Self-Management in Yugoslavia a brief overview (after 1900 solution)
The aim of the Yugoslav shift from Stalinist economics was to redefine the party as a source of ideological guidance, eliminating its political power over the economy. This would follow the true spirit of Marxism by giving the people control over their economic destiny. "The factories to the workers" was the slogan of the decade. The architect behind this ideologie was Edvard Kardelj
History
In 1950 the Basic Law on the Management of State Economic Enterprises by Working Collectives was introduced to establish workers' participation in the management of their own enterprises. The basic law decentralized planning, turning it over to local communes and workers' councils and incorporated the principles of self-management into all aspects of public life. Central authorities outlined only general economic guidelines rather than imposing mandatory targets from a centralized command structure. The state retained control over the appointment of enterprise directors and the allocation of investment resources, however, thereby retaining considerable de facto control over the economy.
The organization of enterprises operating under socialist selfmanagement was elaborated further in the 1974 Constitution and the Law on Associated Labor of 1976.
The original self-management concept redesignated enterprises as work organizations of associated labor and divided them into smaller units at the level of factory departments. Each smaller unit, a BOAL, was a self-managed entity, financially and commercially independent. As members of basic organizations, workers had the right to attend general meetings and elect and serve on workers' councils. The councils were elected bodies that formulated business policy and plans, made investment and borrowing decisions, approved enterprise accounts, and gave final approval to directors and management boards. Despite these extensive nominal powers, however, decisions by the workers' councils were heavily influenced by enterprise directors, who were appointed by the League of Communists of Yugoslavia , as the CPY was called after 1952. Only one-third of the committees nominating enterprise directors could come from the councils; the remainder were members of local communes and trade unions, all still controlled by the LCY in 1990. In the final step, the workers' council chose from the nominating committee's list of candidates, but in most cases the list contained only one name at that stage.
Work communities were developed for white-collar clerical, administrative, and technical workers of the labor organizations. Also self-managed, the work communities resembled the BOALs but provided fewer rights and responsibilities to their members. Self-managed communities of interest were established by basic organizations to provide transportation, communications, education, and health services for production workers. Complex organizations of associated labor provided vertical and horizontal integration to improve cooperation and specialization among work organizations and their component units.
Economic Planning
In 1990 the Yugoslav economy ostensibly operated on a system of economic planning. Throughout the 1960s and the early 1970s, planning was "indicative": federal authorities handed down plans with detailed, specific goals to be achieved, with little input from below. In 1976 a radically new system of voluntary planning, called "social planning," was established. Plans of five years or longer were formulated from the bottom up, with the participation and agreement of all parties concerned.
The planning process started when federal authorities announced the timetable for the overall plan and major intermediate goals. Following the general government program, enterprises and their subordinate organizations drew up microplans, while macroplans were formulated within and among all the local governments and self-managed communities of interest. This was done simultaneously at all levels without any hierarchical approval system. Individual plans were modified through discussion with all parties concerned; the result was then written into binding social contracts. Enterprises and other bodies constructed self-management agreements that addressed specific aspects of the plan, such as the supply of materials and the amount of new capacity required. Annual assessments and adjustments provided adaptability to changing conditions. The Yugoslav economy's dependence on imported technical equipment for growth meant that changing world markets often made such adjustments necessary.
The consensual approach to planning proved ineffective in Yugoslavia. It was time-consuming and, because social compacts were voluntary and therefore unenforceable, plans were largely ignored except in rare instances of federal government intervention. Extreme decentralization of planning also meant that cooperative projects among republics and provinces were not well coordinated. This inefficiency particularly hindered development of national solutions for maintaining the energy balance and distributing foreign exchange.
Reform
There were several attempt to reform the system. In 1982 the new Yugoslav government was faced with a serious economic crisis that included rising unemployment, prices, and national debt. In 1983 the national sense of crisis was strong enough that the Federal Assembly passed austerity measures that temporarily curbed spending and controlled inflation
In 1983 the Long-Term Economic Stabilization Program (also known as the Krajgher Commission Report) was issued, after two years of debate, as the official blueprint for economic reform.
The Krajgher Report was evidence that even in 1983 most Yugoslav politicians agreed in theory that development of a market economy was necessary to restimulate growth throughout the country. But in practice this would have meant a drastic reduction in the policy--making role of the LCY, hence a total repudiation of the Tito legacy. Free enterprise also would mean that government agencies at all levels would lose their control of economic affairs. For these reasons, market reform met strong institutional resistance. The alternative reform, a return to Stalinist central planning, had few Yugoslav advocates in the mid-1980s and was totally discredited by the fall of central planning governments across Eastern Europe in the late 1980s.
While the government debated reform, the self-management system further dispersed control over economic and financial resources vital to the national economy. In the 1960s and 1970s, individual enterprises had formed alliances with local party machines, protecting uneconomical industries by giving them disproportionate influence on policy making, and eroding regional support for price and wage controls. Many of the short-term austerity measures of 1983 were relaxed by the national government even before their expiration dates. The national political system then drifted into inaction, ignoring the need for fundamental economic reform that had been obvious since 1980.
POD?
The trick is to keep a strong democratic federal state too avoid a catastrophic breakup, the loss of a strong domestic market and the splintering into small walled of regions (there were inner tariffs in OTL) etc but on the other side there a more efficient hence market economic system has to be implemented to keep the economy from collapsing.
The best way to achieve both would be your proposed socialist worker-controlled pro-competition market economy with a strong federal parliament quenching dangerous separatist movements. There were many competing fractions and an very open debate so it shouldn’t be to unlikely that one of the parties (one of the more liberal fractions) is coming up with this plan and succeeding
(further information on
http://www.country-data.com/frd/cs/yutoc.html#yu0037 and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edvard_Kardelj)
Especially in earlier days when governments themselves were basically concentrations of power in a small elite.