Growth models and social blocs: Taking Gramsci seriously

Abstract

While the recent extension of the Growth Models perspective to advanced peripheral economies is a laudable endeavor, we argue that the utilization of the social bloc concept needs conceptual refining. We contribute to this debate by drawing explicitly on the writings of Antonio Gramsci. First, we demonstrate that Gramsci differentiated between different forms of state-society complexes in peripheral countries vis-à-vis Western core countries. From a Gramscian perspective, therefore, one might need very different analytical instruments when dealing with the political side of growth models in advanced peripheral economies. Secondly, the widely used notion of intellectual hegemony in civil society—very often associated with Gramsci—refers to the state-society complexes of established capitalist countries and may not necessarily be applied with the same analytical currency in more statist state-society complexes. Our analysis of a variety of Gramscian concepts, which are often overlooked, contributes not only to the study of advanced peripheral economies from a growth model perspective but also to the study of the politics of growth models in general.