“Hegemony” has been a key concept in understanding various forms of domination under capitalist relations of production that might go beyond any particular social formation. Hence it is possible to exercise it at different levels—domestic, regional or international. With its emphasis on attempts at capitalist domination, conceptualisations of it largely rest on the discipline of International Political Economy (IPE). However, some of these conceptualisations tend to degenerate the concept by disrupting its connections with the ruling classes at the domestic level. This led to a misbelief in the wider International Relations (IR) scholarship as though the concept had only idealist connotations and little to do with geopolitical rivalries among nations. This paper argues the opposite and asserts that the concept still holds explanatory power even under a supposedly multipolar order as long as it is not stripped of its domestic and material foundations. As such, the paper seeks to bring the concept into terms with the recent debates over the new character of the emerging international order. In doing this, the paper will also investigate whether the concept shares a common ground with geopolitical economy with a reference to the foundational concepts of the latter such as the “materiality of nations”. The paper argues that the contestations that appear geopolitical in character emanate from struggles for hegemony at the domestic level and are also bound to take the shape of bids for hegemony at regional or international levels by benefiting from the insights that the concepts of “subimperialism” and “imperialism” provides us.