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Introduction

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The United States as Global Liberal Hegemon
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Abstract

Since I was a boy, I have heard the phrase repeated thousands of times that America is the leader of the free world. In political science jargon, the liberal hegemon. But what exactly does that mean? By the time I was 9, I knew that Americans elected the President to be the leader of the United States, but who elected America to be the liberal hegemon? Why the United States? Do the citizens of the United States receive any benefits from having their country be the hegemon besides tens of thousands of deaths and many billions spent on defense? Furthermore, does any country need to hold that position?

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Correspondence to Edward Goldberg .

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© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

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Goldberg, E. (2024). Introduction. In: The United States as Global Liberal Hegemon. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55692-0_1

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