Varieties of Unipolarity.

Unipolarity is a concept which characterizes the distribution of power capabilities among states; however, it says little about the quality of those capabilities and nothing about the nature of the actors who possess them or their strategies for converting them into power. It is commonly agreed that the United States is a preeminent actor in a unipolar system. But there is much disagreement as to what kind of preeminence the United States likely to exert in the post-Cold War World. Different writers use very different terms to capture America’s role in the world. Some authors argue that the United States as an empire and see the US role as an imperial one. Others claim that the USA is a hegemon and interpret its behavior as that of a preeminent actor in a hegemonic system. Members of the conservative Bush administration see the USA as a leading state in a democratic ‘zone of peace’. Radical opponents of the administration view the USA as a core actor in a capitalist world-economy. This paper will first clarify these different concepts in the light of US foreign-policy praxis. It will then discuss more closely the relationship between the two popular concepts of empire and hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]