While reading for a doctoral degree in Sociology at Birmingham University, Gill was encouraged by Burman "to study transnational class formations and to begin to think about world order in a more complex way than orthodox theorizations of International Relations seemed to allow.

[7] Griffiths et al. note that, "uniquely for its time, [it] gave serious attention to the entire theoretical spectrum of the field, including variants of Marxism and game theory as well as making novel arguments about the structural power of capital.

[13] Gill is considered one of the leading Neo-Gramscian International Relations scholars, although his work adopts his own distinctive historical materialist approach as a means of explaining global power and the changing world order.

[14] Gill's early work, American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission (1991) introduced many of these concepts which were used to theorise and identify the global ruling class formations drawn from politics, the corporate world and civil society, and in particular the ideas of their leading thinkers ("organic intellectuals").

Gill argued that a key reason for this was a complex ("historical bloc") of liberal institutions, ideas and elites which was part of a highly developed US-led alliance structure that helped to politically cement the main capitalist states' strategies towards adversaries as well as promoting the globalisation of capitalism.

[17] In his more recent work, Gill has introduced new concepts such as disciplinary neoliberalism, new constitutionalism and market civilization[18] and has drawn significantly on Michel Foucault’s theories of panopticism and capillary power.