Failed ethnic Federalism: the accommodation of constituent nationalities in Yugoslavia before and after Titos leadership (1968-1980 and 1980-1992)Miguel MorillasTheoretical framework The logic to accommodate minority or constituent nations stems from the very nature of Federalism: the principle of authority and liberty that Pierre-Joseph Proudhon talked about back in 1863. He stated that the principle of authority, familial, patriarchal, magisterial, monarchical, theocratic, tending to hierarchy, centralization, absorption, is given by nature, and is thus essentially predestined, divine, as you will. Its scope, resisted and impeded by the opposing principle, may expand or contract indefinitely, but can never be extinguished. On one hand, the principle of liberty is subject to extension or restriction, but it likewise cannot be exhausted as it grows, nor it can be nullified by constraint (Proudhon, 2005). There are some elements of both in any given society regardless the amount of authoritarian rule a regimen may have or apparent unbound freedom people could attain. No political arrangement is exempt and it could be affirmed that even no group arrangement among people that are equals or tend to equality in any context where humans interact. Therefore, it has to be taken in consideration that any sort of analysis of diversity into unity has to be done with a mental model in which complete rule and total absence of rule are in the extremes but just to have a landscape of reality in which in terms of power relation we are located between these extremes. Thus, according to Proudhon, the aim of any government is the balancing of authority and liberty and viceversa. Following this statement, Federalism seems to be the ideal system to solve this conflict from an authority vs liberty perspective. Furthermore, federal principles are concerned with the combination of self-rule and shared rule. In the broadest sense, federalism involves the linkage of individuals, groups and polities in lasting but limited union, in such a way as to provide for the energetic pursuit of common ends while maintaining the respective integrities of all parties (Elazar,1991). Putting aside some few examples that according some authors could be Iceland or Portugal most of the societies in the world consist in multinational states with different kind of ethnic minorities or minority nations. Federalism, thus, seem to be a just way to govern the destiny of nations. Nevertheless, reality has proven to be more complex and some minority nations or subunits seem to hold multiple identities, that is, people may identify themselves with the state-wide nation or other kind of entity that embrace their prime identity. In words of De Schutter, the cultural landscape we inhabit is imbued with cultural hibridity and opacity. It is always characterised by multiple identities, minorities within minorities, and bi-and multilingualism (De Schutter, 2010). All these characteristics will have to be taken into account if a fair Federal system has to be implemented.

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That is the challenge of any federative agreement. If possible to manage this complexity Federalism would be the fairest way to accommodate internal differences. If we understand the federal agreement as it has been presented so far then we might come to the conclusion that federalism is consubstantial to liberal democracy and liberal democracy is the precondition to a reliable federal agreement. Therefore, Federalism cannot possibly exist in a non-democratic context. Elazar remarks the importance of the role of democratic rule in the definition of Federalism: according to him the essence of federalism is democratic. However, the relationship between democracy and federalism is complex. It existed and exists several countries with different forms of federal agreements that claim to be federations even if they may not always fit purely in what can be called democracies understanding by it respect for some basic features: individual rights, civil liberties, etc. According to some authors federalism imposed by force and ruled from the top is neither true federalism nor is it destined to be successful on account of Federalism is too intimately associated with democratic republicanism for that (Elazar,1991). During the XX century there were nation-states that claimed to be federations but which would not fit in the idea of plural democracies as they were run in its origins by one party system. In the European context this was the case of those authoritarian federative socialist republics which contained wide range of ethnicities in their composition: Union Socialist Soviet Republic (USSR) and Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY).1 In the case of the USSR it was reconstituted as a Federation by Lenin and his colleagues in the Communist Party because they felt they had no choice and saw in this system the only way to conciliate the many nationalities within the territory under their control and make possible the Communist rule (Elazar, 1991)2. The ideology of the triumphant party after the internal war, Bolshevism, held the doctrine of Democratic centralism which consisted in an organizational method that describes the freedom of members of the political party to discuss and debate matters of policy and direction, but once the decision of the party is made by majority vote, all members are expected to uphold that decision. If we take a retrospective look, according to its constitution the USSR was a Federation but until its last years in the eighties and early nineties, in practice, its governance was highly centralized. That is, while Soviet federalism was formally so open that the soviet constitution guaranteed the republics the right of secession, in fact the Communist party monopolized all the power in offices of the Republics. In Yugoslavia, during the course of fighting a guerrilla war against foreign occupiers while at the same time waging a social revolution, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) adopted a Federal formula for the organization of the state over which they were confident they would rule in the post-war period. Federalization based on the Soviet model was the Partys response to the manifest ethnic problems of the interwar Kingdom, and the evolving patterns of relationships1

Although Czechoslovakia was considered run by a federal system, I will avoid mention it as it was a binational country having Czechs and Slovaks as the constituent nationalities. 2 Elazar called it reluctant federalism. Other authors nominal federalism.

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within the Partisan/Party organization (Burg, 1977).

3

In the same line as the soviet case,

federalization of the state apparatus did not mean participation of opposite forces in the political scene. The Party elite remained a tightly knit, and strongly Stalinist group whose shared ideology and vision of the future outweighed regional liberties or responsibilities. Considering the precedent events, it has been said that the decision to create a Federation was oriented to satisfy the important psychological needs of the Yugoslav peoples for recognition of their national individuality, and give each nationality the assurance for first time, of enjoying a truly special status with the other national groups (Shoup, 1968)4 (See Annex: Map 1). In these regards we note the different nature or spirit of the establishment of a federation giving the historical particularities of the Balkan area if compared with the USSR which was deemed just as a tool or transitional mechanism designed to provide autonomy until the communist state emerged (Elazar, 1991). The way to maintain unity in diversity in its inception was under a single party system, the idea of yugoslavness and the figure of Josip Broz Tito as the triumphant leader in the war of the liberation of the peoples of Yugoslavia. The leadership of Tito considering its historical legitimization had evident elements of the Weberian model of charismatic authority which will work as a powerful resource during his rule.5 Several authors have made remarks on the fact that the Yugoslav federation was an example of coexistence until Tito perished leaving space for the arise of ethnic nationalism in the republics, others affirm that Titos death was just the last straw of a process that would imminently end up in the dissolution of the federal agreement. One way or the other with the end of his leadership, the old Yugoslav ties that held the constituent parts together seemed to progressively being eroded. As an expert in national security stressed: the failure of the Yugoslav federalism would certainly have occurred sooner had it not been for the unique role played by Tito in enforcing an overarching national perspective on the republics (Dorff, 1994). It could be argued that the war starting in 1991 was not the final destruction of Yugoslavia but rather the instrument that Titos successors would use to implement a new social and administrative order: the ethnically homogeneous or pure communities and nation states. A precondition for this It is not the attempt to investigate why the absence of Tito determined the federal disintegration if it was the case at all- as we understand that this fact accelerated or

