Post-Tito collective presidency — IMF austerity, inflation, republican breakdown

Doctrine — stated goals and content

The nine-year unravelling of Titoist Yugoslavia under the 8-member rotating collective presidency established by the 1974 Constitution. School: attempted market-socialist stabilisation under IMF tutelage, with deepening ethno-federal fragmentation ultimately replacing self-management doctrine. Left-right axis: formally communist / far-left but increasingly heterogeneous across republics — Slovenia and Croatia pushing toward social-democratic marketisation, Serbia-Montenegro toward centralising nationalism under Milošević from 1987. Core policy content: (i) 1982 "Long-Term Programme of Economic Stabilisation" (Kraigher Commission report) diagnosing the model's exhaustion but politically unenforceable; (ii) 1982-1988 repeated IMF stand-by agreements and dinar devaluations as external debt exceeded $20bn; (iii) Planinc austerity — petrol rationing 1982-1983, import restrictions, electricity cuts; (iv) accelerating inflation — annual CPI 30% (1980), 80% (1985), 200% (1988), hyperinflation ~1,300% 1989; (v) 1986-1988 Mikulić reforms attempted to restore enterprise-level discipline; (vi) September 1987 8th Session of Serbian League of Communists, Milošević purge of Stambolić faction, 1989 Kosovo constitutional reversal; (vii) Marković's March 1989 arrival: January 1990 new convertible dinar (10,000:1 redenomination), liberalisation of private enterprise — too late to save the federation. Popularity signals (one-party shifting): 1988-1989 "anti-bureaucratic revolution" mass rallies in Montenegro, Vojvodina, Kosovo organised by Milošević; Slovenian and Croatian League of Communists walking out of 14th Extraordinary SKJ Congress January 1990 dissolved the federal party. Coherence: very low — simultaneously pursued IMF stabilisation, unworkable republican-consensus decision-making, and increasingly incompatible nationalisms; the era is the canonical case of an institutionally over-constrained federal state failing to reform in time.