Even in the era of European integration and the common market, histories and political studies continue to privilege the national. In the reality of the globalized world, however, actors work in close cooperation with international allies while incorporating into their thinking and politics influences from abroad. This decentralization away from the nation has also empowered individuals and organizations that can exist within this transnational landscape, complicating the internal and international relationships of the nation-states that dominate discussions of Europe.

                Our panel examines instances of European transnationalism and how it has empowered non-state actors to change national politics over the last century. In its earliest phases, supranational organizations like the League of Nations challenged the nation-based culture and policies of imperialism, informing a new political voice among Indians in Europe. Shortly thereafter, the onrush of alien ideas about the consumer culture merged with French sensibilities to produce a dialectic of seduction that shaped the way France packaged its image on the international scene. By the 1970s, radical activists called into question the geopolitical interests of the state and pushed their governments to embrace a global sense of justice heavily influenced by African perspectives. In the present, the extensive resources of transnational institutions like the International Dockworkers Council have empowered local and national groups to adopt radical solutions beyond the reach of strictly national federations. In these four chronologically distant studies, we can view the decentralizing effects of globalization on both national discourses and the politics of individual states in Europe.