REFRAMING SOCIAL POLICY: FROM DETECTING SOCIAL EXCLUSION TO BUIL­DING SOCIAL INCLUSION STRATEGIES: THE CASE OF SLOVENIA Mojca Novak School of Business and Managemen,t Novo Mesto, Slovenia Introduction The major topic of the paper is to show the path Slovenia has undertaken to build its poverty and social exclusion combating strategies as a transition country. While the eighties, as the last decade under socialism have started to reveal some economic austerity particularly those which have been related to full employment decrease, the early- and mid-nineties added to the political agenda increasing social security and standard of living problems. Thus, the first decade of the sovereignty put a consistent set of political actions on the governmental agenda to reform the unemployment and pension schemes. In the line with this, various experts and so­cial partners took intensive participation and collaboration in building new regula­tion mechanisms to transcend the widening gap between increasing social expendi­ture and available resources. Consequently, after the decade of increasing retiring and unemployment rates, these trends have revealed a significant turn-over. They started to decrease. Conversely, in late nineties statistical data kept showing the poverty rate increase. First step to combat it has been the poverty line renovation as suggested by experts. Late nineties revealed the need for a coherent re-viewing of poverty incidence con­sidering it in a broader perspective of social exclusion concept. The Council of Europe initiative to eradicate poverty and social exclusion in global perspective was endorsed by the Slovene political authorities giving new impetuous to indige­nous efforts of building the related co-ordinated action. Various poverty and social exclusion experts including the national statistical office and the UNDP Report authors, and various political party and civil society representatives collaborated again joining their interests and efforts in preparing and commenting the National Poverty and Social Exclusion Combating Programme. After being endorsed by the Government, the Parliament has adopted it in the year 2000. The concerned pro­gramme strategies were implemented through the co-ordinated action in different governmental departments, thus, enabling the common regulation framework to 160