To our knowledge, this International Handbook of Cooperative Law is the first of its kind. This notwithstanding, it builds on past and present similar efforts to present cooperative laws in a comparative way. The 1930s, 1950s and 1980s saw a number of such studies.1 From among the more recent publications we would like to mention those coordinated by Dante Cracogna on Central and South America and those by Jose´ Mar?´a Montol?´o on Europe and Latin America.2 In 2010 Jan Theron made a comparative study on Eastern and Southern Africa.3 The regional organization of the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) for Asia and the Pacific has over the years commissioned four “Critical Studies on Cooperative Legislation and Policy Reforms in the Asia and Pacific Region”, the most recent one in 2013.4 Where those efforts focused on a particular political or geographical region or on a specific legal tradition, this handbook sets out to provide a worldwide comparative overview of cooperative law/s. This is not the place to discuss these publications; it is however the place to acknowledge the work of those who have contributed to the chain of solidarity amongst comparative cooperative lawyers, which is not very long. The idea behind this handbook is to add to this chain and broaden the basis for cooperative law as a universal science. For it to be universal it must be based on comparative analyses of the various national, supranational and international laws around the world. Beyond this scientific purpose, such studies may be used for a variety of other, often interrelated purposes. Two of these need mentioning: Firstly, cooperative laws are converging (see Part II). Where this convergence is the result of a legal policy choice, its effectiveness is to a large extent a function of a scientific comparison of the laws that are to converge. Secondly, any law needs revising from time to time. For a number of reasons,