practice, we need now to consider the substantive dimensions of hegemony, that is, hegemony as an achievement of political projects. Two issues are raised here: the process of hegemonic consolidation or institionalization, and the site in which hegemony is contested and consolidated. While Laclau & Mouffe do not explicitly address the former question, they provide important hints for its analysis. This emerges when they

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assert that hegemonic practices are basically metonymical in nature in that they occur when social forces in one sphere (for example trade unions in the economic realm) begin to address issues in another sphere (for example community and housing issues in the social sphere), thereby extending their domain of activity (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, pp.141-142). To develop this important insight, we can draw on Derridas concept of iterability to show how every repetition of a linguistic sign results in some alteration of its meaning. Without exploring the idea in sufcent detail here, it is possible using this concept to account more adequately for the process by which projects attempt to hegemonise different forces, while consolidating their particular discourses in different institutions (See Howarth, 1995). The second issue concerns the key political spaces in which hegemony is exercised. For the classical precursors in the Marxist and non-Marxist traditions, hegemony was seen to be exercised within the limits of the nation state (or was even considered to be synonymous with the nation state). According to Gramsci, for instance, the achievement of hegemony by the working classes was akin to their becoming state. In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, however, there is a double movement. On the one hand, the nation state is presented (albeit implicitly) as a key site for hegemonic politics while, on the other hand, Laclau & Mouffe make it clear that a discursive formation does not overlap with an empirical social formation (in the Marxist sense). On an abstract level, as they put it, a discursive formation is characterised as any formation which signies itself by drawing political frontiers separating it from others (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, pp.143-144). While this is suggestive, it leaves many important theoretical questions unresolved. Without exploring them in depth, it is worth pointing out that a fuller theorisation of hegemonic formations needs to take into consideration the different types and forms of state, as well as the emergence of new political forms (at the global and local levels for instance) which go beyond the state form as we know it. These issues (contra Laclau & Mouffe) cannot be resolved on a purely formal and analytical plane, but must be examined in specic historical conjunctures, and if this is the case then appropriate concepts must be developed for that analysis. This brings us to the third and nal dimension of hegemony. (c) Hegemony as a type of political rule Apart from its analytical and descriptive usages, the concept of hegemony in the Marxist tradition also implies a normative and critical perspective. Hegemony suggests something more than the succesful imposition and consolidation of one political project over others; it entails the winning of consent and the construction of authority. The difculty with Laclau & Mouffes position is the weakening of this normative aspect of the concept. This is not to say that there is a complete disappearance of normativity. Laclau & Mouffe distinguish between a democratic and authoritarian practice of hegemonic politics in their critique of Leninist discourses, arguing that the latter conception, which they clearly oppose, is integral to a theoretical perspective which retains an ontological and epistemological privilege for certain classes and organisations (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, pp.58-59). This critique of different types of hegemonic practice, however, is not extended to an analysis and evaluation of different forms of political rule. The point is also taken up by Laclau in New Reections. Considering the relation between consent and coercion, he argues that

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the opposition between consent and coercion must not be conceived of as an exclusive polarity. Consent and coercion are, rather, ideal limitative situations. What would be, in effect, a type of consent which excluded any coercion? An identity so perfectly formed that it would leave no space for any identication in the Freudian sense of the term. But this is exactly the possibility which our entire critique of the objectivist conception of social relations excludes ... [T]he mere choosing of possible courses of action and the exclusion of others implies, in itself, a form of violence. (Laclau, 1990, p.171)

Again, at a formal level, this provides us with a convincing rethinking of the relationship between consent and coercion; a rethinking which is adequate for all possible systems of power or political formations. At a more concrete level, however, it is still important to retain a distinction between coercion and consent in order to evaluate and criticise different types of political rule. That is to say, we need to be in a position to explore the variable balances of coercion and consent in particular political systems. This would enable the analyst, for instance, to examine the degree to which regimes and states rely on the exercise of coercion to sustain themselves. In this way, borrowing from Gramsci and Poulantzas, it might be possible (and useful both critically and descriptively) to construct a typology of different forms of political rule depending on their degree of organicity or inorganicity. This would depend, following Gramscis theorisation of the state and civil society in the East and West (or Poulantzas analysis of fascism and dictatorship), on the organisation and circulation of consent in different states and forms of regime.

Conclusion
Laclau & Mouffes deployment of post-structuralist and post-modernist themes has opened up new possibilities for theorizing the concept of hegemony. While this paper agrees with many of their assumptions and substantive arguments, in the limited space available it has endeavoured to point out certain deciencies in Laclau & Mouffes approach, while also pointing to possible ways in which their approach might be extended and deepened. Three areas were singled out in this regard. First, the need to rethink the theorisation of social structure and its relationship to political subjectivity. Second, the need to concentrate on hegemony as a substantive political formation. Third, the need to explore the normative dimension of hegemony, and its implications both for critically evaluating and analysing concrete hegemonic forms of political rule.

Bibliography
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