$Unique_ID{COW04139} $Pretitle{299} $Title{Yugoslavia Chapter 4A. Government and Politics} $Subtitle{} $Author{Stephan L. Burg} $Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army} $Subject{party political federal chamber leadership government yugoslavia central economic members} $Date{1982} $Log{Tito*0413901.scf President Tito in his Office*0413902.scf } Country: Yugoslavia Book: Yugoslavia, A Country Study Author: Stephan L. Burg Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army Date: 1982 Chapter 4A. Government and Politics [See Tito: Josip Broz Tito-May 1892 to May 1980] The structure of government and the character of politics in contemporary Yugoslavia have been shaped in large part by conflicts arising out of the coincidence of ethnic and religious divisions in the population with differences in the level of economic development of the regions, and by the simultaneous commitment of the communist political leadership to maintaining national unity and constructing the "self-managed" social order called for by the official ideology. Each of these factors is reflected in both the formal, constitutional system of government and the actual process of political decisionmaking. Nationality conflict and interregional economic conflicts have driven Yugoslav political development and, especially, the development of formal institutions and organizations, in the direction of decentralization. The dual commitments of the party, however, have led it to play a changing role in Yugoslav politics. At times it has pursued policies that reinforced the centrifugal impetus of nationality and regional conflict, and at these times the society has been plunged into conflict and even crisis. But at other times the party has been a strong, integrative force; and when it has, Yugoslav government and politics have been stable. For most of the 1970s the integrative power of the party was largely a product of the personal authority and activity of President Josip Broz Tito and the cohesiveness of the older generation of political leaders he gathered around him in the highest organs of the state and party. The deaths of Edvard Kardelj in February 1979 and Tito in May 1980, however, marked the beginning of a period during which that generation of leaders will be disappearing from the scene. The generation coming to power in the early 1980s lacked the long, common experience of underground revolutionary activity, wartime resistance and revolution, and resistance to Soviet domination that unified these older leaders. The continuing stability of the system in the post-Tito period, therefore, will depend on the ability of the new leaders to maintain political unity despite the nationality differences, regional economic conflicts, and personal political ambitions that divide them. The Development of the Contemporary Political Order Constitutions play several roles in Yugoslav politics. They are intended by the leadership to provide normative guidelines for the ongoing development of the political order. As one parliamentary functionary involved in the drafting of the most recent reform put it during an interview conducted in December 1980, constitutions in Yugoslavia "reflect our hopes for the future." At the same time, however, this functionary pointed out that "we make a constitution for real life, that is why it is not very general or abstract, [why it is] more concrete and more detailed." Constitutions and constitutional reforms in Yugoslavia thus also codify practices that have emerged in the period since the previous reform and are used by the leadership to bring old organizational and institutional formulas no longer appropriate to these practices into line with them. In addition to these practical roles, constitutions in Yugoslavia also serve important symbolic functions. Constitutional reform has provided the communist political leadership with an important mechanism for responding to the pressures inherent in a multinational society. Since the establishment of the state in 1918, the structure of government, the procedural provisions for decisionmaking, and even the delineation and status of the territorial units of government themselves have been subjects of political conflict and have complicated the drafting of constitutions. The communist political leadership has manipulated one or more of these elements in the successive constitutions it has prepared since coming to power in an effort to mitigate inter-nationality conflict by fulfilling as many of the national (see Glossary) aspirations of each group as is compatible with survival of Yugoslavia as a unified state and maintenance of control over the state by the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY). The constitutional reforms adopted since 1966 have granted progressively greater autonomous power and authority to the republics and provinces and expanded their role in the federal decisionmaking process. They have also incorporated important concessions to the distinct ethnic identities of the population in each region, including the granting of a full range of linguistic and cultural rights. (As used herein, region means the six republics and the two autonomous provinces; see fig. 1.) Moreover the formal political order in each region is defined by a separate republic or provincial constitution that emphasizes the distinct national identity of the region and the attributes of full statehood enjoyed by it. The symbolic importance of constitutions - both federal and regional - in Yugoslav politics has also made them the continuing focus of political struggle. At each stage, constitutional reform has reflected the political balance in the party leadership between center and region; between supporters of more authoritarian and more liberal visions of society; and between supporters of more radical, ideologically motivated change and pragmatists. Thus