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The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a state stretching from the Western Balkans to Central Europe which existed during the often-tumultuous interwar era of 19181941. 4 Nationalities are referred to the majoritarian ethnic groups of the constituent republics (with the exception of the republic of Bosnia and Hercegovina which was the only multiethnic republic with a balance of ethnic groups) whereas national minorities stand for the ethnic minorities within the republic, for example, Hungarians and Albanians in the republic of Serbia. 5 According to Max Weber, charisma is a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader. Weber, Maximillan. Theory of Social and Economic Organization. From Chapter: "The Nature of Charismatic Authority and its Routinization", 1947.

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boosted and ongoing process. It is not the idea to study the death the Tito himself buy to use it as a reference for the development of this paper and halve the time to be explored. Some historians have talked about old resentment among the ethnic groups as a cause of disaster. Taken this a cause would encapsulate us in a deterministic perspective but we cannot neglect its importance because it has been suggested that generally speaking the maintenance of ethnic identities in the Balkans are the ideas that, the whole Eastern European region was subjected to an universalistic logic of big empires: when different ethnic communities were joining a certain empire, loose ties were established with the central authority. That is why ethnic communities managed to preserve their autonomy and to develop continuously their selfawareness (Janji, 2002). Thus, we have to keep in mind that federalism within the eastern European context had to deal with this strong sense of belonging. Thus, a type of federalism called ethnic federalism, created to solve the problems of communal life in multi-ethnic communities (Vujai, 2001). The case of the union of the South Slavic people could partly trace its legitimatization here. The overall system can be called ethnic federalism because the republics that composed the Federation previously defined themselves as separated entities, and it was always accepted that the subunits possessed differentiated cultural features such as language and religion. Moreover, the ethnic boundaries and the republic boundaries in the Balkans coincide extensively (See Annex: Map 2). It is of importance to understand how Yugoslav federalism was established after the WWII and how the first federal constitution was drawn. Yet the aim of this work focuses the period of time that starts in 1968 and finishes in 1992. The decision of setting it in 1968 takes into account that key facts occurred in the international arena having the Cold War as the ideological context. The ideas of liberalization penetrated the Eastern bloc and following the French May of 68, the Prague spring took place which are believed to be related with the Croatian Spring of 1971 as part of a wider process. As it has been pointed out by an expert in the area: the road that lead to the disaster started in 1968 (Veiga, 2002).67 8

In the same way, it has been proposed that

internal economical and political liberalization of the 1960s had produced the conditions and the opportunity for the rebirth of sub-state nationalism and the federalizing response in the constitutional changes of 1967-71 (Binns, 1989). The Post-Titoist period started with his death in 1980 finishing approximately in 1992 after the secession of Republics of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and the outbreak of the war.

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According to Veiga, go back on time to understand what happened in the Balkanic state is an exercise that could easily make us put reality out of our sight. In addition, try to understand the disintegration of Yugoslavia from the period right before the rise of Slobodan Milosevi is neither enough nor realistic. 7 In 1968 also ethnic Albanians went to street demonstrations manifesting their discontent in the Province of Kosovo calling to be granted with a Republican status. 8 According to Robert H. Dorff around that year is when the devolution of power to the periphery in Yugoslavia began.

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Dorff emphasizes the necessity to understand federalism both as structure and process.9 That is to analyze not only its formal characteristics (written constitution, bicameral national legislature, division of power between the central and regional governments) what he considers is the traditional way to see federalism. In this sense, Elazar observes that many polities with federal structure were not federal in practice. To make a difference he introduces the category of process adding that only in those polities where the processes of government reflect federal principles is the structure of federalism meaningful. Thus, Dorff take this idea and considers that federal processes include a sense of partnership on the part of the parties to the federal compact, manifested through negotiated cooperation on issues and programs and based on a commitment to open bargaining between all parties to an issue on such way as to strive for consensus or, failing that, accommodation which protects the fundamental integrity of all partners.10 Accommodation is referred to the capability to articulate and conciliate the demands and yearnings of the constituent parts with the central power within a federative system. Federalism has been regarded by many as the fairest system for accommodation of cultural differences as De Schutter suggested. However a critic would be casted from the structureprocess perspective proposed by Dorff to understand federalism in Eastern Europe where in reality federalism did not ameliorate ethnic conflict instead saying the opposite would understate the role of the communist party as a peculiar mechanism of control. Moreover, it conveniently overlooks the argument that federalist structures exacerbated those tensions by providing an excellent organizational base for political leaders to exploit with nationalist appeals once the centre began to weaken.11 From this standpoint federalism did not promote at all politics of accommodation but was rather a mirage that gave the illusion of power sharing on an ethnic basis. That will lead us to think that spirit underlying the establishment of a federal system in Yugoslavia aimed to suppress ethnic differences and not to accommodate them. 12 It is precisely the intention of this paper to explore the reasons why what seemed to be a prosper example of a multiethnic federation in terms of conciliation of allegedly ancestral rivalries eventually failed.

