The World Society Foundation was established in 1982 by Peter Heintz with the aim of encouraging and supporting research on world society – its emergence and historical evolution, its structure, its dynamics and current transformation. Until 2003, the main purpose of the Foundation's sponsoring activities was to finance entire research projects focusing on the various processes of social integration and disintegration within worldwide systems – world culture, world economy, world politics, and intergovernmental systems – and on how global processes affect the perceptions and actions of individual and collective actors worldwide. Its current sponsoring policy is to provide a large number of grants for research papers, as opposed to sponsoring only a few “big-size” research projects. In accordance with this new policy, the Foundation has introduced its WSF Award Program for Research Papers on World Society and held a series of international conferences in order to sustain a network of excellent scholars interested in transnational and global research topics. The World Society Foundation Award honors outstanding research papers on world society that address a specific topic announced by the Foundation in its Award Program. The World Society Foundation also publishes the book series “World Society Studies”. The World Society Foundation is domiciled in Zurich, Switzerland. The current members of the Board are: Mark Herkenrath, Hans-Peter Meier and Christian Suter (President). Former members of the Board include: Peter Heintz, Karl W. Deutsch, Hans-Joachim Hoffmann-Nowotny, Bruno Fritsch, and Volker Bornschier. More detailed information on past research projects sponsored, the topics and recipients of the WSF Awards, the WSF book series “World Society Studies”, and the call for papers of current WSF conferences and Award Programs can be found on the Foundation’s website at www.worldsociety.ch.