How can the ideas of Antonio Gramsci - the intellectual and leader of the Italian Communist Party who died in a fascist prison in 1937 - help us better understand contemporary peace processes? From his many contributions to political thought, this book reads Gramsci as a political strategist, focusing in particular on his conceptual and practical tools designed to achieve, further and/or challenge hegemonic rule. Drawing from Gramsci's conceptualization of hegemony and its subsequent refinements, this book both questions the liberal problem-solving view of civil society as a benign actor underpinning peacebuilding processes and develops an alternative approach to examine political dynamics in conflict-affected regions. Civil society emerges as the key sphere where political and social actors engage in hegemonic struggles to advance competing worldviews around what peace entails. Through analysis of Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina and French intervention in Darfur, the book demonstrates how civil society is less an arena of freedom and democracy, as generations of liberals would have it, than a realm where ruling groups strive for hegemony, that is, attempt to achieve forms of ascendancy and direction over society. Here, domination and exclusion are produced and perpetuated and relationships of power and control take shape. Yet, it is also a space where counter-hegemonic projects can be articulated and furthered. Gramsci's analytics of power deepens the critical theory tradition by showing how power dynamics shape peace processes, how relations of domination and control unfold and how counter-hegemonic struggles emerge in response.