Exploring the “myth” of hegemonic stability

Abstract

The theory of hegemonic stability has become a widely accepted explanation for the dynamics of the world economy. By linking the economy's structure and evolution with the international distribution of power, the theory combines political factors and economic outcomes and therefore satisfies the need for a truly political international economics, a need felt since the 1970s and reaffirmed with the recent emphasis on national power variables often referred to as neorealism. The theory basically holds that cooperation and a well-functioning world economy are dependent on a certain kind of political structure, a structure characterized by the dominance of a single actor. Dominance by a hegemonic power constitutes the optimal situation for ensuring and maintaining an open and stable world economy. Both Great Britain in the nineteenth century and the United States after World War II helped bring about an interdependent and overall peaceful world. Hegemons, however, tend to wane after a time, and periods of hegemonic decline are marked by strains in the system, as in the interwar period and the present. 1

Home is Where You Make it? Gender and Ahmet Davutoğlu’s Strategic Vision in the Middle East

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“…A Freudian egotism is translated from the realm of the individual to that of the state (e.g., Schuett, 2007 ). More specifi cally, the belief in spontaneous order long regarded in the American ethos as the persisting motif of Americanism, as individuals pursue their own goals unhindered by government and thereby reach a higher synthesis out of disparate intentions, is thus brought to bear in the broader global arena with states now substituting for persons, albeit now tinged with a Germanic-Lutheran pessimism that necessitates interventions by the United States as the most benign and public-minded of "powers" when the "best" order fails to arise spontaneously (Agnew, 2005 , p. 97;Grunberg, 1990 ;Inayatullah, 1997 ;Nossal, 2001 ). 81-82).…”

Anglobal governance?

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