In this thesis, I examine the 14th Extraordinary Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia and the political-economic factors that led to the events that took place there. In the theoretical section, I first define the research approach and the fundamental concepts I will use
in the thesis, and then I provide a historical context covering the development of regional inequality in Yugoslavia, the evolution of the Communist Party, and the events at the 14th Congress. In the empirical section, I first summarize and then thematically analyse the semistructured interviews I conducted with members of the delegation of the League of Communists of Slovenia at the congress. The main findings of this thesis are that the general crisis of the 1980s clearly revealed a crisis of legitimacy afflicting the Yugoslav Communist League which
had various systemic sources. At the 14th Congress, two responses to this crisis came into conflict. The Slovenian delegation advocated democratization and decentralization, while the Serbian delegation advocated the party’s monopoly and centralization. Significant developmental disparities among the Yugoslav republics and provinces—which had grown
over time due to ineffective cohesion policies—contributed to the intensity of the crisis and the rise of nationalism. The unwillingness of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia to compete in a pluralistic political arena was a major reason why it failed to overcome the crisis.
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