The inception of the Yugoslav Federalism

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Dorff, Robert H. Federalism in Eastern Europe: Part of the problem or part of the solution? Publius: The Journal of Federalism 24 (Spring 1994). 10 Elazar, Daniel J. Federalism and Consociational regimes. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 15 (Spring 1985). 11 Dorff remarks that federalism itself when only considered as structure cannot ensure accommodation for the cases of the USSR, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Indeed, he blames the communist party structures for being a mechanism for depriving ethnic groups the ability to mobilize and,eventually, these same mechanisms were used in changing circumstances to increase ethnic tensions. 12 According to Elazar this was the case in the establishment of a federative system in the USSR to make possible the Communist rule but which evolved in an expected way: although initially established as a transitional mechanism designed to provide for cultural autonomy until the communist state emerged, Soviet federalism has become firmly entrenched as a means for accommodating diverse ethnic and national differences (Elazar, 1991). According to Dorff, prior to the decentralization of the mid 1970`s, Yugoslavia had been federalist only in the same structural way as the USSR.

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After the Second World War, without the necessity of a Soviet invasion as opposed to other countries of Eastern Europe the Communist forces of Tito, multiethnic and dispersed over all the provinces, raised as the new ruling force in a new created state. Titos followers supported the creation of a Narodni front (NOF) -primarily led by the Communist Party- destined to rule the state which will represent the different interests and political positions but mediatised by the Communist Party. The Front won the elections with more than 90% of votes benefited greatly from their wartime exploits enjoying genuine support among the populace. The first article of the Constitution of 1946 following the 1936s Stalin Soviet Constitution defined Yugoslavia as a federal people's state, republican in form, a community of peoples equal in rights who, on the basis of the right to self-determination, including the right of separation, have expressed their will to live together in a federative state.13 Moreover it declared the composition to be formed by the Peoples Republic of Croatia, the Peoples Republic of Slovenia, the Peoples Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Peoples Republic of Macedonia and the Peoples Republic of Montenegro. The Peoples Republic of Serbia includesd the autonomous province of Vojvodina and the autonomous Kosovo-Metohijan region.14 Each of them embraced in the Federative Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia which was constructed as territorial multinational federation with formally equal status for federal republics that were defined as the homelands of titular nationalities. In addition, the national minorities within each Republic were granted with special rights of protection of their own cultural development as well as the free use of their language.15 Among the main characteristics of symmetrical Federations is the existence of two spheres of government, including federal government on the one hand, and several federated units on the other (Barry and Foweraker, 2001). This was indeed the case of FPRY having the National Assembly from 1946 re-establishing the name from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia- divided in Federal Council and the Council of Nationalities in which republics and Provinces had equal representation.16 Both houses of the Assembly had equal rights.17 It could be identified that many of the main competences were held by the Federal government such as the amendments of the Constitution and its control over the compliance of the Constitution of the Peoples Republics; the representation of the Federation in international relations and international treaties; the federal budget, the passing of the general state budget and of final accounts and the supreme control over its administration; Legislation concerning the distribution of revenues to the Federal budgets of the republics and those of autonomous and administrative territorial13 14

Constitution of the Federative Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia (1946). Chapter I. Article 1. Constitution of the Federative Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia (1946). Chapter I. Article 2. 15 Constitution of the Federative Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia (1946). Chapter III. Article 13. 16 Principles of parity and proportional representation among nationalities have been applied consistently since 1946 in all major functional and territorial bodies at the national level, including the League of Communists, the Socialist Alliance, the Conference for Civic Activity of Yugoslav Women, the Council of the League of Trade Union, the League of Youth, and the Federal Board of the League of Associations of Veterans. 17 Constitution of the Federative Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia (1946). Chapter VII. Article 57.

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units.18 In fact the character of the relations between the Federal Government and the constituent units was asymmetrical but not among the Federal units which were theoretically at equal footing. Each republic had its own Constitution but had to be in conformity with the Federal Constitution. The law of the republics in any case could surpass Federal law in case of discrepancy. The principal of organization of the state was federal but the economy was centralized and planned and the heavy industry was boosted. There was little doubt about the consolidation of the system intimately related with Stalinism. However, In 1948, after clashes with the USRR, Yugoslavia is expulsed from the Kominform as it is accused by the agency of abandoning the socialist ideals, and falls into revisionism and sustains a Petite bourgeoisie-like nationalism. This fact will be crucial as a door opened for the establishment of the Yugoslavian way of socialism announcing that it will take distance from the USSR and that it will set up a model of economic self-management and political-administrative decentralization highlighting a federal principle The economic reforms began on 26 June 1950 when the introduction of workers' selfmanagement was announced.19 Economic control was delegated to the individual republics, with government departments in Belgrade becoming coordination councils for cooperation. With the new system, workers' councils controlled production and the vast majority of the profits, which were in turn distributed among the workers themselves (as opposed to the state or owners/stockholders). Industrial and infrastructure development programs were implemented as well, as the country finally began to develop a strong industrial sector. After the approval of the self-management law until 1956-57 the directors of the factories were designated by the state apparatus. To have an idea of this worked, the state as well controlled the prices and workers wages and could intervene in the financing of the factories curtailing its autonomy. As a product of the break with the USSR the country was losing its Stalinist characteristics such as the centralization of the political power which followed the Marxism-leninst like logic. In the drawing of the new Constitution of 1953 the central power was reduced to five reduced areas: Interior, National Defence, International Relations, Economy and Public Administration leaving the rest of the competences to the republics of the Federation (De la Guardia, 1997). The changes meant that the local Government was the beneficiary and not the republic themselves. The effective power, nonetheless, remained in the hands of the Party rebaptized in that year as League of Yugoslav Communists (SKJ). The Constitution of 1963 reflected the perceived need for recentralization: the parliamentary Federal Assembly was divided into one general chamber,18

Constitution of the Federative Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia (1946). Chapter VI. Article 44. Points 1, 4, 13 and 21. 19 In a self-management system the workers from the lower echelons controlled and mandated the decisions made by higher management. Workers councils, composed of as many as 50 individuals in large factories, represented the will of the worker. Further, since the state itself was intended to wither away, political leadership attempted to shift responsibilities to the workers commune or optina which was meant, in turn, to raise its own funds, sets its own budgets, and provide workers with necessary social services.

