One of the key issue of the social policy problems is the differences in living standards which are evidently increasing. This trend does not only have a negative impact on the general atmosphere and mood of the people but it is also a hindrance of the emergence of a modern market economy. The author discusses the changes of the structure of consumption and states that people with medium level incomes are waging a tough struggle against slipping down on the social scale but their retreat is evident.

An important area of social policy is child protection. Discussing the history of the problem, the author primarily puts on the scale the pros and cons of fostering in institution and in family. She confronts the concepts of child protection of the past few decades with the requirement of being "modern.

The author of this article, the new editor-in-chief of our periodical discusses the possibilities of social democracy: namely, whether the­re is an alternative offered by the social democratic model for East and Central Europe? Analysing the trends that exist in the literature of this theme, he draws the conclusion that the time of the welfare state has come to an end. He separates the three different models of the Welfare State (the American, the German and the Scandina­vian). He discusses the economic causes of the collapse of the welfare state and points out that a new c

Four major tendencies are introduced concerning the causes of the Balkan war, and the judgment about the participants of the conflict. All these approaches have their weaknesses, although all they are able to grasp some important elements of reality. Rethinking of the situation on the Balkans requires not simply an assessment of the former Yugoslav republics, but also a general overview of the role of international institutions, and the so-called New World Orde.

An unreported factor of the causes of the Balkan war is the foreign indebtedness of Yugoslavia. Since the early 1970s, the debt prob­lem, along with the cures recommended by the IMF, regenerated the differentiation between different regions of the country, and led to an unresolvable distributional conflict between the republics. The final result could not be else but the break-down of the Yugoslav economy, and the break-up of the federal stat.