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With all this in mind, how are we to explore different approaches to hegemony?

Across the twentieth century, debates over hegemony have been moments of innovation in political theory and analysis, as well as occasions for disagreement and controversy. From Gramsci onwards, hegemony has been regularly revised according to new situations and priorities. What is at stake in different approaches is more than just the meaning of a concept, but questions about the shape and mechanisms of social domination and political rule, how to connect objective structures to subjective experiences, and thus how to challenge and reconstitute power anew.

To distinguish approaches to hegemony, we need to review the broad contexts and debates from which they arose. I also suggest we consider how those debates figure three, distinct but overlapping, dimensions of the concept: power, subjectivity, and ethics. These dimensions are present – if unevenly so – in most approaches. There are, of course, other ways to proceed (see, for example, Haugaard and Lentner 2006; Opratko 2012; Worth 2015), but this one encourages a sense of the complexity of the concept while also recognizing its evolution over time. Let us look briefly at each in turn.