Passive Revolution

In order determine if sustainability is a megatrend, it is necessary to clarify the nature of sustainability and how it fits into the overall area of political and consumer culture. We first examine the character of a megatrend and establish a working definition that is used for the remainder of the chapter. We then arrive at a working definition of sustainability that positions it on a continuum from weak to strong sustainability. While the sustainability question has both production and consumption dimensions, the focus of the chapter is on sustainable consumption within a culture of consumption. We then argue that the political aspects of consumption become prominent under conditions of environmental stress or impending limits to economic growth. Incorporating the political reveals that, within advanced market societies, the market has achieved supremacy as the means through which sustainability is addressed. We suggest that the New Political Economy (NPE) incorporating a Gramscian perspective provides a framework through which to challenge the assumptions which have led to unsustainable market behavior. The conclusion drawn from this perspective is that sustainability is more than a megatrend as it leads to both systemic and permanent transformation within market societies.

Donna Amoroso's Traditionalism and the Ascendancy of the Malay Ruling Class in Colonial Malaya has formed one of the most influential analyses of the conservative political development of colonial and post-colonial Malaya. Central to her work was the category of "traditionalism", through which she exposed the way in which the invention and reinvention of traditions by the British colonial state laid the groundwork for the reproduction of monarchical and aristocratic power under colonial rule, creating the foundations for the "traditional" nature of the subsequent nationalist movement. In this piece I wish to argue that the process described by Amoroso can be best understood in terms of Antonio Gramsci's notion of the passive revolution of capital, a theory of conservative political, social and economic transformation under conditions of capitalist development. Expanded in the Indian (and post-colonial) case by theorists such as Partha Chatterjee and Sudipta Kaviraj, I will argue that this concept can, in the context of Malaya, form the basis for understanding Malaya's model of conservative nation-state formation, in particular highlighting the importance of three elements which Gramsci saw as central to the process of passive revolution: the state as an institution above class conflict, the coalition as a mediation between classes, and a molecular or gradualist theory of political and economic change.

Français : La notion de révolution passive est aujourd'hui reconnue comme l'une des contributions théoriques les plus importantes de Gramsci ; elle a fait l'objet de travaux approfondis en langues étrangères, et est également mise en oeuvre pour analyser différents phénomènes historiques et situations concrètes présentes. L'objectif de cet article est de constituer une étude synthétique de l'élaboration et des usages de la notion de révolution passive dans les Cahiers de prison. Pour cela, nous suivons les différentes phases de développement de la notion, ainsi que les déplacements de son sens en fonction des cas pour l'étude desquels elle est mobilisée, même hypothétiquement (le Risorgimento, l'Europe du XIX e siècle, le fascisme, l'américanisme, etc.). Pour Gramsci, il apparaît que les apports de cette notion se situent sur au moins deux plans dialectiquement liés : concevoir une modalité du changement historique qui ne saurait être réduite aux bouleversements révolutionnaires proprement dits ; mettre en évidence d'une manière critique les stratégies politiques des classes dominantes, afin d'oeuvrer à l'émancipation de l'activité autonome des subalternes.

English : The notion of passive revolution is nowadays recognised as one of Gramsci's most important theoretical contributions. Not only has it been the subject of extensive work in foreign languages, this concept is also used to analyse various historical phenomena or present concrete situations. The aim of this article is to provide a synthetic study of the development and uses of the notion of passive revolution in the Prison Notebooks. To this end, we follow the notion through its various phases of development, tracking the shifts in meaning according to the cases for which it is used (the Risorgimento, nineteenth-century Europe, Fascism, Americanism, etc.). For Gramsci, the contributions of this notion seem to be positioned on at least two levels, linked dialectically: To conceive a modality of historical change that cannot be reduced to revolutionary upheavals in the strict sense; and to critically highlight the dominant classes’ political strategies to advance the emancipation of subaltern autonomous activity.