while the 1946 constitution reflected the wholesale adoption of Stalinist formulas for the organization of the state, the Fundamental Law - in effect, a new constitution - adopted in 1953 reflected the establishment of a more liberal, anti-Stalinist leadership in the party. Following soon after the momentous Sixth Party Congress in 1952, at which that leadership - largely under the inspiration of Milovan Djilas - officially renounced direct party control over society in favor of a more distinct separation between the party as an organization and the government and significantly decentralized the party itself, the 1953 constitutional reform increased the power and authority of the federal and local governments and introduced partial guarantees of individual civil liberties. The mid-1950s was a period of partial recentralization in the party. The reforms of 1952-53 had introduced substantial confusion among the rank-and-file members and resulted in a significant weakening of the organizational coherence of the party and its influence over society. Beginning in mid-1953, therefore, Tito and other members of the leadership began to have second thoughts about the pace of reform. They initiated a series of measures designed to restore party discipline and affirm the continuing political power and authority of the party, including the January 1954 condemnation of Djilas for deviationism. This recentralization of power did not, however, deter the leadership from continuing to construct a more liberal political order through constitutional reform. The drafting of an entirely new constitution began in the late 1950s and was completed in 1962. Formally promulgated in 1963, the new constitution introduced important changes in the organization and operation of the political system. The Federal Assembly, or parliament, was completely reorganized. Created in 1946 as a bicameral body with a Federal Chamber and a Chamber of Nationalities modeled on the Soviet Union's Supreme Soviet, the Federal Assembly was reorganized in 1953. The Chamber of Nationalities became a component part of the Federal Chamber; its members were to participate in the Federal Chamber on an equal basis, but they also retained the authority to convene separately to discuss and, if necessary, veto any legislation affecting the nations (see Glossary) and nationalities of Yugoslavia. In its place as the second house of parliament, the 1953 reform created a Chamber of Producers, composed of direct representatives of the working class employed in the various sectors of the economy, introducing an element of corporatism into the system of political representation. The 1963 constitution applied this corporatist-like principle of representation far more comprehensively to the federal parliament. It divided the Federal Assembly into five chambers: a Federal Chamber, having general competence; an Economic Chamber, which was the former Chamber of Producers under a new name; an Education-Cultural Chamber and a Social-Health Chamber, each composed of representatives of workers in their respective sectors; and an Organizational-Political Chamber, composed of representatives of workers in administrative positions in the economy and society including, of course, political workers. The Chamber of Nationalities was retained as a component part of the Federal Chamber. The structure of the Assembly reflected the belief of those who drafted the constitution that Yugoslavia had overcome the divisions of nationality and was on the road to establishing a truly socialist order determined by the common class interests of workers. Inherent in this structure was the recognition that workers who were engaged in the same economic activity in each region might share particular interests that differed from those of workers engaged in another activity. But those who drafted the constitution were confident that these could be mediated by the Federal Chamber, which shared the decisionmaking authority of each of the specialized chambers in an arrangement that made the Assembly an effectively bicameral parliament. The 1963 constitution also altered the status and organization of the Federal Executive Council (the executive agency of the government). The president of the republic (Tito) was no longer also president of the council. Instead, the president of the republic nominated a candidate for president of the council who in turn nominated the other members of the council. The council as a whole was then elected by the Federal Chamber of the Assembly. These changes broke the direct political link between the party and the government and established the council as a classic parliamentary government. At this time the council and the Assembly began to take a far more active role in the preparation and debate of federal policies. Although the LCY continued to determine the agenda of government activity and the broad outlines of policy, the constitutional reform of 1963 created institutional channels of access for a broad range of self-managing (see Glossary) interests to participate in and influence the formulation of federal policies. The 1963 constitution was the product of a confident and, by and large, united leadership. Its preparation was overseen by members of the then-dominant liberal coalition in the party leadership, including Kardelj, the party's chief theoretician, and Vladimir Bakaric, the Croatian party chief. It was written with the assistance of liberal legal scholars and political scientists such as Jovan Djordjevic, the Western-trained Serbian legal scholar who headed the most important of the working groups that actually drafted the constitution. The liberal proclivities of its authors were clearly evident in the extensive human and civil rights provisions and the unprecedented, for communist systems, introduction of a system of constitutional courts to protect those rights. There