REFRAMING SOCIAL POLICY: SOCIAL POLICY OF POST-YUGOSLAV COUNTRIES: LEGACY, CONTINUITY AND CHANGES (Historical Context and Social Policy) Vlado Puljiz Social Work Study Center Faculty of Law, Zagreb University Introduction This text deals with social policies of the countries established on the terri­tory of the former Yugoslavia for which the syntagm"Western Balkans" is usually used at present. The analysis will leave out Slovenia, because it does not belong to Western Balkans, as defined in international documents. Moreover, following its independence in 1991, Slovenia, as the most developed of the republics of the for­mer Yugoslavia, has had a rather different(better!) destiny than other post­Yugoslav states. Over the last ten years it developed relatively successfully, and in 2004 became a European Union member. 2 We will neither deal with Kosovo be­cause we do not have sufficient insight into the general situation or social policy there, and because Kosovo still does not have a defined state and legal status, which is a subject of intensive international negotiations. 3 There appears the question: Why is it advisable to treat the countries estab­lished on the territory of the former Yugoslavia separately from other post-socialist countries of South Eastern Europe, such as Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and Moldova? We believe that in that manner we will avoid the trap of simplified gen­eralization we see in the case of some Western authors. Namely, in their analyses of current situation, but also when analyzing history of social policies, in particular of half a century long socialist era, they do not make a difference between the countries of the former Yugoslavia and other post-socialist countries. They apply to all of them, in our opinion inappropriately; the same analytical schemes and in that manner, neglect the differences. 4 2 With 85% GDP compared to the European Union average, Slovenia is today the most developed country of the former socialist part of Europe. 3 "Western Balkans" encompasses Albania, as well. We have however left out Albania from our analysis moti­vated, inter alia, by the fact that in the 20th century Albania followed a different development path than the coun­tries which made up the former Yugoslavia. 4 A. Pfaller writes about social policies of South East Europe:"Centrally planned socialist economies before the 1990s had not had the need of formal state social protection arrangements since"social welfare" had been inte­grated into the central process of production and income distribution. All natural resources, including human re­sources(i.e. labor force of different capabilities) were mobilized by the planning institutions with the aim to con­tribute to social production"(Pfaller, 2001.:2). A more nuisanced opinion about the former Yugoslav welfare state 64