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Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization (1961) offers a comparison between two types of answers to the same social problems: unemployment, poverty and crime. In the earlier centuries exclusion was the answer. The French Hopital General (1656) replaced it by containment. The institution was a combination of a hospital and jail and offered a solution by isolating insane, unemployed and criminal people at the expense of the society. The 20th century welfare state has a different answer to the same questions. This is, however, challenged by financial limitations. Foucault offers a solution by combining social security and individual autonomy, which was not considered to be important before.

There have been numerous fault-lines in society in the past due to religion, race, social class and nation. Current fault-lines relate to demography: the West has a falling population whereas many countries elsewhere in the world are undergoing large population growth; net emigration has been replaced by immigration. The previous Western dominance in economic activity has also changed and the balance has moved east. These and other factors are considered as pointers to the future.

This study discusses the various short-, medium- and long-term cycle theories and focuses on the long-term Kondratiev cycle and its Schumpeterian interpretation. It gives a summary on the economic fluctuation in the 20th century and its impact on structural transformation and regional rearrangements. The problem of ‘peripheral structural crisis’ – the destruction without creation in the relatively backward regions of Europe – is introduced.

The article discusses the proposed enlargement of the European Union by the inclusion of the five Central European Countries, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia and Slovenia in terms of their history. In the past, they have been part of the West at times, but their recent economic history has not been encouraging. What will their prospects be when joining the European Union?

In February 2006, talks began in Vienna to decide the status of Kosovo. The solution was forecast in several statements: instead of officially remaining a province of Serbia, considering that 90% of the population of the area is Albanian, mostly Muslim, and want independence, independent statehood might be granted to Kosovo. Kosovo enjoyed an autonomous status under Tito (abolished by Milošević) and thus has the legal right to decide on independence.Serbia wants to keep its authority over the province, which is considered to be the ‘cradle of Serbia,’ a sacrosanct place in Serbian history. However, the Serb population has gradually decreased and become a small minority. This happened due to a huge Serb emigration after the Ottoman conquest of the region, a spontaneous, sometimes forced emigration, which gained special impetus during the Second World War, when the region became part of ‘Great Albania,’ and Serbs were killed and chased out of the province. The tension and violence of the post-war decades made emigration advisable for Serbs. Milošević's Kosovo war-and-rape campaign made the Kosovars victims of exalted Serb nationalism in the late 1990s. The NATO bombing stopped this but the Serb minority declined into an unbearable situation. The Kosovo Liberation Army's violent actions, killing Serbs, burning their houses, shooting at school buses, continued until recently and led to the flight of half of the remaining Serb population, and ‘cleansed’ Kosovo of 80% of the Roma population.