At its most basic, hegemony means political rule, or even political domination, of one state over another, but it can also refer to the rule of one social group over another within a single state. However, its usage in critical theory tends to be more complex than this because it is used to explain culture, specifically why one set of beliefs or practices is associated with one culture and not another. In this context, hegemony is generally thought of as a paradoxical synthesis of consent and coercion whereby the former feels as though it is freely given despite the fact it is underpinned by powerful coercive structures and practices. The term itself has a long history, as Anderson, Perry details in his lucid account of the conceptâs development, The H-Word: The Peripeteia of Hegemony (2017). It first appeared more than 2,000 years ago in the work of the Greek historian Herodotus, where it is used to designate leadership in an alliance of states, such as Spartaâs leadership of the coalition of Greek polities fighting together to defeat the Persian invasion. But it fell out of usage from Aristotleâs time until the mid-eighteenth century, when it was picked up by German scholars to analyse Prussiaâs place in Europe and give a positive spin to its ambition to lead not only the federation of states that was to become the united Germany, but the whole of Europe itself. Central to its meaning in this instance and subsequently is the way it distinguishes a form of power that is not based solely on oppression, but also contains consent. However, it was the Italian Marxist scholar Gramsci, Antonio who gave shape to the concept as it is generally used today. He adopted the term hegemony in his Prison Notebooks (1929â35), initially as a code-word for ideology (his prison writing was subject to censorship), but ultimately as a critique of and replacement for ideology. Following Lenin, Gramsci argued that ideology is necessary to any ruling power, even a progressive power, so it cannot be considered intrinsically bad, as it often is. Ideology is an organizing force, in Gramsciâs view, that creates the psychological and political terrain in which people acquire consciousness about their social positions. Hegemony thus encompasses ideology, but also exceeds it because unlike ideology it does not refer to consciousness of a specific system of thought or body of ideas. In Gramsciâs wake, several leading Marxist theorists have contributed to the development of the concept. Key amongst them have been Williams, Raymond in Marxism and Literature (1977), Hall, Stuart in The Hard Road to Renewal (1988), Terry Eagleton in Ideology: An Introduction (2007), and Ranajit Guha---the founder of the explicitly Gramscian journal Subaltern Studies---in Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (1983), but probably the most influential has been Laclau, Ernesto and Chantal Mouffeâs Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985) and its sequel, On Populist Reason (2004). Hegemony is not something governments can achieve on their own; they require the active complicity of the populations they administer. This complicity, in turn, renders revolution difficult, if not impossible, and that is what concerned Gramsci. For Gramsci, the clearest sign of this is the willingness of a population not only to tolerate dreadful living and working conditions, but to die to preserve them too. Anderson, Benedictâs work on the imagined community demonstrates how the concept of nation functions in a hegemonic manner to create a sense of bonding amongst a large group of people who could not possibly know each other. Further Reading: P. Anderson The H-Word: The Peripeteia of Hegemony (2017).