Global Capitalism and Transnational Capitalist Hegemony: Theoretical Notes and Empirical Evidence William I. Robinson Globalization and hegemony are concepts that occupy an increasingly important place in social science research and are clearly central to our understanding of 21st century world society. Yet they are as well the subject of progressively pitched debates among scholars from the diverse disciplines like sociology, political economy and international relations. Much of this debate has centered on the purported decline of U.S. hegemony and what new hegemon may take its place as the world slips into turmoil or “systemic chaos”. Opposed to the state-centric approaches which take their basic units of analysis as the nationstate and the inter-state system, this paper focuses on the rise of a transnational class hegemony within the context of global capitalism as a whole, trying to support its basic arguments with empirical data.