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Power, leadership, and hegemony in international politics: the case of East Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2010

Abstract

The article inquires into the conditions of effective leadership of states in international politics, and develops a framework for the study of so-called (new) regional powers such as Brazil, China, India, and South Africa in processes of regional institution-building. Various theoretical strands will be discussed as to the requirements of effective leadership in international affairs. Most importantly, the relationship between power, leadership and hegemony will be outlined. It is argued that the connection between leadership and hegemony is one of co-constitution. Leadership is necessarily based on hegemony, while hegemony can only be sustained through leadership. Furthermore, it will be shown that both leadership and hegemony are essentially political in character, whereas power has no such insinuation but has to be translated into leadership and hegemony through discursive means. Finally, the analysis asks for the preconditions of leadership in East Asia, using China's and Japan's roles in East Asian regionalism as an illustration.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2010

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References

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95 Due to limited space, methodological issues are not addressed in this article. A possible path towards empirical research is offered by critical discourse analysis (CDA). CDA is concerned with structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, social inequality and control as conveyed by language. It accepts the claim of an ultimate impossibility of fixing meanings by speech and recognises the role of hegemony as a process of temporal fixation. However, it is also interested in unveiling the function of discourses which are used to generate and sustain unequal social power relations and can be identified as ideologies. See, Fairclough, Norman, Analysing Discourse. Textual analysis for social research (London/New York: Routledge, 2003)Google Scholar , for an overview.

96 Ba, ‘Who's socializing whom?’

97 Ibid., p. 161.