Hegemonic Project Research Articles

Re-inventing a royalist ‘public sphere’ in contemporary Uganda: the example of Central Broadcasting Services (CBS)

This article sets out the daily negotiated and relatively stabilized rules of expression which govern a royalist ‘public sphere’ in contemporary Uganda. It is based on the idea, inspired by Habermas, that the analysis of day-to-day rules of discussion leads us to understand better political and moral ideals. Away from a normative approach of the issue of the ‘public sphere’, this article analyses the formation of specific practices and rules of deliberation, at the crossroad of the transformations of the Kingdom of Buganda, the consolidation of journalism as a profession and President Museveni's regime's hegemonic project. CBS, the radio station of the Kingdom, is a privileged empirical point of entry to seize these processes, both because it is a central sphere of the reinvention of language and expression and because of its central role in the reestablishment of the Kingdom on the national political scene. Ekiwandiiko kinyonyola enteseganya nengeri enungamu abantu gye beetaayizaamu mu Uganda ya leero. Kyesigamiziddwa ku nsonga ezikubaganyiziddwako ebirowoozo Habermas, nga anynyola enfuga egobererwa ekikuleetera okumanya eby'obufuzi, n'empisa ezigobererwa. Okuva kungeri bo ba nansi gye balabamu ensonga n'okuzisengeka. Era ekiwandiiko kye kimu kitunyonyola ebintu ebitali bimu nga,ensonga z'okwenunula, enkyukakyuka mu bwakabaka bwa Buganda okukuumira ba namawulire ku mutindo gw'omulimu gwabwe, mpozi nenfuga ya presidenti Museveni ebutikidde ekisanja kye nga mukulembeze. CBS, ladiyo y'obwakabaka nga kye kibondo abamuwakanya we bayisa amaloboozi. Olw'okubanga eweereza mu lurimi abantu abasinga lwe bawulira, era etakabanye nnyo okulaba nga eteeka ensonga z'obwakabaka mu by'obufuzi bye gwanga ku mwanjo.

On the Perils and Potentialities of Revolution

Bolivia is living a moment of transition that has raised expectations of a profound transformation of the state–civil-society relationship and of conflict dynamics. The Movimiento al Socialismo has promoted the direct participation of previously excluded sectors in public affairs and the integration of the traditional practices of indigenous groups into formal institutional structures. The heterogeneity of its ruling coalition has posed serious challenges with regard to the management of potential tensions among diverse social sectors. A key role in the promotion of a hegemonic project is played by discourse. Conflict is structured in terms of a strong, self-reinforcing set of narratives about crucial aspects of social life, among them the identification of external enemies and the generation of new merging categories that invent new collective subjects. This rhetorical strategy has not, however, been able to eliminate the oppositional politics of Bolivian social movements. Bolivia vive un momento de transición que ha aumentado las expectativas de una profunda transformación de la relación Estado–sociedad-civil y de la dinámica del conflicto. El Movimiento al Socialismo ha promovido la participación directa de sectores antes excluidos de los asuntos públicos, así como la integración de prácticas tradicionales de grupos indígenas en las estructuras institucionales formales. La heterogeneidad de su coalición gobernante plantea desafíos serios con respecto al manejo de tensiones potenciales entre diversos sectores sociales. Un papel clave en la promoción de un proyecto hegemónico lo juega el discurso. El conflicto se estructura por medio de fuertes narrativas auto-reforzadas acerca de aspectos cruciales de la vida social, entre ellas la identificación de los enemigos externos y la generación de nuevas categorías emergentes que inventan nuevos sujetos colectivos. Esta estrategia retórica, sin embargo, no ha podido eliminar la política opositora de los movimientos sociales bolivianos.

Book review: The Myth about Global Civil Society: Domestic Politics to Ban Landmines, by Daniela Tepe

