Everybody uses the term social security, but definitions vary widely. This unique book may be conceived as a wide-ranging definition, although in fact it emphasizes only part of the concept: that administrative function that grants cash benefits to offset or compensate for such social risks as old age, disability, unemployment, costs of health care, and other instances occasioning the lack of means necessary for a decent existence. In an earlier form (1993), this book proved itself as a much-sought-after introduction to the field, for governments as much as for law students. In this...

The confidence of wage-earners, who depend on an administrative "safety net" to protect them from loss of income, has virtually disappeared. Social exclusion and poverty have become inescapable threats for the average worker. It was to tackle this enormously important issue that the European Institute of Social Security (EISS), a leading multidisciplinary research group dedicated to exploring the frontiers of social security, met in June 2000 in Gandouml;teborg in Sweden. Twenty members of the Institute prepared papers for delivery at the conference, all of which are now printed in this book....

The twelve remarkable essays in this book explore this vital issue from a number of enlightening perspectives. European Social Security and Global Politics represents a partial gleaning of the September 2001 conference-held in Bergen, Norway-of the European Institute of Social Security, a leading multidisciplinary research group and the vanguard of the debate on social security in Europe. Fifteen highly committed researchers and administrators from all over Europe offer in-depth analysis and conclusions in such crucial areas as: how globalisation increases inequality and hinders...

Our society has never been so internationally connected. Companies operate worldwide, retail shelves are filled with products from far and wide, people travel like never before and maintain contacts from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Distant countries have never been so close. Anyone who is practising law today cannot escape this and will increasingly be confronted with cross-border legal issues. Therefore, today’s jurists are expected to have knowledge of their own legal system as well as the law of foreign countries. For this reason, comparative law is integrated today in nearly every law...