The capacity to make the world discuss what the nation proposes: initiatives launched and sustained, summits and processes hosted, coalitions convened around the nation's questions.
The Capability Development Index tracks the events that move a capability — operational use, technical breakthroughs, procurement decisions and the industrial base behind them — and places each on the record with the date it happened.
Recent developments cover the current period. Historical developments are the inflection points that produced Agenda-Setting & Convening as it stands today.
During the Spring and Autumn period the decay of Eastern Zhou authority allowed powerful states to act with relative autonomy as recognised hegemons, or Ba. This gave East Asia an indigenous tradition of hegemonic leadership distinct from outright conquest.
Sparta led the Peloponnesian League as its dominant member, exercising direction over allied policy without annexing its members. It became a template for sub-regional leadership in the Greek world.
The Persian Achaemenid Empire overshadowed the smaller hegemonies of the Greek world until its own collapse. It illustrated a tier of dominance above regional leadership.
Writers of the classical Greek world gave the word hegemony its enduring meaning of politico-military predominance of one city-state over others. This provided the earliest conceptual vocabulary for describing a state's capacity to lead and set the agenda for others.
Athens directed the affairs of the Delian League, converting alliance leadership into predominance over its members. Its collapse was followed by short-lived Spartan and Theban hegemonies.
Qin's military success led the Zhou king to confer the title of hegemon on Duke Xian. Later Qin rulers dropped the formal title while retaining effective hegemony over the warring states.
Philip II was designated hegemon of the League of Corinth, a leadership he bequeathed to his son Alexander the Great. It fused Greek hegemonic form with Macedonian dynastic power.
Opposition to Qin's horizontal alliance produced the first vertical or anti-hegemonic coalition. It marked an early instance of balancing behaviour against a would-be hegemon.
The coalition of the other great states assaulted Qin but was overwhelmed. The pattern of failed balancing repeated several times before Qin abandoned hegemony for outright conquest.
After a century of confrontation with anti-hegemonic alliances, Qin abandoned indirect leadership and unified China by annexation. The episode marks the transition from hegemony to empire.
Victory over the Seleucids left Rome predominant across the Mediterranean. Notably Rome did not settle or tax subdued territories between 200 and 148 BC, exercising leadership over client kings rather than direct rule.
The first good evidence of systematic Roman revenue extraction from another kingdom dates from Judea, alongside the annexation of Pontus in the same year. It marks the shift from hegemonic oversight to imperial administration.
At the outset of his reign Augustus absorbed Egypt, ending the era of client kingdoms in the Mediterranean. Hegemony over allies was thereby replaced by direct imperial rule.
Ruling from 606 to 647, Harsha assembled a large north Indian empire and imposed his leadership over most of the region. It is cited as a South Asian instance of hegemonic predominance.
Successive caliphates exercised predominance over vast territories and extracted tribute from neighbouring states. This constituted a long Islamic phase of regional hegemony.
The empire developed by Charlemagne dominated France, much of northern and central Italy, Burgundy and Germany. It represents the first post-Roman European hegemony.
The Italian maritime republics dominated trade between Europe and the Orient and held naval supremacy for centuries. Their case shows hegemony grounded in commerce and sea power rather than territory.
Ming and later Qing China organised relations with neighbouring states around a hierarchical system of tribute missions, setting the terms on which much of East Asia engaged with the empire for more than 500 years.
From as early as the fifteenth century European states set the terms of global economic exchange. This opened the sequence of successive European hegemonies.
Portugal is dated as hegemon from the end of the Italian Wars to its union with Spain. It heads the conventional list of successive modern hegemonic powers.
The Latin term hegemonia, borrowed from the Greek for authority, rule or political supremacy, appears by 1513 or earlier. Its adoption gave European political thought a word for predominance short of empire.
Habsburg Spain dominated Europe for over a century before its decline was sealed by the Treaty of the Pyrenees. Philip IV's attempt at restoration failed, and by mid-century Spain's pretensions to European hegemony had irremediably collapsed.
Dated from the Treaty of Utrecht founding the Republic to the Glorious Revolution, Dutch dominion rested on efficient production and delivery of goods and services enabled by wind power. It was an early instance of hegemony rooted in commerce rather than conquest.
The treaties ending the Thirty Years' War fixed sovereignty and non-interference as organising principles of interstate relations, the foundation on which later claims to shape a shared international agenda would rest.
Louis XIV sought economic, cultural and military domination of most of continental Europe. France is dated as hegemon for these two decades before Britain's rise.
The Glorious Revolution inaugurated a century of British predominance ended by the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars. It established Britain as a recurring modern hegemon.
Napoleon I sought domination of the continent through economic, cultural and military means. His defeat and exile ended the French bid and transferred predominance elsewhere.
Historical writing broadened the term from intra-society ascendancy to inter-state predominance. By extension hegemonism came to denote the Great Power politics of roughly the 1880s to 1914 aimed at indirect imperial rule.
European powers redrew the continent's borders after the Napoleonic Wars and set a precedent of regular multilateral gatherings to manage shared problems, a model of summit diplomacy later adapted well beyond Europe.
After Napoleon's defeat hegemony passed to Britain, which became the largest empire in history, ruling a quarter of the world's land and population at its zenith under Queen Victoria. This was the classic case of a single state setting global economic and political terms.
Although Germany may have been Europe's strongest power after unification, Bismarck defined the road ahead as no expansion and no bid for hegemony. Restraint by the strongest state shaped the multipolar order until 1914.