Daniela Tepe The Myth about Global Civil Society: Domestic Politics to Ban Landmines, Palgrave: Basingstoke, 2012, 208 pp: 9780230279148, 55 [pounds sterling] (hbk) This book could have been an important contribution to Marxian research. It is not. Its unfulfilled promise is to draw on Marxian state theory in order to explain the manner in which non-governmental organisations (NGOs) shape foreign policy and international regime formation. In December 1997, the legally binding Ottawa Convention to ban anti-personnel landmines was signed. An extensive International Relations (IR) literature has demonstrated that national NGO campaigns loosely linked to each other via the International Campaign to Ban Landmines played a key role in bringing about this result by reframing landmines, transforming them from a national security to a human security issue. Yet little is known about how national contexts affected the role of NGOs as change-makers. Tepe links this gap to the preoccupation of much NGO research with global civil society. Hence, she sets out to explain the cross-national variation of the successful anti-landmine campaigns in the UK and Germany--variations in membership, strategies and goals. Her wager is that such an account cannot succeed unless it pays attention to the nationally specific nature of the capitalist state and society in the two countries. To this end, she employs 'a materialist state-theory framework' (p. 2). Tepe seeks to highlight the added value of her approach by contrasting it with existing NGO research, notably liberal-constructivist IR. Surprisingly, she does not discuss mainstream social movement theory with its focus on political opportunity structures, framing and resource mobilisation. Tepe acknowledges that liberal-constructivists have analysed how state-society relations shape the capacity of NGOs to influence public policy. Yet they fail to take into account 'the historically specific implementation of states' (p. 18). Tepe neither elaborates on what she means by this notion, nor does she zero in on other shortcomings of liberal-constructivism. One prominent model, which she discusses, draws attention to the degree of state centralisation and the nature of policy networks linking state and civil society, but fails to consider how the balance of class forces materialises as strategic selectivity in state institutions. Also, liberal-constructivism has little to say about how policy content shapes NGO effectivity--say, about how NGOs are affected by the nature of variable hegemonic projects which influence where boundaries are drawn and what gateways are opened between the state and civil society. More problematic still, Tepe's strategy in reviewing liberal-constructivist research is to build up straw-man arguments that she then attacks. This strategy dissimulates the fact that that she actually agrees with most of what liberal-constructivists say. 'While constructivist authors understand the importance of domestic actors in norm socialisation, I disagree with their argument that liberal states have fully internalised human rights standards' (p. 19). Virtually no liberal-constructivist doing social science makes such a claim, which flies so blatantly in the face of empirical reality. Also, Tepe wrongly asserts that liberal-constructivists 'neglect diverging values and opinions among members of the same network because the concept of shared norms and values forbids the very existence of such tendencies' (p. 20). The idea of norm contestation is central to liberal-constructivism. Sometimes Tepe's straw-man strategy conspicuously backfires. After criticising Andrew Moravcsik's liberal IR theory, she argues that in contrast to him, she 'understands state interests as functionally differentiated and the product of societal processes of preference building, where certain interests are represented more fully than others' (p. 24). This is a perfect summary of Moravcsik's theory! …

Adolphe Quetelet and biopolitics as secularized theology

The article recaptures the work of an author who has been forgotten by the contemporary social sciences, that is, the Belgium polymath Adolphe Quetelet. Focusing on his main work, Sur l'homme et le développement de ses facultés, ou Essai de physique sociale, the study underscores how the secularization of theological principles within the realm of science was important to the construction of Quetelet's work. His dual engagement in science and politics is pertinent here, as he was the main nineteenth-century force behind the incorporation of statistics as a science essential to the State's ability to govern its people. He also played a relevant role in the realization of the hegemonic political project of modernity, biopolitics, and its influence in the field of biomedicine in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Perspectives on the Development of the Private Business Sector in China

This article reviews new literature on the development of China's private sector. Since this sector's development is embedded in and characterised by a wider institutional environment, several general characteristics of China's capitalist transformation are discussed. Insights drawn from political science help in the understanding of the strategy of "wearing a red hat" and the emergence of China's private sector. The closely interwoven relationships between private companies and the Party-state that have taken place since the 1990s are also examined. The review indicates that focusing on state/capital relationships at different administrational levels contributes to a better understanding of China's private sector. The main conclusion is that although the development of the new private enterprises enabled the ruling elite to form and consolidate a hegemonic project that provided relative societal coherence, the project's continuity is threatened by a tendency for crises to occur.

