Abstract

Privatizing politics in Serbia

The article comments on the privatizing politics in Yugoslavia. Prime Minister Marshal Tito's Yugoslavia established three categories of economic property: private, state and social. The novelty was the third, "social" sector, given over to self-management." Here, managers were elected by the employees, whose interests had to be taken into account, as did market factors, to a greater extent than in other socialist countries. This social sector still includes major industries, such as the Smederevo steel works, the electrical industry in Nis and the most politically sensitive area: communications, including the postal service and television. One fatal flaw of self-management socialism was that, without democratic control of major investment decisions, it tended to foster localized corporate self-interest. Indeed, the centrifugal nature of the self-management system contributed to the eventual catastrophic disintegration of Yugoslavia.