were, however, those among the leadership who opposed the liberalization of the political system advanced by this coalition. The most prominent opponent of liberalization was then party secretary Aleksandar Rankovic. As secretary for organizational affairs and de facto head of the secret police, Rankovic was perfectly placed to ensure the preservation of an informal, centralized system of command and influence inside the party itself, despite the formal decentralization that had taken place since 1953, and to extend that system into other, ostensibly self-managing, nonparty organizations. Nevertheless he did not actively oppose the constitutional reforms advocated by the liberals, probably because of a belief that the formal institutions of the state were not as important for the determination of policy as the informal organizational network he commanded. His only intervention in the drafting process came in the final stages when he secured the creation of an office of vice president of the republic, which he could then occupy, thereby giving formal sanction to his informal status as heir apparent to Tito. Debate over the economic reforms of the early 1960s and over a major economic reform of 1965 revealed clearly the deep political divisions between the liberal majority in the party leadership, led by Kardelj and Bakaric, and the conservative "opposition" led by Rankovic. The debate over establishing a modified market economy revealed the mutually reinforcing character of conflicts based on regional economic interests, ideological differences, and ultimately nationality. The 1965 decision to establish a modified market economy linked the conflict between regional economic interests to the ideological conflict between "conservatives," who viewed centralized allocation as the most appropriate means of achieving redistribution and equalization of wealth to which the party was committed, and "liberals," who acknowledged that the operation of a market system would at first encourage greater investment in the already-developed regions but argued that this would lead later to investment in, and the development of, the underdeveloped regions. This conflict, in turn, was linked to a broader conflict between two visions of the role of the party in society. Those in favor of centralized allocation tended also to favor direct party control, characteristic of the pre-1952 period, while those in favor of reliance on the market tended to favor the less coercive vision of the party embodied in the decisions of the Sixth Party Congress. Not surprisingly, the leaders of the lesser developed regions mostly were numbered among the "conservatives," while the "liberals" came primarily from the more developed regions. The fact that the republics and provinces are generally viewed as "national homelands" and that their populations historically have been mutually antagonistic only made the apparent conflict between the commitments to redistribution and economic reform even more difficult to resolve. The central leadership was in fact divided between the so-called liberal and conservative elements for most of the 1950s and early 1960s. During this time Tito played a central role in determining party policy. Although he supported measures aimed at decentralization of the economy and reduction of the state's role in the self-managing economy, he continued to support the more authoritative and centralistic vision of the party held by the leaders who opposed those reforms. With this support, the liberal majority in the leadership was powerful enough to win the adoption of specific reform measures, including the 1963 constitution and the 1965 establishment of a "socialist market economy." But the liberals could not effectively implement those measures or turn real power over to the institutions of the state as long as their opponents retained control over party personnel policies and the instruments of coercion and continued to enjoy Tito's support. Indeed, until the conservative opposition was defeated, the party leadership continued to decide the most important issues-meaning the potentially most explosive ones-behind closed doors and to impose the solutions they devised on the formal decisionmaking bodies of the state. By 1966 the conflict between the liberal majority and the conservative opposition had assumed the dimensions of what Tito himself called "a struggle for power" within the LCY. The liberals defeated Rankovic and his supporters only when a set of fortuitous circumstances allowed them to collect evidence of widespread abuses by the secret police under Rankovic's control. These included wiretapping and surveillance of members of the leadership, including Tito himself, which had suppressed open discussion and planted mistrust in the party heirarchy. The impact of these revelations was enormous. Tito remarked to the Central Committee assembled to oust Rankovic and his supporters in July 1966 that he was reminded "a little of what it was like at one time under Stalin." The combined impact of the economic reforms and the sharp curtailment of secret police activity that followed the ouster of Rankovic transformed political life in Yugoslavia. The autonomous decisionmaking power of self- managing enterprises were expanded, and they, as well as all other organizations and institutions, enjoyed greater latitude for activity free from direct control from the center or police surveillance. This permitted the rapid emergence of social forces that heretofore had been repressed (see Peoples of Yugoslavia, ch. 2). Changes in the internal organization and operation of the LCY itself increased the political significance of self- management enterprises. As organizational secretary of the party, Rankovic had controlled from Belgrade appointments of cadres to middle and lower level positions in the regional party apparatuses. After his ouster