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US Foreign Communication Policy 23

opportunity. As I have suggested elsewhere, the work of Gramscian
16
or critical international political economists remains underdeveloped
on the subject of culture despite its central position in relation to the
question of consent in world order. Nevertheless, the work of Robert
Cox and others constitutes a rich point of departure for the study at
hand.

2.3 CULTURE AND CRITICAL INTERNATIONAL
POLITICAL ECONOMY

Robert Cox, like Schiller, understands that a broad range of capjtalist
globalization activities are contributing to cultural tendencies toward
homogenization in world order. But unlike Schiller, Cox conceptual-
izes this core-to-periphery movement to be 'countered by the affirma-
tion of distinct identities and distinct cultural traditions.' 17 Cox also
considers states to be core structural mediators of these cultural meet-
ings. For Cox, states may facilitate or impede cultural homogeniza-
tion. The latter response may take place through the protection of
strategic home industries through state-based mechanisms, such as
legal protections or economic subsidies for domestic mass media,
nationalist educational policies, support for a range of domestic insti-
tutions and infrastructures, and so forth.
For Cox and many other critical students of international political
economy (IPE), the role of culture in world order is conceptually part
of a more general Gramscian approach. The concept of hegemony is
central to this. It refers to a process of political, economic, military
and cultural predominance involving relations among classes, states
and international institutions. As Stephen Gill writes, 'hegemony is
not simply a form of direct ideological domination. Hegemony is won
in the context of a political struggle and its central goal is to obtain
political legitimacy for the arrangements preferred by the dominant
class.' 18 In effect, hegemony, as I understand it, represents a process
involving the capacity to engage in and dominate institutional develop-
ments and, when necessary, control the form of mediated compromises.
On the role of culture in relation to this more elaborate process of
hegemony, it is worth quoting Cox at length:

The cultural challenge goes to the heart of the question of
hegemony. 'Hegemony' is ... a structure of values and
understandings about the nature of order that permeates a whole