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the Federal Chamber, and four chambers given specific bureaucratic responsibilities. In an effort to end regional conflict and promote national representation of the Yugoslav people, the constitution directed that individual republics be represented only in the Chamber of Nationalities, a part of the Federal Chamber. The 1963 constitution also introduced the concept of rotation, which prohibited the holding of higher or lower level executive positions for more than two four-year terms. Other notable provisions extended human and civil rights and established constitutionally guaranteed court procedures (Curtis, 1992). These provisions had no precedent among the so-called Communist states. 1968 1980: Political and economical liberalization and progressive devolution In 1967, The Draft Thesis on Future Development and Reorganization of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia was published. The work suggested that the functional structures of the SKJ should adequate to the new social reality since an economic and social evolution had taken place in the last years after the implementation of self-management. The Congress of 1969 will be the key for the insertion of the SKJ into the self-management system. Following the thesis of 1967 it adopted a more democratic statutes regarding freedom of expressing opposed political ideas among the militants but also less centralizing policy of the State institutions. The Federal Assembly passed six amendments to the Constitution to endow the Council of nationalities of more competences and independence as it was understood that it represented the genuine interests of the republics. In this manner, each republic had the power to intervene in the decisions that affected them and, in the majority of the cases, could exert veto to those measurements that could be considered harmful for their interests (De la Guardia, 1997). That is, the competence of the Chamber of nationalities was extended to include all issues affecting the economic interests of the republics, making it in all but name a separate parliamentary body. These reforms also affected the Federal council, in 1970, a symmetric feature was introduced: the almost parity of competences for all the republics and autonomous provinces was decreed. 20 Nonetheless, the Chamber did not have sufficient influence on the formulation of federal policy but all federal legislation had to receive the approval of the Chamber. It was indeed suggested that Yugoslavia would be considered a Confederation rather than a Federation. A Confederation understood as federal agreements between independent states which goal to pursue some specific objectives (Barry and Foweraker, 2001) could not be applied in this case because the Chamber will take decisions as single chamber which will prevent any possibility of the institutionalization of the delegations elected by the republican and provincial assemblies and make impossible any misuse of veto from any delegates from the republic or province. With this panorama, a skism took place: the division between the Federal governments and the republics or unitarists and decentralizers often associated with nationalistic ideas. This has to be understood in its complexity that the struggle was not clear between two positions but20

This will allow the republics to establish relations with other states. Such was the case, for example, of Slovenia and Croatia which got closer to Austria and Germany.

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instead several: those to who sought to preserve hard-won rights of the republics while at the same time controlling the excesses of nationalism, and those who appear to have forged an alliance with the nationalists and were seeking to use the force of the nationalist wave to break down resistance to further devolution of power to the republics (Burg, 1977). We assist a process of nationalisms threatening not a mere centre but centre with a polycentric distribution of power in which the system of decision-making based on negotiations of multiple centers of power, or what the Jovan Djordjevi, Tito's great federalist advisor and constitution-maker, defined as Polyvalent Federalism, an original and innovative type of Federalism developed only in the Yugoslav society as an expression of the self-management system. 21 It has also been named Communal Federalism referring to a system in which leaders and groups in local communities share a greater relative influence over what occurs in society as a whole than leaders and groups occupying positions in provincial, republic or federal organs (Dunn, 1975) remarking the importance of communities to influence the decision-making. Neither of these authors address the flaws that may appear as the decision are taken within the ideological setting of the SKJ without giving chance to the confrontation of ideological positions not being compelled by the limitations imposed by the party. This will lead to the debates we are used to witness in liberal democracies. The single party system and the ideological control, along with the revival of historical background of the different nationalist traditions as source of identity22 can be a possible explanation of the tension that existed in the 70s. It has has been described by a foreign observer about those times that the psico-social atmosphere of the Yugoslav politics is close to a state of paranoia in which the federal government considered every issue as a manifestation of nationalism from the republics.23 Despite that the major moves towards decentralization already occurred in the 60s, as mentioned before 1968 can be picked as a crucial moment for the Federation. The dissemination of liberal ideals, especially in the Croatian and Slovenian elites, and the 344.000 unemployed people at the beginning of that year will create proper conditions for the republics21

Polyvalent Federalism was defined as by Djordjevi as a new kind of social federalism that derives from a multiethnic community but primarily from the superstructure of a society based on the social ownership of means of production and social management. For Djordjevi -what then was modern society- is in process of transition from political federative association, from territorially based community to functionally-based community, from a mechanistic constitutional model. In this development Yugoslav constitutional law and political theory during the last quarter of this century may play the role American constitutional law and political theory played during the last quarter of the eighteen century (Djordjevi, 1975). 22 According to Denitch, there two confronted vision of the state by Serbs and Croats (which were only two of the republics but whose political clash would be key for the dynamics of the Federation). While Serbs have a developed parliamentary tradition and a Jacobin conception of the state influenced by French ideals in the 19th century leading to centralizing integralist ideas (The Kingdom of Yugoslavia, dominated by Serbs is a clear example); the political history of Croatia in the 19th century was one drawnout parliamentary and legal battle for the historical rights of the Croats or, more specifically, the Croat state (Denitch, 1977). 23 I was reported that every current issue: economic, social, cultural and others was treated as an aspect of the national question in Yugoslavia. The order of things up to then was completely reversed. The national question ceased to appear or to be treated as a phenomological form with certain content. On the contrary, every economic, social, cultural and other aspect of life began to be presented as a form with national essence (Peri, 1974) in Burg, 1977.