Constitutionalization? Whose constitutionalization? Africa's ambivalent engagement with the International Criminal Court

While the concept of constitutionalism evokes the idea of taming politics through the force of law, the making of constitutions is in fact a contested social process in which different juris-generative actors vie for discursive hegemony. No wonder then that in a pluralist post-national setting, the project of global constitutionalism is continuously challenged by states from the periphery. Those states view constitutionalism as essentially a hegemonic project, which condenses Western notions of good governance, human rights, etc. into the nucleus of an emerging global constitutional order. This article addresses the consequences of this challenge for the constitutionalization of international law, focusing on the rule of law dimension of global constitutionalism, more specifically the relationship between the African Union (AU) and the International Criminal Court. I shall argue that a realist conceptualization of the agent–structure nexus, which views constitutional structures as mere epiphenomena of hegemonic power, is too narrow to account for the myriad ways in which agents from the periphery and global constitutional structures interact. Instead, I shall distinguish between five interaction scenarios, namely transformation, localization, cooptation/adaptation, obstruction, and withdrawal. My claim is that the AU’s refusal to be coopted by the system must be understood as part of a broader campaign aimed at reorganizing the relationship between the different public authorities involved in global (and regional) governance.

Anatomy of a ‘Critical Friendship’: Organized Labour and the European State Formation

Drawing on a critical political economy perspective on European integration, this article argues that organized labour at the European level, mainly through the form of the ETUC (European Trade Union Confederation), has been over-reliant on the institutional structures of the European state formation, and concomitant hopes for a European social model, rather than questioning the social basis of the hegemonic project of neoliberal integration that has fundamentally engendered the current form of the EU. This argument is then revisited in the light of recent developments; even before the current crisis fault lines in this strategy have emerged, and have subsequently become more pronounced. The analysis examines the role and strategies of organized labour in the process of European integration, focusing on the shifts and continuities in its position from broad support for the Single Market project to an increasingly critical relationship with the European state formation in the context of financial and economic crisis. A partir de una perspectiva de economía política crítica de la integración europea, este artículo sostiene que el sindicalismo a un nivel europeo, principalmente a través de la forma de la CES (Confederación Europea de Sindicatos) (ETUC, por sus siglas en inglés) ha dependido excesivamente de las estructuras institucionales de la formación del estado europeo y de esperanzas concomitantes hacia un modelo social europeo, en lugar de cuestionar a la base del proyecto hegemónico de integración neoliberal que ha engendrado la forma actual de la UE. Este argumento vuelve a tratarse a la luz de desarrollos recientes; aun antes de la crisis actual, surgieron discrepancias en esta estrategia, y posteriormente se han acentuado. El análisis examina la función y las estrategias del sindicalismo en el proceso de la integración europea, con un enfoque en los cambios y continuidades en su posición de un soporte general para el proyecto del Mercado único, a una relación cada vez más crítica con la formación estatal europea en el contexto de la crisis económica y financiera. 运用欧洲一体化的批判政治经济学视角，本文认为，欧洲层面上有组织的劳工，主要通过欧洲工会联合会（ETUC）形式，已过于依赖欧洲国家形成（state formation）的制度结构，以及与此同时寄望欧洲社会模式，而非质疑新自由主义一体化的霸权计划之社会基础，这种新自由主义一体化已根本性地危及当前欧盟的形式。然后，我根据最近的发展再次考察了这一论点；甚至在这一战略中当前危机的断层线出现以前就是如此，后来变得更为明显。本文的分析考察了欧洲一体化过程中有组织劳工的角色和战略，聚焦于其立场的变迁和延续，从广泛支持单一市场计划到金融和经济危机背景下与欧洲的国家形成出现了日益批评性的关系。 이 글은 유럽 통합에 대한 비판적 정치경제학을 다루면서 유럽 수준에서의 조직 노동이 주로 유럽노총(ETUC)을 통해서 현재 EU형태를 근본적으로 위협하는 헤게모니적인 신자유주의적 통합 프로젝트의 사회적 기반에 대해 의문을 제기하는 대신에 지나치게 유럽 국가 형성의 제도적인 구조에 의존적이었고, 그에 수반하여 유럽 사회모델에 대한 희망을 과도하게 가졌다고 주장한다. 이 주장은 최근의 발전에 비추어 다시 논의된다; 현재 위기 이전에 조차 이러한 전략의 오류가 나타났고, 결과적으로 더욱 분명해졌다. 이 분석은 단일 시장 프로젝트에 대한 광범위한 지지에서부터 금융 및 경제위기 맥락에서 유럽 국가형성과의 비판적 관계에 이르기까지 유럽 조직 노동의 입장 변화와 지속에 초점을 맞추어 유럽통합 과정에서 조직 노동의 역할과 전략을 검토한다.

