reach beyond the satisfaction of self-interests. ‘To become hegemonic’, suggests
Cox, ‘a state would have to found and protect a world order which was universal
in conception... an order which most other states... could find compatible with
their interests’.^80
What emerges then is a version of hegemony that is based in the ‘consent’ of the
ruled (and hence in voluntary compliance), but in which consent appears a function
purely of self-interest and benefit. There is no logic of appropriateness going beyond
those interests, and this is the principal omission. One sophisticated attempt to fill
it has been provided by Ned Lebow, in his elaboration of the Greek notion of
hegemonia.^81 His central claim was that successful hegemonia‘requires acquiescence
by allies or subject states, and this in turn rests on some combination of legitimacy
and self-interest’.^82 In this version, legitimacy is indeed separated out from self-
interest, albeit that its source is then left indeterminate.
What might its source be? In some neo-Gramscian versions, a different emphasis
is discovered. The motif is less the provision of benefits, and more the moral quality
of leadership. Hegemony is a creation of ‘a specific intellectual and moral
dimension’,^83 or the exercise of ‘political and moral direction’.^84 This edges analysis
away from satisfaction of self-interests, narrowly construed. In his own account of
hegemonia, Lebow had indeed specified just this need for agreed principles going
beyond the distribution of benefits to subordinates. Of equal importance, he had
stipulated, was that the hegemon behave in ways consonant with its own principles.
Those principles impose constraints on what would otherwise be unrestrained
behaviour, since the most powerful states are not externally bound. Hence, there is
great need for self-restraint: ‘Internal restraint and external influence are thus closely
related. Self-restraint that prompts behaviour in accord with the acknowledged
principles ... both earns and sustains the hegemoniathat makes efficient influence
possible’.^85 If the hegemon sets the rules, it is obliged also to abide by them. For
example, Pericles had understood that, to maintain Athenian hegemonia, ‘Athens had
to act in accord with the principles and values that it espoused’.^86
As a corollary, how is the hegemon’s compliance with its own principles to be
encouraged by others? Arguably, we have already been given substantial insight into
this process, but in language misleadingly referred to as ‘soft balancing’. There are
measures of so-called soft balancing much better understood as strategies for
preserving the legitimacy of a hegemonic order. Unfortunately, the same conflation
once again takes place, and ‘soft balancing’ is depicted exclusively as a set of practices
in the context of primacy, when it is more appropriately relevant to the maintenance
of a viable hegemony. ‘Soft balancing’, we are told, ‘involves the use of diplomacy,
international institutions, and international law to constrain and delegitimize the
actions of a hegemonic United States’.^87 This is taken as an alternative to military
balancing, and also as a hesitant step beyond the material-capabilities approach, but
it is confusing that the language of ‘balancing’ is still retained. It should be
approached instead from the perspective of attempts to ‘institutionalise’ hegemony.
Soft balancing can then be considered, not as action to impede or (materially)
weaken the hegemon, but instead as a symptom of a legitimacy deficit, and as an
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