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

Collective self-reliance is an interesting, nowadays forgotten development strategy that was popular between the 1950s and 1970s, particularly among the newly independent states of the “Third World”. It was widely discussed in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s by Yugoslav researchers, among others. This paper aims to examine Yugoslav ideas on collective self-reliance from a historical perspective on the basis of original works from the time. It presents a brief history of the idea and its resonance in the non-aligned world, contemporary criticism, as well as political, economic and spatial dimensions of the strategy and the means by which it aims to achieve the goal of an economically independent, sovereign “Third World region”. A summary of basic contrasts between two interpretations of collective self-reliance is given to illustrate the specifics of the Yugoslav approach. This developed strategy serves as a theoretical impulse to reintroduce the ideas of south-south cooperation to the development discourse.