This perception of hegemony led Gramsci to enlarge his definition of the state. When the administrative,executive and coercive apparatus of government was in effect constrained by the hegemony of the leading class of a whole social forma- tion,it became meaningless to limit the definition of the state to those elements of government.To be meaningful,the notion of the state would also have to include the underpinnings of the political structure in civil society.Gramsci thought of these in concrete historical terms-the church,the educational system,the press, all the institutions which helped to create in people certain modes of behaviour and expectations consistent with the hegemonic social order.For example, Gramsci argued that the Masonic lodges in Italy were a bond amongst the government officials who entered into the state machinery after the unification of Italy,and therefore must be considered as part of the state for the purpose of assessing its broader political structure.The hegemony of a dominant class thus bridged the conventional categories of state and civil society,categories which retained a certain analytical usefulness but ceased to correspond to separable entities in reality. As noted above,the second strand leading to the Gramscian idea of hegemony came all the way from Machiavelli and helps to broaden even further the poten- tial scope of application of the concept.Gramsci had pondered what Machiavelli had written,especially in The Prince,concerning the problem of founding a new state.Machiavelli,in the fifteenth century,was concerned with finding the leader- ship and the supporting social basis for a united Italy;Gramsci,in the twentieth century,with the leadership and supportive basis for an alternative to fascism. Where Machiavelli looked to the individual Prince,Gramsci looked to the Modern Prince:the revolutionary party engaged in a continuing and developing dialogue with its own base of support.Gramsci took over from Machiavelli the image of power as a centaur:half man,half beast,a necessary combination of consent and coercion.To the extent that the consensual aspect of power is in the forefront,hegemony prevails.Coercion is always latent but is only applied in marginal,deviant cases.Hegemony is enough to ensure conformity of behaviour in most people most of the time.The Machiavellian connection frees the concept of power (and of hegemony as one form of power)from a tie to historically specific social classes and gives it a wider applicability to relations of dominance and subordination,including,as shall be suggested below,relations of world order.It does not,however,sever power relations from their social basis (i.e.,in the case of world order relations by making them into relations among states narrowly conceived)but directs attention towards deepening an awareness of this social basis War of Movement and War of Position In thinking through the first strand of his concept of hegemony,Gramsci reflec. ted upon the experience of the Bolshevik Revolution and sought to determine what lessons might be drawn from it for the task of revolution in Western Europe.9 He came to the conclusion that the circumstances in Western Europe differed greatly from those in Russia.To illustrate the differences in circum- stances,and the consequent differences in strategies required,he had recourse to the military analogy of wars of movement and wars of position.The basic differ. 164 Downloaded from mil.sagepub.com at LIB SHANGHAI JIAOTONG UNIV on Odlober 10,2010Downloaded from mil.sagepub.com at LIB SHANGHAI JIAOTONG UNIV on October 10, 2010