The sustainable development discourse, including the modern green growth version, may have aspects that contribute to environmental and social welfare but it is a top down reform project, that aims at correcting the environmental and social externalities resulting from economic growth. It is directed by governments that abide by the logic of capital. Although in principle there is civic engagement, public participation is limited and without challenging the dominant economic paradigm. Following Gramsci's terminology, sustainable development can be interpreted as a passive revolution, in the sense that change is managed through compromises with different social and political actors but within limits which neutralize any potential threat to economic and political power. On the contrary, the emerging (yet still marginal) alternative, multidisciplinary , degrowth academic paradigm, has evolved from an activist movement since the first decade of this century, and retains close contacts and open communication with social movements that support a degrowth transition in economy and society. This transition directly challenges the established orthodox growth narrative and the mechanisms of capital accumulation. Thus, in contrast to the sustainable development discourse, it is difficult for the "power bloc" to accommodate degrowth. But in times of crisis and change, the dominant powers can certainly use some aspects of the degrowth discourse, assimilating and transforming them into elements that fit their new accumulation strategies, hegemonic visions and state projects. For this not to happen, degrowthers should focus their research and theory more on the workings of capitalist political economy, and their political practice on trying to form alliances with social actors, such as working-class movements, that are crucial for the achievement of hegemony.

The U.S. and U.K. officials and media have long been warning against the “imminent” Russian invasion of Ukraine. Whatever the prospects of such an invasion are, it also raises an important question about the character of the Russian political regime and how the invasion may change it.

Let us hypothetically assume, as many have, that Russia can defeat the Ukrainian army and occupy a large part of Ukraine (especially the southeastern and central regions). The question is what to do with this part of Ukraine. The problem is not the unlikely massive Ukrainian guerrilla war against the Russian army. The problem is that the Russian state, such as it is now, has little to offer Ukrainians as well as to the world.

Gramsci’s concept of hegemony has been interpreted in a wide variety of ways, including a theory of consent, of political unity, of ‘anti-politics’, and of geopolitical competition. These interpretations are united in regarding hegemony as a general theory of political power and domination, and as deriving from a particular interpretation of the concept of passive revolution. Building upon the recent intense season of philological research on the Prison Notebooks, this article argues that the concept of hegemony is better under- stood as a ‘dialectical chain’ composed of four integrally related ‘moments’: hegemony as social and political leadership, as a political project, as a hegemonic apparatus, and as the social and political hegemony of the workers’ movement. This alternative typology of hegemony provides both a sophisticated analysis of the emergence of modern state power and a theory of political organization of the subaltern social groups. This project is encapsulated in Gramsci’s notion of the formation of a ‘modern Prince’, conceived as both political party and civilizational process, which represents an emancipatory alter- native to the dominant forms of political modernity.

Wales is commonly divided into ‘more Welsh’ and ‘less Welsh’ places, although very little is known about the ‘least Welsh’ parts of Wales (dubbed ‘British Wales’ in Balsom’s ‘Three Wales Model’). Indeed, some contemporary analyses claim that devolution has made Wales ‘more Welsh’ to the extent that British Wales no longer exists. However, these claims of cultural homogeneity overlook the persistence of regional class divisions in Wales, with the ‘least Welsh’ parts of Wales remaining the most affluent.

This thesis contributes to the understanding of this overlooked region by exploring Welsh identity in the British Wales town of Porthcawl. Using a longitudinal ethnographic approach, I investigate how locals negotiate a Welsh identity and whether class and place influence this process. Yet this is not just a study of local place: my analysis of everyday Welshness is located within a wider Gramscian theoretical framework which conceptualises devolution as a process of passive revolution.

My study finds that locals feel very Welsh, undermining ideas that British Wales is ‘unWelsh’, and that place influences local identification with Welshness. Locals understand Welshness to be hierarchical, and measure their own Welshness against discursively constructed ideals of linguistic Welshness and working class Welshness (the latter being more prominent). Using Bourdieu, I show how locals work to reconcile the clash between their local (middle class) habitus and the national (working class) habitus. Understood as a working class habitus, Welshness has both positive and negative connotations. Locals subsequently move towards and away from Welshness in different contexts. The micro helps illuminate the macro, and everyday life in Porthcawl is punctuated by Welshness, rather than being structured by it. Whilst the molecular changes of devolution are observable in Porthcawl, locals occupy a British cultural world, and the national deixis remains British. These findings are indicative of a post-devolution interregnum.