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to put more pressure for political renewal in the sense of a greater political and administrative decentralization. But the idea is that the pressure for decentralization that was accepted by the Titoist direction masked that it was not intended to follow the liberalizing stream that originated the revolutions of 196824 in other European countries, neither in a democratic sense nor relaying the parties leadership and power structures. 1968 is when the process of federalization of the League of Communists began as the republican congresses were held. For first time, Republican parties decided about their political platform and orientation and chose their representatives in the federal bodies. This fact is important in understanding the series of events at the beginning of 1970s leading to the 1974 Constitution (Popovski, 1995). Administrative reforms in the late Sixties empowered the six republics (soon also the two autonomous provinces) with legislative power on the federal level. Thereafter for some authors- movement toward confederation and sovereignty for the republics was inevitable (Ramet, 1992). There were two crisis identified: in 1968 with the protests of Yugoslav students demanding social, and political reforms, more equality, more democracy and more real socialism25 in connection with the student movement in that year throughout Europe. The second took place in 1971, the so called Croatian spring when the League of communists of Croatia (SKH) demanded more economic autonomy and eventually put forward a claim for Croatian independence. It has been said that in spite of the decentralizing policies and the competences granted to the republics, the Croatian nationalists present in the party and in the state organs of decision kept pushing for an effective autonomy which was detrimental for the power of the federation. Their original political pressure for democratic reforms was rapidly converted in a pure nationalist sense. A process of decentralization without democracy was taking place to quote Veiga.26 An important point to think about is that in previous decades an important investment in education in all the Republics has been made, so the new generations had more academic credentials but also growing expectancies regarding the quality of life, acquisition of jobs and materialism. As the economic problems grew at the end of the 60s it also did the restiveness of the young population.27 The implementation of liberal reforms on one side created expectations in career advancement but at the same time there was a near-monopoly over executive and professional positions but by the cadres of the revolution which were often poorly qualified. Paradoxically, the fight for social egalitarianism in the conformation of the Yugoslav society after the revolution would bring about 25 years later the promotion of conflict between leading personnel and upwardly mobile groups with increasing education and qualifications.24 25

Yugoslavia supported the Czechoslovakian revolution which sponsored a socialism with human face. Examples are: tudensko gibanje, 1982; Praxis, 1968, 1971. 26 Veiga, Francisco. La trampa balcnica. Una crisis europea de fines del siglo XX. Ed. Grijalbo, Barcelona, 2002.27

This was not only the case of Slovenia and Croatia but in all the Republics. In June 1968, Belgrade University students staged a week-long strike focusing on the mentioned problems.

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The constitution of 1974 only partially reversed the extreme decentralization of the early 1970s.28 It added elaborate language protecting the self-management system from state interference and expanding representation of republics and provinces in all electoral and policy forums. The Constitution called the restructured Federal Assembly the highest expression of the self-management system (Curtis, 1992). Although, it is important to highlight that it was de jure a self-management federalism basing sovereignty in the principles of working class and nation. Thus, Yugoslavia was considered a Federation because it was a multinational state pursuing self-management based upon negotiation and agreement (Popovski, 1995). This Constitution added symmetrical features as the direct participation of the federal units in the decision making. The important decisions had to be based in interregional consensus. Although it looked like a fair solution these measures did bring several problems that will appear later.

On the other side, the increased bureaucracy made the rule of the Federation cumbersome. The result was a very problematic relation between the central authority and the regional and provincial powers. To have a better insight of the federative constitutionalism that emerged in 1974 to make everybody happy it encompassed the following constitutional instruments or documents: a) a unique constitution of Yugoslavia or a Federal Constitution; b) constitutions of the republic; c) constitutional laws (acts) of autonomous provinces; d) statues of municipalities (communes) and of towns; e) statutes of self-managing organizations of associated labour as well as those of other self-managing institutions.29 Many authors have pointed out the difficulties in the decision-making in such complex structure with so many layers and often opposed interests.

As we can see the attempts of decentralization in a non-democratic context with lack of political pluralism will lead the SJK to split its preeminence among the six communist parties in the republics and the two other from the autonomous provinces. Critically, Veiga, puts the nature of decentralization as stemming from the pressure exerted from the regional communist oligarchies (Veiga, 2002). He states that even if they argue from using in principle the defence of the self-management system what is found behind is a nationalistic sentiment. Selfmanagement could be used as a strong political argument or strategy to acquire more competences, nationalism will work the same way but the first can be tolerated from the central power, the second will have a more restrictive treatment. In any case, both will push in the same

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Edvard Kardelj wrote that its formula did not correspond neither to a federation nor a Confederation. Bennett defines it as a intricate series of check and balances designed to prevent any individual from acquiring as much power as Tito himself has held and to prevent any of Yugoslavias peoples from dominating the federation adding with 405 clauses it was the worlds longest constitution, and, probably on account of its absurd length, was virtually untranslatable and largely nonsensical. (Bennett, 1995). 29 Djordjevi, Jordan. Remarks on the Yugoslav Model of Federalism. Publius 5, No. 2 (Spring 1975)

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direction: more decentralization.30 As time passed the nationalist rhetoric replaced the economic arguments.31 In 1977, the chief ideological theoretician of Titoism, Edvard Kardelj, attempted to lay the ideological groundwork for a diversified post-Tito political system. In his The Directions of Development of the Political System of Self Management, he admitted that pluralism was an inevitable fact of Yugoslav political life, but he insisted that this pluralism had nothing in common with the pluralism of the bourgeois democracies of the West. In Yugoslavia, he said, conflicting interests could be accommodated within the scope of the SKJ (Curtis, 1992). The point that needs to be stressed is that any kind of political pluralism could not be thought out of the realms of the communist party, the ideological sphere embraced any kind of decentralization attempt. But the logic of liberalization in economic terms was hand on hand with the allegedly historic attempt of independence of Slovenia and Croatia. In fact, the first expressions of nationalism could be identified at the same time that economic and ideological conflicts faced the developed and less-developed republics after the liberal economic reforms were implemented in 1965 aiming to tackle the income disparities (See Annex: Table 1). Contrarily, the attempt to distribute wealth within the Federation failed. Instead of becoming narrower, the gap between poor and rich republics widened. In consequence, a major ideological confrontation was created as a dispute for the allocation of the scarce resources advanced. On one side, the conservatives viewed centralized allocation as the most appropriate means of achieving the redistribution and equalization of wealth to which the Party was committed and the liberals that saw that investment in the developed areas will be the most efficient way of increasing the development in all the regions. In this direction, the singularity of Yugoslavia is that there is a coincidence of division based on the federal structure of the state and those based on ethnicity and levels of development (Burg, 1977). Having most of the liberals clearly coming from Slovenia and Croatia and the conservatives from Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia; a door was open to the several factors to intertwine to make negotiations more problematic. According to Burg, of the divisions mentioned only the federal structure of the state and the federal commitment of the Party were susceptible to short term alteration and were appropriate on the basis of the evolving model of a society based on selfmanagement, that is, the relationship between the republics and between the republics and the federation. 1980-1992: Death of the leader, ethnonationalist momentum and disintegration

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Sekelj writes about this: local promoters asked for more autonomy in the decision in order to benefit of the success of their work or to hide their failures. This pressure was more intense as the economic system produced good per capita dividends: since 1950 personal income grew faster than global productivity. In whole Yugoslavia, between 1954 and 1965 the productivity grew 3,6%, the income per capita 5,9%; between 1966 and 1970, the percentages were 5 and 7,% respectively (Sekelj, 1993). 31 Steven L. Burg concerning the Serbian-Croatian confrontations puts is as the forces of nationalism on both sides of the issue exploited the freedom of action that came with liberalization (Burg, 1977).

