Hegemony means making a class the leading force of the whole nation.

Evidence

If it is true that the Jacobins “forced” its hand, it is also true that this always occurred in the direction of real historical development. For not only did they organise a bourgeois government, i.e. make the bourgeoisie the dominant class—they did more. They created the bourgeois State, made the bourgeoisie into the leading, hegemonic class of the nation, in other words gave the new State a permanent basis and created the compact modern French nation. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 475

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the essential Gramsci distinction between being the dominant class and being the leading, hegemonic class.