My dissertation examines how the globalization of modern science and technology has redefined the power and legitimacy of modern nation-states. Taking the transatlantic history of postwar nuclear science as a case in point, I focus on proposals to establish international organizations (the International Atomic Energy Agency) and/or supranational nuclear communities (the European Community of Atomic Energy), formulated by the US government and West European governments between the 1940s and the 1970s. Drawing and expanding on the literature in historical sociology and political science on the formation of nation-states and the role that transnational networks play in international relations, I ask: How were national governments persuaded to delegate control over the regulation of nuclear activities, either to global international organizations, or to West European supranational communities? How did informal transatlantic networks successfully convince national political leaders, bureaucracies and experts to support their plans? How do these attempts to disengage nuclear science from national control change our conceptions of sovereignty and international relations?

To answer these questions, I compare the role of two transatlantic networks of nuclear scientists and policymakers whose expert skills, social capital, and access to political elites varied—liberal and cosmopolitan internationalists as opposed to European federalists. The first network of cosmopolitans and international liberals was mostly composed of American and European nuclear scientists who worked during the war for the Manhattan Project, as well as concerned citizens and scholars who joined their effort for international control of the atom after the war. The second network, of European federalists, was comprised mostly of American and European lawyers, businessmen and politicians gathered around Jean Monnet and hoped to secure a new space for European sovereignty. As I show, the social characteristics of these two transatlantic networks determined the extent to which they succeeded in achieving their goals, and moreover I am able to specify three forms of action by which they pursued their differing political and strategic aims: (1) as norm entrepreneurs , able to articulate different sets of norms and values justifying the delegation of sovereignty they asked for; (2) as policy entrepreneurs , able to articulate new policy paradigms to solve the strategic problems of national nuclear proliferation and East/West military gap in Europe; (3) as policy translators, able to translate the specific policies they proposed into terms that were acceptable to those who disagreed with their policy paradigm within national governments and bureaucracies.

Based on archival research in the US and in the archives of the European Community, I track the series of transatlantic controversies between these cosmopolitan, international liberals and European federalists. The characteristics of their networks explain the specific formation of the atomic confederacy which eventually tied together Western nuclear development. My model of how transnational networks affect international law by acting as norm and policy entrepreneurs as well as policy translators allows me to re-think how nation-states, international organizations, and transnational networks operate together in a globalized world.