Collective self-reliance: A portrait of a Yugoslav development strategy

Abstract

Miscellanea GeoGraphica-RegIONal StuDIeS ON DeVelOpmeNt Development studies became an important interdisciplinary research field after World War II. The Cold War and the political division between the West and the Eastern Bloc created tensions between the main geopolitical powers of the time. This had important implications on development models proposed on both sides of the Iron Curtain as well as in the "rest of the world". The aim of this paper is to refresh and present a development strategy that was created by Yugoslav researchers. This strategy was analysed on the basis of original contemporary Yugoslav works including books, articles in scientific journals, papers presented at conferences and working meetings, brochures and booklets of institutes and state bodies involved in development research. Although there are a few publications on the idea of self-reliance itself, the materials cited here are not easily accessible to the wider scientific community due to their age and the general lack of available translations. This paper gives a "photographic" insight into the body of Yugoslav theory that was still being developed in 1989, the year of publication of the most recent work analysed and only two years before the breakup of Yugoslavia and onset of the war which put an end to development research in the collapsing country. The collective self-reliance strategy was an original concept for speeding up development in underdeveloped regions. It was particularly aimed at members of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), of which Yugoslavia was one of the founders. Revisiting this concept today on the basis of these original Yugoslav works is an attempt to contribute to the ongoing discussion on methods of confronting problems of underdevelopment in a way that is not frequently encountered these days. The paper aims to contribute to the body of the history of European development thought in the 20th century. The scientific approach of Yugoslav scientists working on the collective self-reliance strategy can be classified as either marxist or structuralist, with a strong notion of dependency theory. Important works on the strategy were published by Ljubiša Adamović (1979), Rikard Štajner (1989), Janez Stanovnik (1979), Dunja Pastizzi-Ferenčić (1980) and Srđan Kerim (1983, 1985). Model framework The new geopolitical constellation and decolonisation of African and Asian countries that were plagued by economic and institutional deficiencies resulted in the need to work out ways of