Abstract

The article discusses the main conceptual approaches to understanding the nature and patterns of functioning and development of hegemony in international relations. Analysed the contribution to the development of research hegemony in international relations, which has made the school world-system analysis. According to its founder F. Braudel, the hegemony of the world is a manifestation of inequality, the latter reveals the structural realities that are approved very slowly, very slowly disappear. The concept of a follower of Fernand Braudel, Emmanuel Wallerstein, according to which the hegemony reflects the ability of a particular state to make one part of the international system to its customers, and the second - to drive into a defensive position. The development of the «modern world-system» is defined by Wallerstein changes hegemony. Wallerstein argues that the State has the ability to create a stable geopolitical system of unequal social division of powers, which are part of the normal functioning of the capitalist world-economy. It is also noted that the pattern of ups and downs of world leaders - hegemony - are considered in the research of many scientists, including George Modelski. He develops a theory about hundred-year cycle of global leadership, using the term «selection» to describe the process of competition and the adoption of this role. Among the concepts of hegemony also highlighted the Charles Krauthammer’s conception of monopolarity, on which the present geopolitical structure of the world after the «cold war» - one pole of world power, consisting of the United States as the top of the industrial West. Analyzed the Piter Taylor’s conception of global hegemony, which distinguishes the competitive and non-competitive era, successive, and the Nail Ferguson’s conception of imperialism. The paper shows that the problem of hegemony in the 70-th years passed from the purely theoretical plane into practical politics, becoming an important component of foreign policy studies major powers.