ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of the major approaches to and theories of regional development and discusses the Yugoslav alternatives to the ethnonational/political definition adopted by the regime in 1945. It summarizes Yugoslav explanations for the displacement of the goal of regional equalization as argued by Yugoslav decision-makers for the four decades of post-war development. The chapter shows how although these were a constraining factor on regional development, it was economic regionalism, the primary pursuit of one's own region's economic interests that fundamentally undermined the goal. Kosta Mihailovic's approach to regionalization has been vociferously opposed by most in the developed and less developed regions. The reaction to both Mihailovic's and Hasan Hadziomerovic's attempts to articulate a "more coherent" policy of regional development was intense political debate. From its first days in power, the Yugoslav Communist regime professed as its goal the narrowing of economic inequalities between republics and regions.