South Korea’s history of economic development and corresponding political struggle is usually told from the perspective of speculators whose intellectual investment in this nation is rooted in pursuits toward capital accumulation.2 But Korea’s ongoing melee of labour unrest has trans- formed the face of development domestically throughout several stages of what Antonio Gramsci called ‘passive revolution’, which I relate to global political economic struggles for the creation and control of ideas about how to best compete and survive in the rapidly globalising world without complete destruction of national accord. (This is my published PhD and first monograph, published first in 2007 in then in 2012 in paperback)

This paper delineates the problematic of state and civil society set
out by Marx and Gramsci in its theoretical-conjunctural validity, as
it relates to postcolonial social formations and especially post-
1970s Pakistan. The Gramscian concepts of passive revolution,
“boundary-traversing” hegemony, and the integral state are elaborated
through references to three major theorists of postcolonial
societies: Chatterjee, Alavi, and Fanon. The resulting framework is
then deployed to understand developments in post-1970s
Pakistan as two phases of passive revolution.

This article examines Bolivian vice president Álvaro García Linera’s use of concepts originating in the work of Antonio Gramsci and Bolivian sociologist René Zavaleta Mercado. Zavaleta’s concept of sociedad abigarrada (usually translated as ‘motley society’) has a history of misappropriation in which García Linera participates by articulating it with the related concept of the estado aparente to claim that the merely apparent’ state which does not effectively represent the heterogeneous social reality of a country like Bolivia is abolished with the official establishment of the Plurinational State in 2009. This ideologeme of the Plurinational State as one that faithfully represents Bolivia’s abigarramiento is equated with the Gramscian stato integrale, which in Gramsci refers to the state proper plus civil society where these are thoroughly integrated to function as an organic whole (the modern capitalist nation-state). Beyond merely misusing the borrowed terms of this discursive operation, García Linera gives a prescriptive value to concepts developed for an analytical purpose to validate the existing regime.

Antonio Gramsci's notion of " passive revolution " has often been understood as a distinctive historical narrative, political concept, or theory of state formation. This article proposes to consider it instead as a " heuristic formula " within the " lexical architecture " of the Prison Notebooks. Based upon a diachronic and contextualist analysis of the usage of the formula, I argue that Gramsci's research on passive revolution emerged as a critical element within the development of his own distinctive conception of the " sublation " and " actualization " of the slogan of " the revolution in permanence. " Attending to this dialectical relationship allows the political and strategic dimensions of passive revolution to be highlighted, and suggests new paths of research for the debate about its analytic fertility and contemporary relevance.

ABSTRACT History appears already to the young Gramsci as a system of
forces in unstable balance, which struggle to position themselves on the side of history, to identify with it. For this reason, in his reading of Marxism, the unity of history is a result, the product of a successful strategy of hegemony building. This article reviews the Gramscian theory of hegemony and tries to show its coherence with the philosophy of praxis, that is, with the notion of the fundamentally practical nature of reality. In particular, it is argued that, on the one hand, a crisis of  hegemony must be understood as disintegrating (and not emptying) a hegemonic system, which allows subordinated hegemonic moments to emerge; on the other hand, the crisis itself is determined by the formulation of hegemonic discourses that try to escape their condition of subordination.

O objetivo desta reflexão é alcançar uma breve e introdutória
resposta à seguinte indagação: como situar o Brasil internacionalmente em
face à conjuntura política e econômica da América Latina? A hipótese a
ser argumentada ao longo deste texto sugere que o Brasil está inserido
em limites conjunturais especíicos do movimento de “tradução” de longo
alcance da hegemonia norte-americana, com todas as conseqüências que
isto envolve do ponto de vista da relação de forças envolvendo os diferentes
grupos e estratos sociais no plano nacional e internacional, além dos nexos
desiguais e combinados com perspectiva da dialética da paz e da guerra no
além-fronteiras.

The purpose of this analysis is to achieve a brief and introductory answer to the following question: how is it possible to place Brazil internationally in political and economic terms in Latin America? The hypothesis to be argued throughout this text suggests that Brazil is inserted in specific conjunctural limits of the American hegemony long-term "translation" movement, with all the consequences that This involves from the point of view of the relation of forces involving the different social groups and strata at the national and international levels, as well as unequal and combined links with the perspective of dialecticz of peace and war in international affairs.

In this article, I argue that Antonio Gramsci's concept of passive revolution makes a foundational contribution to International Relations (IR), yet has been relatively under appreciated by the broader discipline. Within the Historical Sociology of International Relations, uneven and combined development has recently been postulated as a key trans-historical law that provides a social theory of the 'international'. Drawing from, but moving beyond these debates, I will argue that passive revolution is a key conditioning factor of capitalist modernity. I will demonstrate how the concept of passive revolution is the element that explains the connection between the universal process of uneven development and the manner in which specific combinations occur within the capitalist era as geopolitical pressures, in tandem with domestic social forces become internalised into geographically specific state forms. It therefore offers a corrective to the frequently aspatial view that is found in much of the literature in IR regarding uneven and combined development. Additionally, passive revolution provides a more politicised understanding of the present as well as an important theoretical lesson in relation to what needs to be done to affect alternative trajectories of development.

