This book is the result of an international comparative research collaboration which launched the LOSS project nearly two decades ago. The initiative goes in particular back to the Catholic University of Ingolstadt (Bavaria, Germany) and the University of Louisville (Kentucky, United States of America). The Project Local Organization of Social Services was established to build a bridge among different social cultures and social politics which exist in the United States of America, Western Europe and the so-called transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The purpose of the editors is to look at the current Hungarian social and socio-political situation and the transformations in order to inspire other research teams to create similar monographs about the LOSS in their own countries. According to our hope more and more bilateral research collaborations are going to be launched in the near future. For example between Finland and Hungary and Austria and Hungary etc. These international comparative researches could form a bigger network in the Euro-Atlantic region. This book is an important step in the comprehensive process towards the international network. This book seemingly does not follow strict editorial rules, although there is an invisible logical line running through it, and linking all chapters. The intent of the authors, each specialist in the subject areas of their chapter, was to synthesize the social phenomena of the recent past. Some contributions provide also a wider historical perspectives. Essentially, this book is a part of a mosaic which will be deciphered by subsequent work. . This is simply a compilation of the first studies and is to be followed with results of other collaborative research among the semi-peripheral Northern and Eastern European countries in the next years..