Health care and workers' self-management in Yugoslavia

The form of communism developed in Yugoslavia since the early 1950s--called workers' self-management--has been of interest to many westerners concerned with the ideas of participatory democracy and workers' self-management. Yugoslavia's economic growth and general openness toward the West have encouraged many people to visit and to investigate the health care system as well as other aspects of the society. It is generally said that self-management is responsible for the remarkable successes that Yugoslavia has achieved. This paper suggests, on the other hand, that many of the successes achieved in the health care system are attributable largely to the fact that self-management is not allowed to work as freely as it does in other sectors of the economy.