In this short paper, I give an overview of the experimental turn of Films Division documentaries (especially the most intense phase from 1967-69) focusing on the shift in governmentality during these years. Coinciding with Indira Gandhi's rise to political power during a key "moment of disaggregation" and concurrent changes in media policy, these experimental films register the discontents of Nehruvian modernity (its austere governance of the senses) and open up a medial space, so far restricted to bureaucratic-state actors, to outside claimants. Ultimately, I argue, the sensory intensification captured by these films point to the explosion of the hegemonic bureaucratic frame in India's national politics and predict the authoritarian-populism to come 1970s onwards.

Welsh devolution has not been adequately theorized. Following the narrow vote for Welsh devolution in 1997, many academics in Wales adopted a nakedly ‘celebratory’, uncritical view of devolution as a radical change to the British state, taking at face value the claim that it was designed to rejuvenate Welsh democracy. The power relations inherent to the transformation of the British state are rarely discussed in Wales. As a consequence, the developments which have occurred in Wales since devolution- political disengagement, the rise of the far right, the vote for Brexit- seem hard to grasp: it is simply presumed that something has ‘gone wrong’ with the application of devolution. This dominant way of thinking assumes that devolution was designed to ‘work’. Using Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution, this article argues that devolution to Wales (and Scotland) was a central plank of New Labour’s transformation of both the Labour Party and the British state. Building on a reading of the postwar British state as a historic bloc, I draw attention to the power relations inherent in Welsh devolution and the ‘top down’ nature of the process, which was led by the Labour party in order to preserve its hegemony in Wales and the UK as a whole. After outlining the political struggles and strategies of transformismo which occurred within the process of passive revolution, where hegemony is temporarily ‘thinned’, I contend that the contemporary Wales represents a period of interregnum, where the old world (the traditional centralized British state) has died, but a new Welsh state cannot be born. As Gramsci predicted, this has led to the emergence of a host of ‘morbid symptoms’ in Wales. I conclude by reflecting on the nature of the interregnum and whether ‘restoration’ or ‘revolution’ is likely to triumph in Wales.

Recent debates surrounding state transformation in East Asia have tended to examine either how transformations in domestic social relations undermined the efficacy of the developmental state, or how mobilisation of coercion and consent at the international level led to the adoption of neoliberal policies..
Through an examination of the case of Korea, however, this article seeks to move beyond this division between ‘domestic’ - and ‘international’ - centred analyses to provide a framework wherby mutually constitutive transformations taking place both at the level of social relations of production and at the level of the international order can be integrated to produce a conjunctural analysis of state transformation. Through deploying Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution, an analysis of social and geopolitical underpinnings of korean late development is provided in order to provide an alternative explanation of the causes and nature of transition towards the neoliberal state since the latter part of the twentieth century.

Recent protest movements in sub-Saharan Africa have generally failed to effect progressive transformations. Efforts to achieve social change have been frustrated by governing elites that continue to utilise their vacillating and unequal relationships with the external environment to sustain power. Although the leading figures may change, the dominant African class can re-establish leadership through new alliances with domestic and international networks of capital. To understand such 'change-without-change', this paper contributes to the growing body of literature on Antonio Gramsci's development of 'passive revolution'. The comparative character of Gramscian analysis enables his philosophy of praxis to be translated into very different historical and geographical settings. With this in mind we draw together recent engagements with passive revolution from Geography, Politics and African Studies. In particular we develop Jean-Franc ßois Bayart's notion of extraversion, while considering it in relation to more recent philological engagements with Gramsci. Our empirical focus is the politics of transition in Malawi. In his second term in office, the autocratic and unpopular president, Bingu wa Mutharika, implemented economic policies that ran against neoliberal orthodoxy and suppressed protest during a period of crisis. Mutharika was replaced, following his death in 2012, by Joyce Banda, a previously marginalised vice-president, who nurtured a re-engagement with transnational capital. Working through the state, Banda led a transformation from on high and moved to impose new economically liberal policies, including a major currency devaluation, which reduced living standards for many. We draw our empirical material from Chancellor College, a major site of protest against Mutharika in 2011. Evidence from interviews with staff and students demonstrates how two episodes of revolution/restoration in Malawi, a country distant from the western historical experience, can be interpreted through Gramsci's socially differentiated understanding of politics.