the central leadership, composed in large part of individuals whose political bases lay in the regions, transferred much of this power-as well as authority over the regional security police organizations-to the regional party organizations. The power of the regional leaderships vis-a-vis the center was significantly enhanced. At the same time, however, the liberal coalition, now squarely in control at the center, adopted a system for the election by secret ballot of the members of local party organizations. These local party organizations in turn rapidly assumed increased powers. They began to nominate candidates for positions to which individuals had previously been appointed, and a rapid democratization of inner-party life ensued. As a result party leaders at all levels increasingly became subject to pressures from the members who elected them. The effects of these organizational and procedural modifications were reinforced by changes in party membership. New members were being enrolled from among the ranks of workers and managers with experience in self- management. Older members with more conservative orientations were being expelled or were resigning. Democratization of party elections, therefore, made possible the election of lower and mid-level party functionaries who had little if any prior experience in party work. These new functionaries and the new general membership were unwilling to accept restraints on free discussion within the party that were absent outside of it. Indeed, the LCY decisionmaking process quickly became characterized by open debate and disagreement-even within the central and regional leaderships. [See President Tito in his Office: President Tito in his Office. Courtesy Embassy of Yugoslavia, Washington] Democratization of party life was paralleled by democratization of political life in general. Prior to 1966 the party had usurped much of the authority and responsibility of parliamentary bodies and other social institutions. Party functionaries no longer were permitted to hold positions in the republic or federal administrations at the same time, and the professional staffs of these bodies no longer were permitted to perform party functions. These were assumed by the specialized services of the central party organs. Paradoxically, this resulted in an increase in the number of cadres working in the central party apparatus at a time when the independent power and authority of the central party was on the decline. The withdrawal of direct party supervision over the operation of state institutions permitted these institutions increasing autonomy. Already rooted in local territorial and functional constituencies, the federal and republican parliaments quickly became arenas for the expression of conflicting local interest. Rather than providing an institutional "transmission belt" for the implementation of party policies, the parliamentary system rapidly was transformed into a channel for the expression of local and popular demands on the government and the party. The post-Rankovic period was characterized by the general organizational expansion of society. The provisions of the 1963 constitution guaranteeing individual liberties gained new life. Small groups of citizens undertook organized social and economic activities free from close party or police supervision. The communications media expanded dramatically with the establishment or expansion of regional newspapers and periodicals and radio and television stations, especially in the languages of the national minorities. All these institutions and organizations-as well as self- managing economic enterprises-enjoyed greater autonomy from direct police and party supervision than ever before. With this autonomy came greater freedom of expression, and the public media soon became the site of political debates even more wide-ranging and unrestricted than those taking place at the same time in the party. Having renounced simple repression as a tool for the regulation of political conflict and having permitted the rise of relatively autonomous social forces, the communist leaders now faced the task of reconciling conflicting social forces not fully under their control. This was made more difficult by the fact that all but the very highest party leaders, such as Tito, Kardelj, and Bakaric, were becoming increasingly dependent on the support of the broader party membership in their respective republics and provinces, and especially dependent on the middle and lower level party cadres who staffed major social and political institutions and were key actors in party elections. Without their support it would be impossible for any regional party leader to implement policy and difficult for him to retain his position. The party masses in each of the regions, in turn, were now coming more strongly under the influence of social forces and institutions outside the party. This influence was difficult to break-even through the manipulation of party personnel policies-and it made individual Communists more difficult to mobilize on behalf of party policy. The constellation of social and political forces that emerged in the post-Rankovic period proved the assumptions of the liberal party leadership about the relative strength of nationality and class interests to have been badly mistaken. The late 1960s saw an exponential increase in the frequency and intensity of political conflicts linking ethnic, regional, and economic issues and dividing the country and its communist political leadership into distinct ethnoterritorial blocs. Milestones in the escalation of these tensions were marked by the conflict in late 1966 between Bosnia (Bosnia and Hercegovina) and the other republics over the federal government's division of funding for aid to the underdeveloped regions. Bosnia called the Chamber of Nationalities of the Federal Assembly into substantive