Most existing interpretations of the thought of Antonio Gramsci in International Relations
and International Political Economy are strongly influenced by the seminal account provided
by Cox in the early 1980s. Recovering the hitherto neglected concept of philosophy of praxis,
this thesis departs from the 'Coxian orthodoxy' and develops an alternative understanding
of Gramsci that sees hegemony as a combination of coercion and consent emerging from the
articulation on three overlapping dimensions, respectively involving the interaction of the
economic and the political, the international and the national, the material and the ideational.
The potential of this approach is illustrated by examining the unfolding of neoliberal
economic reforms in Egypt in the past two decades. It is argued that, firstly, the interaction of
economic and political factors produced the emergence of a neoliberal authoritarian regime
with a predatory capitalist oligarchy playing an ever greater role. Secondly, articulation
across different spatial scales brought about a passive revolution managed by the state with
the aim of adapting to the globalising imperatives of capital accumulation without
broadening political participation. Lastly, the performative power of neoliberalism as an
ideology fundamentally reshaped economic policymaking in favour of the rising capitalist
elite.
This focus on the shift in class relations produced by β and itself reinforcing β neoliberal
reforms allows us to understand how the already waning hegemony of the Egyptian regime
under Mubarak gradually unravelled. The rise of the capitalist oligarchy upset relations of
force both within the ruling bloc and in society at large, effectively breaking the post-
Nasserite social pact. Passive revolution witnessed the abdication to the pursuit of hegemony
on the national scale, with the attempt of replacing it with reliance on the neoliberal
hegemony prevalent on the international scale. The success of neoliberalism as an ideology
did not obscure the increasingly inability of the regime to provide material benefits, however
marginal, to subaltern classes. Thus, the affirmation of neoliberalism in Egypt corresponded
to the failure of hegemony on the national scale
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