The unintended hegemonic effects of a limited concession: institutional incorporation of Chinese schools in post-war Hong Kong

Using the case of Chinese schools in post-Second World War Hong Kong, this paper explores the unintended consequences of an incomplete hegemonic project. After World War II, anti-imperialist pressures and rising educational demands in the local setting propelled the colonial authorities to be more active in providing and funding Chinese schools. This development created a considerable number of vernacular institutions that were either directly state-run or generously government-financed. Nevertheless, this concession was circumscribed because the regime eschewed universal and compulsory education, and many Chinese schools remained private and unaided. Producing three different types of vernacular institutions, the state’s partial incorporation of these institutions unwittingly divided these schools and pre-empted them from forming a united, antagonistic identity. These findings urge us to examine carefully, when using Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, the extent of compromise the powerful have actually conceded. They also hint that hegemony should not be conceived only as a conscious, conspiratorial project, for state practices occasioned by conjunctural forces may produce unintended consequences that have profound repercussions on political power.

Iconic architecture as a hegemonic project of the transnational capitalist class

Identifying the drivers of actually existing capitalist globalization as the transnational capitalist class, this paper suggests that theory and research on its agents and institutions could help us to explain how the dominant forms of contemporary iconic architecture arise and how they serve the interests of globalizing capitalists. We define iconic architecture in terms of buildings and/or spaces that are famous, and that have distinctive symbolic and aesthetic significance. The historical context of the research is the thesis that the production and representation of architectural icons in the pre-global era (roughly before the 1960s) were mainly driven by those who controlled state and/or religious institutions, whereas the dominant forms of architectural iconicity in the global era are increasingly driven by those who own and control the corporate sector. The argument is illustrated with reference to debates around the politics of monumentality in architecture; the relationship between iconic architecture and capitalist globalization; and an explanation of why these debates are being overtaken by critical and uncritical conceptions of architectural iconicity derived from an analysis of the use of iconicity and similar terms in the discourses of major architecture and architect–developer firms and mass media presentations of their work.

El ‘problema indígena’ y la construcción de la nación en Bolivia y Ecuador durante el siglo XIX: la perspectiva de las luchas por la hegemonía

This document analyses the Building-Nation hegemonic projects carried out inBolivia and Ecuador in the Nineteenth Century, and it also wrangles the idea thatindigenous people were excluded from their already formed ‘nations’ to show theways these groups were articulated to the independence Creole Nation project, as wellas for the Liberals Nation-formation project in the second half of the XIX century. Italso addresses the ways in which the Indians attempted to participate in their nationsbuildingproject. Both Nation-building projects articulated indigenous groupspassively. The Creole national project intended to integrate them through turningthese indigenous groups into ‘citizens’ but just giving this merely status, while theLiberal Project aimed to ‘civilize’ banishing their communal life social practices anddepriving them from their landholding. One of the arguments in this article is the onethat states Indians were not passive agents and they deployed collective actions, fromviolent uprisings to access to justice, and demanded an active place in the process ofnation building.

Active Citizenship: Navigating the Conservative Heartlands of the New Labour Project

This paper develops a distinct perspective on the continuities and contrasts between Thatcherite Conservatism and New Labour, interpreted through active citizenship policy. Revisiting Thatcherism, it argues that the roots of the New Labour approach to active citizenship can be traced to the late-Thatcher period. It explores six facets of New Labour’s agenda, arguing in each case that there were affinities with Conservatism. These affinities further highlight continuities in the ‘social dimension’ of an ongoing hegemonic project, whose objective is to overcome the ‘weak citizenship’ characteristic of neoliberalism by mobilizing citizen assent. Judged against this benchmark, the project may have had only limited success.

Immigration policy, public libraries and the social practice of exclusion in Canada

AbstractCanada's immigration policies have historically constituted a social practice of exclusion that privileges the hegemonic project of one social identity over that of another, namely the capitalist state over other social relations in society. Using critical discourse analysis, this doctoral dissertation project examines the ways in which the state's constitution of immigrant communities and their relationships with state institutions, such as the public library, represents one site where such hegemonic struggles unfold. This research addresses the question: As an institute of the state and product of public policy, what role has the public library played in constituting immigrants to Canada and in what ways have these practices contributed to the inclusion or exclusion of immigrants in Canadian society?