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In the six years between the promulgation of the 1974 constitution and the death of Tito in 1980 the Federation was dominated by two overriding issues: economic crisis and fears about what would happen to the country both internally and externally, after Titos death. The Constitution of 1974 was designed to operate in two phases: during Titos life and after it. The idea was that the Constitution will work as an automatic mechanism at the image and likeness of the leader in his absence. This is what will be called bureaucratization of the charisma (Sekelj, 1993). From that moment a presidency was replaced by an eight person collective presidency (with each of the eight representing one of the eight units) wherein one of the eight was elected chairman on an annual rotation basis. This constitutional provision did not come into practice until 1980. The underlying intention was the development of a consociational structure of conflict resolution that could enable it to survive in the absence of the leader as Binns expressed. It is revealing, specially for those strongly committed with the idea that the figure of Tito, as a political leader, will be enough to keep a Federation together that we also have to count with a crucial fact that was occurring about that time which is the economic crunch: when the loans dried up and Yugoslavia had to begin repaying the national debt. The panorama was not very promising. Yugoslavias inflation and trading balance with the West had become so bad by the mid-1970s, partly under the impact of the OPEC price rises and subsequent Western recession, that it was forced to seek help from the IMF and western banks. The apparent prosper times that the Federation enjoyed previously could not be maintained and by the 1980s the crisis was all over. Instead o limiting domestic consumption and cutting living standards as the IMF urged. Yugoslavia borrowed heavily from private Western Banks. According to an observer, the countrys foreign debt rocketed from under $3,5 billion in 1973 to more than $20.5 billion in 1981 (Bennett, 1995). In 1982 as the federal government the country worked out the full indebtedness they came across that only 35 per cent was raised at the federal level and 65 per cent by the republics and the two autonomous provinces.32 Discontent grew exponentially in the republics due to the impact of the internal economic crisis and the poorer areas that had benefited less from central redistribution as the system was becoming more confederal hitting them harder as the richer areas became less willing to bale them out. Indeed, one of the features of the post-Tito situation has been the increasing stalemate at federal level in the face of economic crisis but also the national tensions. This period saw the re-appearance of serious discord among the nationalities (the AlbanoSerbian conflict, and antagonism among the South Slavs). The nationalist clash was inflamed by the destabilization of the power structure set up in the context of socialist self-management: decentralization at republic and commune level, and consensus between the leadership and the population (Canapa, 1991). Binns, argues notes that the absence of an authoritative figure (resulting from the rotational leadership system) capable of knocking heads together at crucial times, as Tito was, and the fact that since 1980 the in camera conflict- resolution procedures32

According to Bennett, uncontrolled borrowing sprees at the republican and provincial level were often unknown to the federal authorities and had become endemic.

13

which he preferred turned into acrimonious public wrangles (Binns,1995). Here it is particularly interesting to know that a shift in the decision-making process, making it more transparent, which can be considered one of the ideal characteristics of liberal democracies, did not seem to work as expected possibly given the lack of the democratic tradition of deliberation and problem solving out of the realms of the Party. It was certainly convenient for some factions within the party in their seek for more autonomous to fan these nationalist feelings if proper economic conditions would be found: the decline of living standards between 1980 and 1986 was at average of 6% on a year basis, with ever more clear differences among the territories of the Federation created the right situation. For example, in 1986 the average wage in Kosovo was 26% inferior to the Federal average and in Slovenia, 35% superior to that average.33

The party's influence declined and the party moved to a structure that gave more power to party branches in Yugoslavia's constituent republics. The XII Congress of the SKJ was marked in particular by divisive tendencies. The axes of the discussion spin around federalism-centralism and economic, liberalization and control, strict titoism and political renovation. In a retrospective comparison Pavlowitch argued that at the end of the sixties the Party had to face a multiform nationalism which they thought they had eliminated. On the contrary, in the 80s it was realized that the national question was more serious than the thirties when it was manifested in a constitutional and political manner: in the 80s it had acquired an economic, political and cultural dimension. Furthermore, it has been noted that the party instead of acting following the guidelines of the political elite in Belgrade started acting autonomously at a republic level. A key character in the scene was the emergence of the figure of Slobodan Milosevic who was able to climb with the Party to the state presidency starting a recentralizing process. Serbian nationalism became then a first-order threat both real and perceived to the non-Serbian ethnic groups and their federalist enclaves. Nationalism was then widespread along the republics and was used as an instrument by the self-interested politicians as Sabrina Ramet argues. She sees rather like an opportunist move than as an enduring, historical set of forces that would inevitably and inexorably tear these countries apart. She considers as well the federalist structure as playing a pivotal role. Putting together opportunism and the federal structure she writes that the republic governments, together with the party organizations, are seeing as providing institutional bases of power that opportunistic politicians seek to control. To the extent that these republics were dominated by one ethnic nationality or another, they induced ambitious politicians to appeal to nationalists sentiments in their attempts to consolidate power. Dorffs approach of the federal structure as a cause of the fragmentation of societies in Eastern Europe is very suitable here given that decentralization through the gradually greater transfer of competences to the republics, did not contribute to regenerate the system but with time it aggravate crisis. One may33

Data from: Martn de la Guardia, Ricardo M. La Europa balcnica : Yugoslavia, desde la segunda guerra mundial hasta nuestros das. Sntesis, Madrid, 1997.

