From Gramsci to Marcuse

Universities, Ideological Hegemony, and the Problem of Institutional Closure—an essay by Luc Lelièvre

Photo by Fabien Lebre on Unsplash

Antonio Gramsci, writing from prison in the early twentieth century, argued that durable social transformation does not occur through force alone, but through the gradual establishment of cultural hegemony. Institutions such as universities, media, and schools play a central role in shaping what societies come to regard as “common sense.”

Several decades later, Herbert Marcuse advanced a controversial extension of this logic. In Repressive Tolerance, he suggested that formal neutrality, under conditions of structural inequality, may inadvertently reinforce dominant power structures, and that selective tolerance could be justified in pursuit of social transformation.

These ideas remain debated. However, they raise a broader and more contemporary question:

What happens when institutions retain formal openness, but gradually lose their capacity to process dissent in a corrective way?

This essay approaches that question through the concept of procedural closure.

Procedural Openness, Substantive Closure

Modern universities continue to operate through established procedures: peer review, ethics committees, evaluation frameworks, and formal channels for dissent. In this sense, they remain procedurally active and, in appearance, responsive.

However, as James C. Scott has shown in a different context, institutions that prioritize legibility and administrative coherence may also reduce their sensitivity to knowledge that does not fit established frameworks.

In some cases, dissenting perspectives are acknowledged but not substantively integrated.

Critiques are processed, documented, and addressed formally, yet outcomes remain largely unchanged. The issue is not overt censorship, but a more diffuse phenomenon:

institutions that continue to “hear,” but struggle to “correct.”

This dynamic does not require explicit ideological uniformity. It may arise through:

• risk aversion in reputationally sensitive environments,

• increasing administrative complexity, and

• the gradual alignment of institutional incentives.

A Structural Pattern

This pattern is not confined to a single institution or case. It appears across domains where:

• professional standards,

• regulatory frameworks, and

• public communication

interact closely.

Under such conditions, institutions may converge toward similar responses—not necessarily through coordination, but through shared constraints.

This dynamic echoes, in part, the problem identified by Albert O. Hirschman: when feedback mechanisms weaken or become costly to exercise, systems may continue to function while gradually losing their capacity for internal correction.

The result can resemble a form of “lockstep.”

From the inside, however, it may reflect:

• institutional inertia,

• path dependency,

• rising costs associated with deviation from established positions.

Experience and Interpretation

My own academic experience—attempting to apply Hannah Arendt’s framework to the management of rights during the COVID period—brought me into direct contact with this dynamic.

The difficulty was not the explicit prohibition but the absence of substantive engagement within existing procedures. The project did not advance, not through formal refutation, but through a combination of administrative and evaluative mechanisms that limited its development.

Comparable patterns have been reported in other domains, including medicine, where debates around treatment approaches have sometimes been shaped as much by institutional processes as by open scientific exchange.

These observations should be interpreted cautiously. They do not demonstrate a unified theory of control. However, they point toward a recurring structural question:

Under what conditions do institutions become less able to revise their own assumptions?

From Hegemony to Closure

Rather than attributing this dynamic solely to ideological influence, it may be more analytically productive to understand it as the convergence of multiple factors.

As Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argue in their work on institutional performance, the long-term stability of systems depends less on the absence of error than on the presence of mechanisms that allow for effective adaptation and correction.

Rather than attributing this dynamic solely to ideological influence, it may be more analytically productive to understand it as the convergence of multiple factors:

• cognitive simplification under pressure,

• administrative standardization,

• reputational risk management, and

• procedural self-reinforcement.

In this sense, what appears as ideological hegemony may partly reflect a broader loss of institutional reversibility.

The issue is not necessarily that universities impose a single worldview in a coordinated manner—

It is that they may become progressively less able to integrate perspectives that fall outside their dominant frameworks.

The Role of Law and Process

This dynamic extends beyond academia.

In complex institutional environments, legal and procedural systems play a dual role:

• they protect rights; however, they can also, unintentionally,

• increase the cost of contestation.

For individuals challenging large institutions, the burden is often not a single decision, but the cumulative weight of:

• delays,

• procedural opacity, and

• asymmetries of resources.

This does not imply generalized bad faith. It reflects structural conditions under which correction becomes difficult—even when formal protections remain in place.

Conclusion: Restoring Institutional Reversibility

The central issue is not whether universities or institutions function. In many respects, they do.

The question is whether they maintain their capacity for self-correction.

If that capacity weakens, the result is not necessarily repression in a classical sense, but something more subtle:

a gradual drift away from adaptive responsiveness.

Restoring this capacity does not require replacing one orthodoxy with another.

It requires reinforcing the conditions under which:

• dissent remains actionable,

• critique can influence outcomes, and

• institutions retain the ability to revise themselves.

In that sense, the problem is not hegemony alone.

The stronger possibility is that systems designed to process knowledge may become less able to learn from it.

Luc Lelièvre, guest contributor.

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Luc Lelièvre is an independent researcher in sociology and critical anthropology based in Québec, Canada. He completed advanced doctoral training in social science research methods at Université Laval, with a focus on statistical modeling and structured qualitative analysis. His academic works have been published in journals such as Anthropologie et Sociétés and Les Cahiers de géographie du Québec.

Over the last two decades, his research has examined how institutions shape the lives of vulnerable populations, the evolution of bureaucratic systems, and the impact of modern governance on rights, justice, and public debate. His work is characterized by a careful and methodical approach, grounded in clear distinctions between empirical observation, analysis, and interpretation. Since 2024, he has contributed to international editorial platforms, writing on academic freedom, institutional dynamics, and the challenges facing universities and public institutions in democratic societies.

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