Cet article propose une étude synthétique des usages de la pensée de Gramsci (en premier lieu les notions d’hégémonie et d’État intégral) par Althusser et par des philosophes et théoriciens de l’État fortement influencés par lui (Étienne Balibar, Nicos Poulantzas, Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Perry Anderson) dans la deuxième moitié des années 1970 (période de l’eurocommunisme). Il s’agit ici de restituer le dialogue entre ces différentes pensées où la place de Gramsci est déterminante, et d’examiner comment elles s’inscrivent d’une manière complexe dans les débats de cette période, qui portent notamment sur les rapports entre socialisme et démocratie.

Present thesis is a case study applying the theory of Antonio Gramsci to labour state relations in Turkey. More specifically it seeks to highlight the causes of political instability and the contradictory course of labour politics, mainly in the period of 1950-1980, from a Gramscian perspective. On the basis mainly of the Gramscian studies of David Adam Morton (2011) and the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (1971) it will be illuminated how class struggles indicative to the formation of the modern Turkish state, within conditions of uneven capitalist development, resulted in a political stalemate in the 1950´s, 60´s and 70´s.

Gramscian theory claims that such political volatility is inherent to the process of state formation, which is the product of a process, which Gramsci termed a passive revolution. This concept denotes the situation, experienced in many less developed countries, where a weak
industrial bourgeoisie, or state forces acting on their behalf in the name of development, is attempting to establish hegemony – defined as rule dominated by consent – through an international catching up process involving capitalist reform. The Gramscian state, what he termed the integral state, thus, contrarily to Weberian conceptions of the state, is defined both by its use of consent and coercion. In Gramsci´s own words: “State = political society + civil society, in other words hegemony protected by the amour of coercion” (Carnoy 1984: 72). Thus, the integral state is a matrix of institutions, which is conventionally divided into the spheres of civil society and the state that “consecrate and legitimize” (Morton 2011: 7) the capitalist relations of production. Present thesis, thus, illuminates how Turkish labour movements were partially integrated into the integral state system by the dominant classes, through ideological and political co-optation. The important word here being partially, as parts of the bourgeoisie, being divided and unconsolidated by the unevenness of capitalist development, was unable to provide hegemonic leadership and therefore applied coercive measures towards labour.

This study, thus, sets itself apart from other Gramscian studies of Turkish society, in that it contains a special focus on labour relations within the integral Turkish state, and furthermore, because it makes use of the analytical concepts Uneven and Combined Development (U&CD),
the capitalist type of state, and passive revolution.

It is the claim of present thesis that such specificities to the Gramscian analysis of state-labour relations in Turkey helps illuminate the underlying power structures shaping modern state formation, and thereby clarifies the historical role of labour movements as a cog in the intricate matrix of relations making up the integral state. It is thereby the aim to clarify the class character of the state, which Antonio Gramsci claimed were obscured in the liberal demoratic state system. It does this, however, without reverting to class determination, as equal weight is given to human agency and class structure within Gramscian theory.

Through the lens of the above described theory, applied to existing studies of Turkish history, political economy and labour, it is, thus, illuminated how political processes in the multi partyera of Turkey can be perceived as a process of the refinement of the integrative exercise of passive revolution.

Since the turn of the millennium, the production of critical social theory in Bolivia has been galvanized by a period of social upheaval and social movements victories. These movements created a moment of intense praxis, with theory and action producing one another in a dialectical fashion. The social impact of Bolivian intellectuals in response to the systemic crisis that emerged in the late-1990s cannot be underplayed, as the interaction between social movements and the state was influenced by thinkers of the time. Gramscian theory especially “passive revolution” and the “integral state”—has been particularly important in the study and politics of the revolutionary cycle from 2000 to 2005 and the government of Movimiento al Socialismo (the Movement toward Socialism; MAS). These two concepts have facilitated a rich analysis of the government of Evo Morales and the developments of the state. These theories have also been transformed into government discourse, with García Linera using the notion of the integral state to describe the MAS government’s political project in his role as vice-president. This article seeks to explore the impact of this social theory on Bolivian society and the social function of Gramscian intellectuals by looking at two key texts: García Linera’s Las tensiones creativas de la revolución and Bolivian philosopher Luis Tapia’s El Estado de derecho como tiranía. While both texts use a Gramscian analysis in the Bolivian context to great effect, they also demonstrate the political nature of Bolivian social theory and highlight the social function that the intellectuals themselves perform.