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think that decentralization legitimized the practices of the regional elites which, when they could not take more advantage of the federative structure, casted nationalist propaganda to settle their absolute power without the federal control. As nationalism was used for populist politicians and by the mid-eighties was already settled among the republics the new panorama will have different clashing fronts. The territory of the Federation excepting Serbia and Slovenia is ethnically mixed and there is not total correspondence of an ethnic group within the boundaries of the republics. Slovenia is the only country that did not have a minority in the other republics but, for example, there were substantial Serbian minorities in the other regions. This will cause a situation in which when a nationalist and reformist movement gained impulse in a certain republic automatically the minority, in most of the cases attached to the mother republic, will feel threatened putting the pressure in the other regions or federative units where this minority was historically linked. This will have the effect on the other unit (where the minority feel attached) on one side of resisting the demands of the other region and also to maintain the control of the minority that constitutes its own ethnic group. In consequence, a double legitimization of nationalism can be developed to use as a model to understand the complexity of the process of disintegration and that will enforced mutually: 1) The nationalism that can be used for seeking for more autonomy, 2) The nationalism used to protect their own brothers living in other republic. In a retrospective glance we could locate the first in the activities in Slovenia and Croatia and the second in Serbia at the late eighties fanned specially as Slobodan Miloevi seize control of the Party. The collective presidency became the target of Miloevis political power play. By reducing the Montengro, Vojvodina and Kosovo to satellites of Serbia, he effectively controlled four of the eight votes of the collective presidency and was able to produce deadlocks in the presidency at will (Ramet, 1992). A door was then open then for the dissolution but also for the worst. In addition, the logic of crossed disputes between the republics were aggravated -and used as a reason for demanding more or total autonomy- by the serbianisation of the JNA regarded as one of the symbols of unity of the federation. In 1991 the officer corps of the JNA were drawn predominantly from among Serbs and Montenegrians. The estimations suggested that 54.25% of the officer corps were Serbs. Moreover, until January 1991, when the JNA officially banned party political activities in its ranks, about 96% of the officer corps were members of the League of Communists.34 Finally, the immediate events that precipitated the complete dissolution of Yugoslavia had their origins in 1987-1989 when the Serbian Party by then under the leadership of the avowedly nationalist Miloevi- again set itself on a course of alliance-building and hoped to isolate Slovenia and Croatia. This show the lack of a key component mentioned by Elazar in federalism

34

Kipp, Jacob W. and Timothy L. Sanz. The Yugoslav People's Army: Between Civil War and Disintegration. Military Review 71 (December 1991): 36-45.

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as a process as exposed at the beginning: the willingness of accommodation.35 Logically, the effects of nationalism eroded the willingness of accommodation. Is yet to be investigated by historians if whether a substantial idea of yugoslavness really existed prior to the establishment of federation or if it was developed as the federative experiment evolved and was part of the justification of the federalist structure of the party-state and also if it the sentiment was shared by the constituents units. The reviewed literature seems to dissuade us from this statement. Final remarks: What is key here is to understand that the decentralization was not performed in a democratic setting but rather in a single party system. All the efforts of achieving more decentralization were channelized by the SKJ. The pressure from the elites of the republics for more decentralization was within the realm of the SKJ, aiming for more power but not for democratization. The ideological ground of the Party was both titoism, referring to a particular way of socialism based on a charismatic leader, and yugoslavness, or the idea of historical brotherhood between south slav nations. The death of Tito occurred in a period of crisis that affected the party which was already disintegrating itself as it started to act more autonomously at the republics level. The absence of Tito and the economic bankruptcy will create more aspirations for the republics to define their own destiny regardless of the central power. At the beginning at the eighties takes place a process of sharpening of an ongoing political and economic crisis. The crisis created ideal conditions for the fanning of nationalism in the republics claiming more autonomy even though the transfer of competences had been regular during the life of the Federation. Whether the nationalism was used as an historical right of recognition or as political opportunism for an elite, either one way or the other, it could be noted a lack of willingness for negotiation and compromise from the constituent republics raised in the period studied but having its first manifestations at the end of the sixties, going through the seventies and finding ideal political conditions upon the death of Tito. That is, it had determinant effects on the system regardless its ethical nature or veracity. I would like to have the chance to talk about irrationality as a mean appealed by the republic elites to fan nationalism, an irrational ethnic-nationalism36, in order to pursue their goals. In this sense it can also be stated that charisma as Titoism itself was a doctrine permeated by the charismatic personality of the leader- was a major factor that served to keep the Federation together. So what can we consider as non-rational factors affected the dissolution of the35

Lipjhart leaves open the willingness of accommodation but expressing it with a positive undertone: the leaders of the rival subcultures may engage in competitive behaviour and thus aggravate mutual tensions and political instability, but they may also make deliberate efforts to counteract the immobilizing and unstabilizing effects of cultural fragmentation in Dunn, 1975. 36 In this concern, Daniel J. Elazar affirmed in an article about the outbreak of the Balkan wars that the main problem in Yugoslavia is that historic ethnic passions easily overwhelm rational efforts at resolution of the crisis and things get out of hand, as they have in the last few weeks (Elazar, 1991).

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federation and not only from one side but passions seemed to be very present in the political culture of the region. This could make us think that a strong ethnic sense of ethnonational belonging still existed and were revived despite in the establishment of the federation and in its evolution, despite the ruling elites navely hoped that federalism will be an answer to all national tensions and that the national question would be solved because class relations had been solved (Popovski, 1995). In this line, authors seem to take different positions regarding the spirit of Yugoslavness and its ethos. While some authors like Elazar consider it an artificial creation 37 and highlights its authoritarian character as a mean to secure its unity, others not only express the existence of a spirit of comity among the South Slavic people but also identify the existence of core values that have been expressed in the successive Yugoslav constitutions (1946, 1953, 1963, 1974): decentralization, citizen and worker control, voluntary regulation of political, social and economic relationships, an independent role for republics and communes, and the principle of market regulation of economic processes.38 Adding also that during the period studied it until the late eighties the ethnically balanced distribution of power at the federal levels has been take in particular care. In any case, decentralization of a federal constitutional order is not a substitute for genuine political pluralism. Finally, we witnessed during this period a process towards decentralization having a progressive devolution of competences from the center to the periphery. But this occurs within a party-state represented by the SKJ and Tito. When the power of the center began to weaken the political system shifted not toward a decentralized politics of accommodation as there was not a pre-existence tradition of ethnic democracy39 expressed out of ethnonationalistic termsbut to a politics of competition between the center and the periphery and among the units of the periphery. References: Weber, Maximillan. Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Chapter: The Nature of Charismatic Authority and its Routinization translated by A. R. Anderson and Talcott Parsons, 1947. Ramet, Sabrina P.. Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia, 1962- 1991. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1992.

