ABSTRACT
Regional hegemony may be exercised through a range of coercive forms but also through regional social compacts – hierarchical assemblages that facilitate the creation of order by establishing networks that bind together the governing elites in the regional hegemon and in the subordinate states. This transnational network activity helps create global political authority. In the process of shaping up regional security compacts, domestic politics in peripheral states may condition the rise of hegemonic orders, and norms from the margins may creep up to the core. These points are illustrated through a regional social compact led by the United States in Cold War South America, when regional hegemony came to support the use of state terror by autocrats against rebellious societies.