session for the first time in its history in order to reverse the decision. This set in motion once again the process of constitutional reform: the highly nationalistic "Declaration on the Name and Position of the Croatian Literary Language" adopted by a group of Croatian cultural organizations in March 1967, and the equally provocative response by Serbian writers broke a long-standing truce imposed by the party leadership in the 1950s on the explosive question of Serb-Croat relations. In the fall of 1968 there occurred a series of major nationalist (see Glossary) demonstrations by Albanians in Kosovo and northwestern Macedonia, which included demands for the separation of ethnically Albanian territories from Yugoslavia and their attachment to Albania. There followed in August 1969 a series of political protests and demonstrations in Slovenia, prompted by the apparent denial by the Federal Executive Council of funding for road-building projects in that republic, but which rapidly escalated to include nationalist and separatist demands and placed the question of relations between the regions and the federation on the political agenda. While these conflicts were the most dramatic manifestations of rising levels of hostility, they were by no means the only ones. Indeed, the society as a whole experienced a dramatic resurgence of conflict during this period, dominated by the national question. And these conflicts hastened the rapid "federalization" of the party that had begun with the ouster of Rankovic and gave rise to the genuine "federalization" of power and authority in the state. The party leadership agreed in November 1967 that, in keeping with the statute adopted at the Eighth Party Congress in 1964, the next LCY congress would be convened after the republican party congresses. Although the 1964 statute had preserved the political primacy of the all-Yugoslav congress, the leadership now decided that the LCY congress was to develop "a synthesis of the results of the congresses of the Leagues of Communists of the republics" and establish this synthesis as a guideline for the central leadership. Moreover in mid-1968 they restructured the central party organs. A fifty-member Presidium was established as the main leadership organ, to be composed of an equal number of members elected by the party congress in each republic, rather than appointed by the center. These changes meant that the members of central party organs-with a few important exceptions-would owe their allegiance to the republican and provincial organizations that had placed them there, not to their colleagues at the center. This altered the nature of the decisionmaking process within the political elite. It very rapidly came to be the case that "important decisions no longer were made at the federal summit but rather [by] direct contacts among representatives of the republics-in the form of bilateral and multi-lateral interpersonal visits and discussions of republican State and Party delegations." By the time of the Ninth Party Congress in March 1969, there no longer existed an independent "party center" other than President Tito, "who all the more frequently received delegations of the republics for political discussions and in this way created a platform for political decisions." Federalization of the party was accompanied by the simultaneously increasing influence of republic and provincial representatives in the government and parliament. The Bosnian initiative in 1966 resulted in the adoption in 1967 of a series of amendments that enlarged the role of the Chamber of Nationalities, and thereby the republics and provinces represented in it, in the federal decision-making process. The chamber was now required to meet separately to consider social plans, all bills affecting the revenue of the regions, and all matters heretofore in the independent jurisdiction of the Federal Chamber, making it in all but formal organization a separate chamber of the Assembly. As the Chamber of Nationalities expanded its domain of competence and became more a creature of the republics, the need for the government to achieve interrepublican agreement on federal policy prior to its submission to the parliament also increased. Consequently the Federal Executive Council introduced the practice of holding "consultative meetings" with representatives of the executive councils of the republics and provinces to determine the position to be taken by the federal government on the "more important socio-economic questions." These meetings quickly assumed such importance that "not a single more significant issue could be presented to the council before it had been discussed at a consultative meeting." This practice became institutionalized after 1969 with the establishment of a Coordinating Commission within the council, composed of representatives of the federal, republican, and provincial executive councils. The increased control of the republics over federal policymaking sharply reduced the ability of the government to make decisions. During 1967 and 1968 enormous problems began to build up in the economy as the federal government, which still retained important monetary, fiscal, and taxing powers required to implement policy, was prevented from acting because of disagreement among the republics over the substance of the policy to be pursued in each area. The increasingly important role of banks in the economy in general, the investment policies of banks and governments, the foreign currency exchange systems, and tax policies all became the subjects of interrepublican bargaining and conflict (see Role of Government, ch. 3). At the same time growing economic problems were generating increasing dissatisfaction in the population. In June 1968 Belgrade University students staged a week-long strike. The strike focused on the problems of growing unemployment, increasing economic inequality