37

After World War II it took Tito to forge a new unity on a federal basis, but the will to remain united derived from the agreement of all concerned that they wanted to remain independent of the Soviet Union at a time when the Soviet threat was a powerful one (Elazar, 1991). 38 Dunn, W. N. Communal Federalism: Dialectics of Decentralization in Socialist Yugoslavia. Publius: The Journal of Federalism (Spring 1975). 39 I refer here to the liberties that are associated today in the way we understand liberal democracy. Radically opposed with the Marxist way to understand cultural particularities. In Yugoslavia as other socialist countries it was understood that definition of the individuals as attached to a social class will eventually absorb the use of culture or religion as a source of identity, this proved to be wrong with time.

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Elazar, Daniel J. and Merkaz ha-Yerushalmi. Federal systems of the world : a handbook of federal, confederal and autonomy arrangements / compiled and edited by Daniel J. Elazar and the staff of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Longman, London, 1991. Elazar, Daniel J. Exploring Federalism. University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 352,1987. Denitch, Bogdan. Ethnic Nationalism: the tragic death of Yugoslavia. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis,1994. Veiga, Francisco. La trampa balcnica. Una crisis europea de fines del siglo XX. Ed. Grijalbo, Barcelona, 2002. Martn de la Guardia, Ricardo M. La Europa balcnica : Yugoslavia, desde la segunda guerra mundial hasta nuestros das. Sntesis, Madrid, 1997. Bennett, Christopher. Yugoslavia's Bloody Collapse - Causes, Course and Consequences. New York, NY University Press, 1995. Barry Clarke, Paul and Foweraker, Joe (editors). Encyclopedia of Democratic thought. Routledge, London and New York, 2001. Popovski, Vesna. Yugoslavia: Politics, Federation, Nation, in Federalism: The Multiethnic Challenge. G. Smith ( ed.). London: Longman, pp. 180-207, 1995. Vujai, Ilija. The challenge of ethnic federalism: experiences and lesson from the former Yugoslavia in Federalism and Decentralization: Perspectives for the Transformation Process in Eastern and Central Europe by Rose, Jurgen and Ch. Traut, Johannes (Eds), 2001. agar, Mitja. The Collapse of the Yugoslav Federation and the Viability of Asymmetrical Federalism. The Changing Faces of Federalism: Institutional Reconfiguration in Europe from East to West. Sergio Ortino, Mitja agar and Vojtech Mastny (eds). Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 107-133, 2005. Bringa, Tone (2004) The peaceful death of Tito and the violent end of Yugoslavia. Death of the father: An anthropology of the end in political authority. John Borneman (ed.): New York: Berghahn Books pp. 63-103 Binns, Cristopher. Federalism, nationalism and socialism in Yugoslavia. In Federalism and Socialism. Forsyth, Murray. New York, St Martin's Press: 115-147, 1989. Shoup, Paul. Communism and the Yugoslav national question. New York: Columbia University Press, 308, 1968. Curtis, Glenn (Ed.). Yugoslavia: a country study. Area handbook series, 550-99. Washington, DC: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, Washington DC, 1992. Papers: Dunn, W. N. Communal Federalism: Dialectics of Decentralization in Socialist Yugoslavia. Publius: The Journal of Federalism (Spring 1975). Dorff, Robert H. Federalism in Eastern Europe: Part of the problem or part of the solution? Publius: The Journal of Federalism 24, 99-114, (Spring 1994). Elazar, Daniel J. Federalism and Consociational regimes. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 15 (Spring 1985). Djordjevi, Jordan. Remarks on the Yugoslav Model of Federalism. Publius 5, No. 2 (Spring 1975).

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Burg, Steven L. Ethnic conflict and the Federalization of Socialist Yugoslavia: The Serbo-Croat conflict. Publius: The Journal of Federalism (Fall 1977). Kipp, Jacob W. and Timothy L. Sanz. The Yugoslav People's Army: Between Civil War and Disintegration. Military Review 71, 36-45, (December 1991): Denitch, Bogdan. The evolution of Yugoslav Federalism. Publius: The Journal of Federalism (Fall 1977). W. Harriet Critchley. The failure of Federalism in Yugoslavia. International journal, 1993(48):3, Sum , p. 434-447. Canapa Marie-Paule. Crise des nationalits et crise du systme politique en Yougoslavie. In: Revue dtudes comparatives Est-Ouest. Volume 22, N3. pp. 81-107, 1991. De Schutter, Helder. Federalism as Fairness. Journal of Political Philosophy, 2010. Others: Constitution of de Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, 1946. Constitution of de Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, 1953. Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, 1963. Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, 1974.

AnnexMap 1: Republics, Autonomous regions boundaries and ethnic groups in the SFRY

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Source: A Map Folio, CIA, 1992. Map 2: Ethnic Structure of the SFRY (Absolute ethnic majorities, over 50%)

Source: Population census of the SFRY (March 31, 1981). Table 1: Social Product per capita in the Republics of Yugoslavia (%) Average anual growth 1947 1965 1975 1978 (1947 1978)

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Yugoslavia Slovenia Croatia Vojvodina Serbia Macedonia Bosnia Montenegro Kosovo Developed areas

100 162 105 100 101 70 86 94 49 110

100 177 120 122 95 70 69 71 39 118

100 201 124 121 92 69 69 70 33 121

100 205 127 115 98 68 64 71 29 124

5 5,8 5,7 5,5 4,9 4,9 4,1 4,1 3,2 5,5

Less developed areas 77 64 62 59 4,1 Source: Ekonomska politik, n 1.370 (July 3 of 1978), (in Ramet, Sabrina P.: Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia, 1962-1991, Bloomington, Indiana Univeristy Press, 1992).

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