PART III: YUGOSLAVIA FROM A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE (1918–1991) - Yugoslavia and Development: Benefits and Costs
PART III: YUGOSLAVIA FROM A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE (1918–1991) - Yugoslavia and Development: Benefits and Costs

Author(s): Vladimir Gligorov
Subject(s): Economic history, Recent History (1900 till today)
Published by: Helsinški odbor za ljudska prava u Srbiji
Summary/Abstract: Both the economic and political history of Yugoslavia consists of a series of ill-advised constitutional decisions and then intermittent attempts to implement necessary reforms so as to rectify these decisions. These decisions would regularly go on to prove themselves as untenable since they were guided by the same, mainly ethnic or national motives. Some form of dictatorship was always seen as justified, above all from the perspective of security. And then one form or other of territorial devolution was used to seek out equity for national-territorial and economic interests. At the same time, the external circumstances were not favorable. The country needed (i) a liberal-democratic constitution in an era of rising nationalism; (ii) the development of a private-ownership-based economy open for exchange with the world in a time of growing protectionism and totalitarianism and (iii) the rule of law in revolutionary times. Favorable conditions for liberalization and democratization occurred only on the eve of the country’s dissolution. During the last couple of decades after the break-up, seven ex-Yugoslav states co-exist within a system of regional cooperation that suffers from the same shortcomings as the former common state. Thus the current situation seems as temporary and unnatural as any of the Yugoslav structures from the inception of the common state to its disappearance.

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