and materialism, and the frustrations of the younger generation over the logjam in career advancement caused by the near monoply of executive and professional positions enjoyed by the cadres of the revolution, who were still only middle-aged and sometimes poorly qualified. The strike received support from the provincial campuses of that university, and from the students of other universities, including Sarajevo and Zagreb universities. The student demonstrators' socialist orientation toward these problems was little consolation to the political leadership faced with the task of solving them. The outside threat posed by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 served to calm internal Yugoslav quarreling-but not completely. Throughout 1967 and 1968 and into 1969, the Croatian language issue simmered. Nationalists on both sides of the issue continued to exploit the freedom of action that came with the post-Rankovic democratization of society (see Peoples of Yugoslavia, ch. 2). The same issues raised by the "declaration" continued to be raised by Croat writers at conferences and meetings, and they continued to be answered by their Serb counterparts. These exchanges simply remained off the front pages of the major newspapers. In the fall of 1968 large-scale riots broke out among the Albanian populations of several cities in Kosovo and northwestern Macedonia. One of the more moderate demands of the Albanian demonstrators was for elevation of Kosovo's status within the Yugoslav federation to that of a socialist republic. This demand was at least partially accommodated in another series of constitutional amendments adopted in December 1968. The appellation "Socialist" was added to that of "Autonomous Province" for both Vojvodina and Kosovo, and the basic legal order of each of these regions was now to be established by a constitution separate from that for the Republic of Serbia. In addition ethnic groups with the official status of nationalities or "national minorities" (Albanians and Hungarians among them) were granted the same rights-including the use of their native languages in public institutions-as the "nations" of Yugoslavia. Both socialist autonomous provinces, however, remained constituent units of the Republic of Serbia. These changes were adopted largely in order to continue the process started by the 1967 amendments-that is, to strengthen the control of the republics and provinces over the federal decisionmaking process. They elevated the Chamber of Nationalities to a fully independent body and made it, instead of the Federal Chamber, the chamber of general competence. All federal legislation now had to be approved by the Chamber of Nationalities. These changes led to public discussion in Yugoslavia of whether one country could be considered a "confederation." Officially this view was rejected because the amendments had not altered the rules for decisionmaking within the chamber. It continued to make decisions on the basis of a majority vote of all its members. A realistic Yugoslav analyst, however, viewed the operation of the Federal Assembly quite differently. The author of an empirical study of the operation of the Assembly acknowledged in 1969 that it was "hardly likely" that delegates in the chamber would act independently of the other delegates from their republic or province, and he pointed out that they were also likely to be under the strong influence of their respective regional leaderships. The inability of the party and government to forge interrepublican agreements on specific policy issues led by default to increased activity on the part of the reorganized federal parliament. Following the 1967 elections, debates and discussions both in the committees of the Assembly and on the floor of the chambers themselves became increasingly lively. Not only the volume, but also the scope of Assembly work increased. The increased activity of the Chamber of Nationalities suggested to some foreign observers at that time that Yugoslavia was moving in the direction of parliamentarism, but hindsight suggests that it would have been more accurate to suggest that the Yugoslav state was moving toward immobilisme. The 1967 and 1968 amendments rendered the parliament-through the Chamber of Nationalities-susceptible to the same stalemating forces that were affecting the party and government. By late 1968 and early 1969 the need for authoritative political leadership, immune from particularistic pressures and able to provide sober judgment, was clear. It also was clear that such leadership could be provided only by a revitalized central party organ. On the eve of the Ninth Party Congress in March 1969, however, it seemed unlikely that such an organ would be created. As the leadership had decided earlier, each of the regional party organizations had convened its own congress in advance of the federal one and had elected a certain number of its members to serve on the central organs of the LCY. Those elected to membership on the central Presidium-which was supposed to serve as an authoritative, policymaking body for the entire party-generally were not the most authoritative and powerful members of the republican organizations. Those members were elected instead to positions within their own republican party organizations. If the Ninth Party Congress had unfolded as planned, that is, had these personnel assignments simply been "verified," there no longer would have been any central party organ with even a pretense to authority over the regional organizations. Moreover there apparently would have been no formal executive body at the center of the party. The small Secretariat of the Presidium envisaged in July 1968 had been eliminated from the draft party statutes submitted to the congress. Precisely because of this, Tito acted on his own initiative to construct a more authoritative central party organ.