LA CONSTRUCCIÓN DE IDENTIDADES CORPORALES ALTERNATIVAS EN LOS LÍMITES DE UN PROYECTO EDUCATIVO HEGEMÓNICO

A pesquisa teve a intenção de conhecer a contribuição da educação física na construção de identidades corporais da infância no contexto europeu atual. Desde o enfoque socioconstrutivista, (Gergen, 1992; Giddens, 1995; Castells, 2000; Hernández, 2000; Braidotti, 2000; Butler, 2003, dentre outros). A metodologia construtivista (Guba; Lincoln, 1994) e o estudo etnográfico (DENZIN, 1997) se reflete na construção de identidades corporais alternativas, nos limites de um projeto educativo hegemônico, que questionam as formas tradicionais do saber e anunciam a urgencia de um sujeito corporal político que merece uma nova articulação pedagógica.

Beyond state/non-state divides: Global cities and the governing of climate change

This article challenges the assumption that the boundaries of state versus non-state and public versus private can readily be drawn. It argues that the roles of actors — as state or non-state — and the forms of authority — public or private — are not pre-given but are forged through the process of governing. Drawing on neo-Gramscian and governmentality perspectives, it suggests that a more dynamic account of the state can offer a more nuanced means of analysing the process of governing global environmental affairs. In order to understand this process and the outcomes of governing climate change, we argue that analysis should focus on the hegemonic projects and programmes through which the objects and subjects of governing are constituted and contested, and through which the form and nature of the state and authority are accomplished. We suggest that this is a process achieved and held in place through ‘forging alignment’ between diverse social and material entities in order to achieve the ‘right disposition of things’ through which the will to govern climate change can be realized (Murray Li, 2007a). We illustrate this argument by examining the governing of climate change in two global cities, London and Los Angeles.

Violent Narco-Cartels or US Hegemony? The political economy of the ‘war on drugs’ in Mexico

Mainstream analysis and commentary on drug trafficking and related violence in Mexico focuses overwhelmingly on the narco-cartels as sources of the problem and presents the US as a well intentioned player helping to conduct a ‘war on drugs’ out of concern for addiction, crime and violence. This article offers an alternative interpretation, grounded in critical political economy, showing that in addition to fuelling the narcotics industry in Mexico thanks to its large drug consumption and loose firearms regulations, the US shares much responsibility for its expansion thanks to its record of support for some of the main players in the drugs trade, such as the Mexican government and military, and by implementing neoliberal reforms that have increased the size of the narcotics industry. The war on drugs has served as a pretext to intervene in Mexican affairs and to protect US hegemonic projects such as nafta, rather than as a genuine attack on drug problems. In particular, the drugs war has been used repeatedly to repress dissent and popular opposition to neoliberal policies in Mexico. Finally, US banks have increased their profits by laundering drug money from Mexico and elsewhere; the failure to implement tighter regulations testifies to the power of the financial community in the US.

The neoliberal revolution

Stuart Hall The neoliberal revolution The present situation is another unresolved crisis within the conjuncture that we can define as 'the long march of the Neoliberal Revolution'. Each crisis since the 1970s has looked different, arising from specific historical circumstances. However, they also seem to share some consistent underlying features, to be connected in their general thrust and direction of travel. In ambition, depth, degree of break with the past, variety of sites being colonised, impact on common sense, shift in the social architecture, neoliberalism does constitute a hegemonic project. Paradoxically, such apparently opposed political regimes as Thatcherism and New Labour have contributed in different ways to expanding this project. Hegemony has constantly to be 'worked on', maintained, renewed, revised. Excluded social forces, whose consent has not been won, whose interests have not been taken into account, form the basis of counter−movements, resistance, alternative strategies and visions ... and the struggle over a hegemonic system starts anew. Now the Coalition is taking up the same cause.

Multicultural Market Democracy: Elites and Indigenous Movements in Contemporary Ecuador

AbstractThis paper bridges the gap between studies of subaltern social movements and elite politics by asking how political and economic elites respond to indigenous mobilisation in Ecuador. I argue that elites have developed a hegemonic project based around three core principles – multiculturalism, economic liberalism and democracy – that serves to incorporate indigenous peoples into the political system while simultaneously excluding indigenous movement demands that would undermine the political and economic sources of elite power. The paper develops this argument around a concept of what I call ‘multicultural market democracy’ based on historical analysis and in-depth interviews with 43 Ecuadorian elites.

