Non-alignment and socialism: The relationship between foreign policy and domestic reform in socialist Yugoslavia

This dissertation examines the relationship between foreign policy and domestic reform in the former Yugoslavia from 1950 to 1988. More specifically, the relationship between the Yugoslav foreign policy of non-alignment and Yugoslav socialism, known as socialist self-management, has been investigated. Various scholars subscribe to the theory that a direct, or bivariate, relationship existed between these two policy forms.; The findings do not support the contention that a direct relationship existed between these two policy forms in Yugoslav conditions. The author has identified a decline in Yugoslavia's overall commitment to "non-aligned" foreign policy in the 1980s, most notably, the curtailment of official visits by Yugoslav government leaders to other non-aligned countries. At the same time, a retrenchment on the part of leadership from self-management reforms in the 1970s and 80s was evident: the recentralization of political power increased instances of official repression of dissent; and, the recentralization of economic power. The author has also examined the impact upon this relationship of certain "rival" explanations advanced by other observers: developments in the international economic and energy environments in the 1970s and 80s; and, the demise of President Tito in 1980 for example.; It is the central argument of this dissertation that a spurious relationship existed between non-alignment and self-management in the Yugoslav context; that is, it is a more plausible approach to this problem of the nature of the relationship between these two policy spheres to consider both as dependent variables in a multivariate relationship wherein the causal factors reflect certain domestic and external trends such as those mentioned above. Multiple regression analysis with lagged exogenous variables has been employed to examine the relationship between Yugoslav non-aligned foreign policy and socialist self-management. Such a research design allows for correlational analysis of the data when there are several exogenous variables present in the model, which not only enables the author to determine the (statistical) relationship between the two policy forms, but to assess the impact of these alternative explanations as well, hence, testing the argument of a spurious relationship between non-alignment and self-managed socialism in the country. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...