We are living at a time when the distinction between the domestic and foreign realms of politics has not merely blurred, but has abolished altogether. While Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s harsh critique of Israel on its existential Palestinian issue on a global platform led to an immediate rise in the domestic support base of Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), Turkey’s explicit support for the oppositional groups in the ongoing Syrian civil war has sparked an intensification in attacks by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) within Turkey.

No other political actor can be more aware of this direct correlation between domestic and foreign realms of politics than the AK Party, which legitimizes its domestic political power through a foreign policy discourse of “Turkey as a rising global power”. In other words, this new foreign policy discourse — whether realistic or not — serves to legitimize the domestic power of the ruling party. As Yüksel Taskın wrote in 2011, the opposition parties are yet to grasp this overlap between Turkey’s domestic and foreign policy spheres, and have thus far failed to present any alternative foreign policy discourse.

RESUMO: Este trabalho objetiva propor uma interpretação da questão nordestina no Brasil, a luz da produção intelectual de Antonio Gramsci sobre a questão meridional. Não se pretende dar conta de explicar a complexa dinâmica do capitalismo atual, mas sim entender historicamente a formação de uma questão nordestina. Para isso, usaremos, principalmente, os conceitos de Bloco Histórico, Revolução Passiva, o papel dos Intelectuais, e a importância da aliança Operário-Camponesa para emancipação das classes subalternas. Como resultado observa-se a validade dessa interpretação para entendimento das contradições presentes na região Nordeste, desde a formação do Estado brasileiro, e especialmente no auge no processo de lutas das Ligas Camponesas, criação e atuação da SUDENE entre as décadas de 1950 e 1960, e o abafamento desse processo de lutas com o Golpe de 1964.

ABSTRACT: The objective of this paper to propose an interpretation of the northeast question in Brazil, from the intellectual production of Antonio Gramsci on the southern question. Without pretending to explain the complex dynamics of current capitalism, but rather to understand historically the formation of a northeast question. For this, we will use the concepts of Historical Block, Passive Revolution, the role of the Intellectuals, and the importance of the Workers-Peasants alliance for the emancipation of the subaltern classes. As a result, it is possible to observe the validity of this interpretation for the understanding of the contradictions present in the Northeast region, since the formation of the Brazilian State, and especially at the height of the process of “Ligas Camponesas” struggles, creation of SUDENE between the 1950s and 1960s, and the stoppage of this process of struggles with the 1964 Coup.

Neorealist and Neo-Gramscian Hegemony in International Relations and Conflict Resolution during the 1990s
1990’lu Yıllarda Uluslararası İlişkiler ve Çatışma Çözümünde Neorealizm ve Neo-Gramsiyan Hegemonya Kavramı

Abstract: The article aims to explain international relations and conflict resolution in combination with the neorealist and neo-Gramscian notions of the hegemony during the 1990s. In the first part, it focuses on neorealist hegemony theories. The Hegemonic Stability Theory (HST) is tested for viability as an explanatory tool of the Cold-War world politics and conflict resolution. Because of the limitations of neorealist hegemony theories, the neo-Gramscian hegemony and related concepts such as historic bloc, passive revolution, civil society and war of position/war of movement are elaborated. Later, the Coxian approach to international relations and world order is explained as a critical theory. Finally, the article attempts to establish a model of structural conflict analysis and resolution.