The Italian Marxist philosopher used hegemony to analyse consent and leadership inside a given society. From this derived the political-science sense of hegemony as leadership rather than coercion.
The summit continued the international sequence on AI governance that began with the UK's Bletchley Park meeting in 2023, with India positioning itself as a bridge between Western regulatory approaches and the priorities of developing economies.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum, Carney said international economic partnerships were in the midst of a rupture rather than a transition. He called on middle powers to act together to avoid being victimised by American hegemony.
Brazil used its hosting role to press wealthier nations on climate finance commitments and to foreground Amazon deforestation and indigenous rights within the formal negotiating agenda.
The Johannesburg summit emphasised debt relief, critical minerals and climate finance for developing economies, with South Africa using its presidency to press for a permanent African voice in global economic governance.
Leaders from dozens of countries gathered in Sharm el-Sheikh to lend political weight to the ceasefire agreement, reinforcing Egypt's long-standing role as a convening power on the Palestinian file.
The gathering brought together Russian, Indian and Central Asian leaders and was used to promote a narrative of multipolar cooperation as an alternative to Western-led forums.
He pledged a more assertive common African position in multilateral negotiations, including on United Nations Security Council reform and debt relief, succeeding Moussa Faki Mahamat.
Government, industry and civil-society leaders discussed emerging international norms for artificial intelligence, with France seeking to shape the agenda ahead of the following summit in India.
Officials met in Riyadh without Ukrainian representatives present at the opening session, underscoring the kingdom's positioning as a venue acceptable to Moscow and Washington alike.
In a 2025 International Security article Walt held that a balancing coalition in Asia made Chinese regional hegemony improbable. In May 2026 he revisited the argument, saying he had underestimated Trump's incompetence and that the prospects for Chinese hegemony now looked better.
Trump adopted a more pro-Russian line, cut assistance to Ukraine and Taiwan and took an aggressive stance towards allies including Canada. Observers including Michael Ignatieff judged that China and Russia saw an unprecedented opening to overthrow American predominance.
Delegations met in Istanbul for several rounds of negotiations covering prisoner exchanges and the outline of a wider settlement, reinforcing Turkey's position as a venue acceptable to both sides.
The initiative, a signature project of Brazil's G20 presidency, sought to align governments and development banks behind coordinated financing for anti-poverty programmes.
Two days after the US election Putin declared that no hegemony could be a consideration in the new international environment. Russian official agencies later proclaimed victory over hegemony following the 2025 Trump–Zelenskyy meeting and Trump's tariff and expansionist moves.
The pamphlet dated American hegemony from the end of the Cold War and claimed its abuse imperilled the world, listing only Andorra, Liechtenstein and Bhutan among UN members as free of US military involvement. It marked an explicit state-level contest over the legitimacy of hegemony.
The authors argued a third path, neither peaceful nor violent in the conventional sense, best described China's likely global rise. It extended the commercial-hegemony model to a rising power.
Russia's seizure of Crimea in 2014 was followed by a full-scale invasion in 2022 and further annexations. The actions directly challenged the rules-based order underpinned by American hegemony.
Zhu contended the key question was how power could be transferred peacefully from the United States to China. The claim drew significant opposition but framed subsequent transition debates.
Nye opened the book by claiming that no nation since Rome had loomed so large above others, and elsewhere argued the United States was bound to lead. The works framed debate over American primacy and soft power.
The French Socialist politician coined the hyperpower label on account of unilateral American military action worldwide. The term captured unease among allies about unchecked US agenda-setting.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union left the United States without a peer competitor. Chinese official commentary later dates US hegemony precisely from the end of the Cold War.
In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy they described hegemony as a power relationship in which a subordinate collectivity performs tasks benefiting only the ordinate power. The account tied military, political and economic dominance to discursive construction.
Japanese growth and technological sophistication were singled out as challenges to US predominance. It was an early test of theories about hegemonic transition.
Leaders of France, the United States, the United Kingdom, West Germany, Japan and Italy met to coordinate responses to oil shocks and currency instability, establishing an annual practice of economic agenda-setting among the largest Western economies.
Arab oil-exporting members curtailed exports over Western support for Israel in the October war, sharply raising prices within months and showing that resource-exporting states outside the traditional great powers could set the terms of global economic debate.
The theory formalised the idea that one predominant state maintains global order by providing public goods. Gilpin also predicted American decline as the benefits of those goods diffused to other states.
Yugoslavia, India, Egypt, Indonesia and Ghana were among the founders of a movement declining to align with either Cold War bloc, giving newly independent nations a standing platform for coordinated positions at the United Nations and beyond.
The conference produced principles on sovereignty, non-interference and cooperation that shaped the language of developing-world diplomacy for decades and prefigured the Non-Aligned Movement founded six years later.
Hegemonic rivalry between communism and capitalism was institutionalised in the Warsaw Pact (1955–1991) and NATO, SEATO and CENTO. The bipolar structure meant no single global hegemon during the Cold War.
The United States committed some $13 billion to European recovery, using an economic initiative to cement Cold War alignments and demonstrate how a great power could set another region's agenda through funding rather than force.
51 states signed the founding charter, creating a permanent body through which member states could propose resolutions, convene sessions and contest the international agenda on a standing basis.
The conference that ended the First World War produced the first permanent body meant to manage disputes and coordinate international policy, though it excluded Germany, Soviet Russia and much of the colonised world.