Narrative Practice And Anti-"Hegemonic Governance

Hegemonic Governance based on international regime arrangements remains the basic way of global governance since the end of the Cold War.Powerful countries such as the hegemon are not only able to wield material coercive forces to dominate final decisions in global governance,what’s more,they can shape the context,agenda,norms,and rules on which decisions are based,thereby implementing “coercive socialization” for the developing countries,the latecomers of global governance.After decades of development,this monopolistic governance model is deeply rooted,with countries at the center of power enjoying impressive privilege,while the voices of relatively marginalized developing countries are mostly suppressed or silenced.Paradoxically,although some developing countries do not have the strength to overturn or threaten to overturn the existing governance regimes,break the monopoly of powerful countries such as hegemonic powers,and have considerable dependence and vulnerability,they are still able to effectively participate in governance and achieve their own aspirations in the end.The purpose of this study is to explore how the countries,whose material strength is weak relatively,counter or even reverse hegemonic governance mode in global governance.This study fuses the existing literature of the “linguistic turn” “narrative turn,”and “practice turn” in International Relations,introducing the concept of “narrative practice”,and proposing a theoretical hypothesis that developing countries with weak material strength can rely on narrative practice to counter hegemonic governance.The hegemonic governance mode itself can also be seen as a dominant narrative,challenged by new narrative practices of the developing countries.Specifically,this study proposes that narrative practice mainly functions through three specific strategies: The first is narrative cultivating,which enhances the legitimacy of one’s own claims through narrative framing and “victimhood identity” narratives;The second is narrative gaming,which challenges the legitimacy of hegemonic governance through narrative arguments and “counter narratives;” The third is narrative community building,which relies on the combination of “de-othering”narrative and “spokesperson identity” narratives to exert pressure on hegemonic governance.The three strategies differ from but also overlap with each other.Throughout the process,many kinds of moral,legal,professional knowledge,and local norms can be used as narrative materials.The reason why narrative practice can play an counter hegemonic role depends on its complex context.This includes not only the background of global power changes and hegemonic governance failures,but also the development of modern communication technology,the spread of the concept of multiple civilizations,and the deepening of the international moral context.In clarifying the above issues and framework,this study selects two cases to test the hypothesis: first,focusing on the field of global trade governance,Brazil’s confrontation with developed countries led by the United States and Europe on agricultural subsidies in the Doha Round negotiations;The second is the game between Pacific island countries and umbrella countries led by the United States and Australia in the Paris climate negotiation process in the field of global climate governance.Completely overthrowing the existing governance system is not the primary intention and choice of developing countries.Instead,they use narrative practice to challenge non democratic and monopolistic governance models in specific areas of governance,prevent decisions that harm their own interests,and thereby break through the yoke of hegemonic governance at a lower cost.Narrative practice is to a large extent appropriate to the real conditions of developing countries,and can enrich their “menu for choice” of participating in governance,countering hegemonic mode,and improving international discursive power.Moreover,playing an active part in the reform and development of the global governance system and working to make global governance fairer and more equitable are the aspirations and long-term goals of many emerging powers such as China.Exploring narrative practice further is expected to facilitate the undertaking theoretically and practically.