A ruling party exercises hegemonic power without formal juridical rule

Evidence

In certain States, the “Head of State”— in other words, the element which balances the various interests struggling against the predominant (but not absolutely exclusivistic) interest—is precisely the “political party”. With the difference, however, that in terms of traditional, constitutional law it juridically neither rules nor governs. It has “de facto power”, and exercises the hegemonic function and hence that of holding the balance between the various interests in “civil society”; the latter, however, is in fact intertwined with political society to such an extent that all the citizens feel that the party on the contrary both rules and governs. It is not possible to create a constitutional law of the traditional type on the basis of this reality, which is in continuous movement; it is only possible to create a system of principles asserting that the State’s goal is its own end, its own disappearance, in other words the re-absorption of political society into civil society. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 944

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the hegemonic function as de facto balancing power exercised within civil society yet felt as rule by citizens, intertwined with political society.
• XREF: Core scaffold concept of hegemony/state-civil society interweaving; carries forward to how racialized bodies are governed without formal juridical standing. — connects to: The bourgeois commonwealth runs on delegated power with no legitimation from right or wrong; German parties were structurally incapable of claiming to represent the general will; Domination without leadership constitutes dictatorship without hegemony — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 551 (+12 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The state’s goal is its own disappearance/re-absorption of political into civil society — a dense claim about the withering of the state that frames all of Gramsci’s subsequent analysis of civil society.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 944

Broader Connections

• Totalitarian government is a powerless façade over real party power #expands (0.80)
• A party can function as a general ideology superintending scattered rival groups #expands (0.75)
• Common sense is a key route to hegemonic power in democracies #exemplifies (0.72)