Since the 1970s, various sociological approaches have tried to understand and conceptualize "the global," yet few of them have systematically addressed the full spectrum of social relationships. Prominent exponents of the global approach - such as world systems analysis - instead have focused on particular domains such as politics or the economy. Under the label of "world society," however, some authors have suggested alternatives to the predominant equivocation of society and the nation-state. The contributions to this volume share that objective and take their point of departure from the two most ambitious projects of a theory of world society: world polity research and systems theory, mapping out the common ground and assessing their potential to inform empirical analyses of globalization.

Since the 1970s, various sociological approaches have tried to understand and conceptualize the global, yet few of them have systematically addressed the full spectrum of social relationships. Prominent exponents of the global approach - such as world systems analysis - instead have focused on particular domains such as politics or the economy. Under the label of world society, however, some authors have suggested alternatives to the predominant equivocation of society and the nation-state. The contributions to this volume share that objective and take their point of departure from the two most ambitious projects of a theory of world society: world polity research and systems theory, mapping out the common ground shared by world polity research and systems theory and assessing their potential to inform empirical analyses of globalization.

Modern systems theory provides a new method for the analysis of society through an examination of the structures of its communications. In this volume, Niklas Luhmann, the theory's leading exponent, explores its implications for our understanding of law.
Luhmann argues that current thinking about how law operates within a modern society is seriously deficient. He lays out the theoretical and methodological tools that, he argues, can advance our understanding of contemporary society and in particular of the identity, performance, and function of the legal system within that society. In systems theory, society is its communications: they are its empirical reality; the items that can be observed and studied. Systems theory identifies how communications operate within a physical world and how different sub-systems of communication operate alongside each other.
In this volume, Luhmann uses systems theory to address a question central to legal theory: what differentiates law from other social practices? However, unlike conventional legal theory this volume seeks to provide an answer in terms of a general social theory: a methodology that answers the question in a manner applicable not only to law, but also to all the other complex and highly differentiated systems within modern society, such as politics, the economy, religion, the media, and education. This sociological approach offers profound insights into the relationships between law and other social systems.

Modern systems theory provides a new paradigm for the analysis of society. In this volume, Niklas Luhmann, its leading exponent, explores its implications for our understanding of law. Luhmann argues that current thinking about how law operates within a modern society is seriously deficient. In this volume he lays out the theoretical and methodological tools that, he argues, can advance our understanding of contemporary society and, in particular, of the identity, performance, and function of the legal system within that society. In systems theory, society is its communications: they are its empirical reality; the items that can be observed and studied. Systems theory identifies how communications operate within a physical world and how different sub-systems of communication operate alongside each other. In this volume, Luhmann uses systems theory to address a question central to legal theory: what differentiates law from other parts of society? However, unlike conventional legal theory, this volume seeks to provide an answer in terms of a general social theory: a methodology that answers this question in a manner applicable not only to law, but also to all the other complex and highly differentiated systems within modern society, such as politics, the economy, religion, the media, and education. This truly sociological approach offers profound insights into the relationships between law and all of these other social systems.