Varieties of US Post-Cold War Imperialism: Anatomy of a Failed Hegemonic Project and the Future of US Geopolitics

Varieties of US Post-Cold War Imperialism: Anatomy of a Failed Hegemonic Project and the Future of US Geopolitics

Foundational Fiction and Representations of Jewish Identity in Jorge Isaacs' María

Foundational Fiction and Representations of Jewish Identity in Jorge Isaacs' María Julia C. Paulk Doris Sommer's landmark study of Latin American literature, Foundational Fictions, claims Jorge Isaacs' novel María as a foundational fiction because of its tremendous popularity and its allegorization of the divisions plaguing nineteenth-century Colombia. Sommer's approach to nineteenth-century Latin American literature has been widely received and generally well accepted. A recent study, "Judaísmo y desarraigo en María de Jorge Isaacs" by Gustavo Faverón Patriau, calls Sommer's interpretation into question by proposing that Isaacs's novel does not propose unification through mestizaje but rather is a novel of exile and Diaspora (341). Like his Jewish forefathers, Efraín, the protagonist, continues the search for a homeland at the conclusion of the novel. Given that almost twenty years have passed since the publication of Foundational Fictions, perhaps we should be inspired by Faverón Patriau's example to reexamine Sommer's analyses in order to determine which aspects of her methodology are still useful for us and where further work may be called for. In this article, I propose to evaluate Faverón Patriau's critique of Sommer's approach to the nation-building novels of the nineteenth-century and analysis of María in light of recent developments in a growing but still very much underrepresented area, Latin American Jewish Studies. Rather than discount Sommer's enormous contribution to the study of nineteenth-century Latin American literature as over determined, we can take this opportunity to further examine the concepts of foundational fiction and mestizaje with respect to representations of Jewishness in Latin American literature. I will demonstrate that Efraín's nostalgic look at the past offers a critique of the high cost of assimilation [End Page 43] to those groups that do not fit in with the nineteenth-century elite's vision of a homogeneous, whitened national identity. I would like to begin by briefly reviewing Doris Sommer's approach to the Latin American literary works that she calls "foundational fictions." Sommer's impact on the study of novels from the nineteenth century has been enormous; in my opinion, this is because her approach is effective and useful. A re-examination of her work can nonetheless benefit literary criticism and our understanding of nineteenth-century literature. One overarching theory unites the chapters of Sommer's book: her concern, she states, is "to locate an erotics of politics, to show how a variety of novel national ideals are all ostensibly grounded in 'natural' heterosexual love and in the marriages that provided a figure for apparently nonviolent consolidation during internecine conflicts at midcentury. Romantic passion, on my reading, gave a rhetoric for the hegemonic projects in Gramsci's sense of conquering the antagonist through mutual interest, or 'love,' rather than through coercion" (Sommer 6). Sommer arrives at her interpretation by means of her unique definition of allegory. As Sommer herself claims, people were already reading these novels as allegories: "By assuming a certain kind of translatability between romantic and republican desires, writers and readers of Latin America's canon of national novels have in fact been assuming what amounts to an allegorical relationship between personal and political narratives" (41). Rather than rely on the traditional definition of allegory as an extended metaphor or "a narrative with two parallel levels of signification" (42), Sommer defines allegory as "a narrative structure in which one line is a trace of the other, in which each helps to write the other" (42). Developing this concept even further, Sommer describes "the allegory in Latin American national novels as an interlocking, not parallel, relationship between erotics and politics" (43). As she reads, Sommer "shuttle[s] back and forth from reading romantic intrigues to considering political designs" (41). Her understanding of the love story informs her interpretation of the political commentary and vice versa. A curious aspect of Sommer's approach that must be dealt with is the fact that many of the love stories that she analyzes as political allegories proposing national unification and consolidation are in fact failed unions. In Mármol's Amalia, the lovers, Eduardo and Amalia, are killed near the...

Active citizenship: navigating the Conservative heartlands of the New Labour project

This article develops a distinct perspective on the continuities and contrasts between Thatcherite Conservatism and New Labour, interpreted through active citizenship policy. Revisiting Thatcherism, it argues that the roots of the New Labour approach to active citizenship can be traced to the late-Thatcher period. It explores six facets of New Labour's agenda, arguing in each case that there were affinities with Conservatism. These affinities further highlight continuities in the ‘social dimension’ of an ongoing hegemonic project, whose objective is to overcome the ‘weak citizenship’ characteristic of neoliberalism by mobilising citizen assent. Judged against this benchmark, the project may have had only limited success.