A party secures allied-group consent by arbitrating between its own and others’ interests

Evidence

Although every party is the expression of a social group, and of one social group only, nevertheless in certain given conditions certain parties represent a single social group precisely in so far as they exercise a balancing and arbitrating function between the interests of their group and those of other groups, and succeed in securing the development of the group which they represent with the consent and assistance of the allied groups—if not out and out with that of groups which are definitely hostile. The constitutional formula of the king, or president of the republic, who “reigns but does not govern” is the juridical expression of this function of arbitration, the concern of the constitutional parties not to “unmask” the Crown or the president. The formulae stating that it is not the head of State who is responsible for the actions of the government, but his ministers, are the casuistry behind which lies the general principle of safeguarding certain conceptions—the unity of the State; the consent of the governed to State action—whatever the current personnel of the government, and whichever party may be in power. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 662

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the mechanism by which a class party wins hegemony: not domination but arbitration that carries allied groups’ consent.
• XREF: Directly extends the machinery of consent/coercion from chapter 1’s hegemony notes; also prefigures how the ‘neutral’ state mask lets a ruling group rule by consent. — connects to: Group-membership arbitrators tend to be blind to outsiders’ interests — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 4858