Keywords: Neo-realism, Neo-Gramscian, Hegemony, Conflict Resolution, International Relations

Özet: Bu makale uluslararası ilişkiler ve çatışma çözümü kuramlarını neorealist ve neo-Gramsiyan hegemonya kavramlarını çerçevesinde 1990’lı yılları kapsayacak şekilde açıklamayı hedeflemektedir. Birinci bölümde, neorealist hegemonya kuramlarını odaklanılacaktır. Hegemonik istikrar kuramı (HİT) Soğuk Savaş sonrası dünya politikası ve çatışma çözümü ile ilgili olaylari açıklayabilme kabiliyeti test edilecektir. Özellikle neorealist hegemonya kuramlarının Soğuk Savaş sonrası dünya düzenini açıklamakta yetersiz kalması sonucu, neo-Gramsiyan hegemonya kavramı ile birlikte Gramsci’nin siyasi düşünce tarihine kazandırdığı öteki önemli kavramlar – tarihsel blok, pasif devrim, sivil toplum ve pozisyon savaşı/hareket savaşı –  açıklanacaktır. Daha sonra uluslararasi ilişkiler ve dünya düzeni hakkında önemli çalışmaları bulunan Cox’un kuramı, kritik teori olarak incelenecektir. Makalenin sonunda yapısal çatışmaların çözümü ve analizi konusunda bir model oluşturulmaya çalışılacaktır.

Anahtar Kelimeler: Neorealizm, Neo-Gramsiyan, Hegemonya, Çatışma Çözümü, Uluslararası İlişkiler

This article begins by engaging with some recent attempts to bring the study of the agency of labour into analyses of global capitalism, and argues that these approaches fail to capture the ways in which labour movements impact upon state strategies and, in turn, how this affects the spatial and temporal nature of global capitalist restructuring. Through adopting Antonio Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution, the article shows that whilst China has witnessed a significant degree of spontaneous and unorganised labour unrest, the state has been highly active in seeking to forestall the emergence of a politically conscious organised labour movement in ways that have important implications for the mode of China’s insertion into the international division of labour. In accordance with Gramsci’s framework, this ‘revolution from above’ should be understood within the framework and the specificity of the international states system. Labour struggles, class formation and the role of the state in these processes are conditioned both by geopolitical rivalry and by the demonstrative effects of earlier cases of successful industrialisation, as well as by examples of resultant labour struggles.

This article seeks to integrate some of the premises of historical materialism into the English School (ES) of international relations in order to help overcome the frequent mismatch between ES theory and concrete historical practice. Because norms and rules constitute the defining analytical framework of the ES, deviations from such codes of conduct signal the inexplicable presence of disorder. This theoretical limit can be seen in three examples of ES analysis on the rise and evolution of Latin America, which separately focus on the determinant role of rights, recognition and norms. Yet the assumed primacy of these codes of conduct produces a series of paradoxes that cannot be solved within the confines of inter-subjective norms and rules. In contrast, the article proposes a class-relational analysis that articulates the diverse norms and discourses of agents through the concrete socio-political relations of power in which they are embedded. Drawing upon a critical Gramscian approach, the article will offer an historical reconstruction of Latin America's emergence that better grounds the actual practice of rights, recognition and norms, and thus facilitating a deeper analytical purchase of ES concepts by recognising the inextricable relationship between order and disorder in the making of international society.

The 2011 Egyptian revolution and its concrete outcomes of military rule and Muslim Brotherhood governance demand a thorough analysis that transcends the archetypical binaries of revolution and counter-revolution, uprising and transition, dictatorship and democracy. A Gramscian interpretation, deploying the concepts of historical bloc, passive revolution, and Caesarism, embeds the contemporary events within a historical process of post-colonial state formation and reconfiguration and the local implementation of global neoliberal accumulation strategies. These lineages elucidate the capacity of the Armed Forces to play a specific Caesarist role during the revolutionary process. The January 25 insurrection and its counter-revolutionary appropriation by the military and the Brotherhood are rendered intelligible as alternating moments of one and the same process, in which the revolutionary mobilization of the masses is intersected, on the one hand, by hegemonic relations between ruling and subaltern groups, and, on the other, by political fights internal to these discrete factions.

Over the last decade, the concept of passive revolution has been central in the Neo-Gramscian academic production. However, the role of the state in this type of political junctures has not received enough attention, neither in relation to the embedded class struggles nor on the impact these have had in the processes of 'conservation-innovation' that, according to Gramsci, are featured in passive revolutions. This article aims to contribute to such literature gap by bringing forth theoretical insights from Nicos Poulantzas and Kees Van der Pijl regarding 'state autonomy' and using them for the analysis of a recent political process, which several scholars label as a passive revolution: Rafael Correa's government in Ecuador (2007-2017). The article suggests that the latter should be understood as a case of Caesarism, and more specifically, a political intervention of Ecuador's cadres, aimed to break a 'catastrophic equilibrium' in the confrontation between the country's power block and its contending anti-neoliberal coalition.