Regional Development in a Socialist, Developing and Multinational Country: The Case of Yugoslavia

The paper presents an overview of the problems, policies, and shortcomings of regional planning practices in Yugoslavia and makes recommendations for future regional planning policy with respect to inter-regional inequalities. Since World War II the government has invested considerable effort and resources experimenting with various policies to reduce spatial disparities among its principal regions. As a socialist country, Yugoslavia could presumably use direct control of interregional allocation of investment funds and skilled labor to avoid the classic pattern of regional growth. However, various institutional problems, conflicts between goals and policies, demographic characteristics, and the lack of adequate conceptual structure for regional development policies have limited the government's success in reducing absolute and relative income disparities.