On understanding the non-alignment in Yugoslav theorisation of international relations

Abstract

The paper contributes to the historiography of the domestic science of International Relations, observed through its processing of the nonalignment in the socialist Yugoslavia period. The author has analysed the relevant academic literature that deals with the nonalignment as a concept, a movement and an interplay of social relations. Initially, the paper presents a short sketch of the development of the science of International Relation within Yugoslav social sciences, and then the development of the part of the IR science that had nonalignment as its object. The author has shown the strong threads of the Marxist approach to the International Relations in the analyses of the nonaligned movement and its genesis, but also flexibility and eclecticism in the analyses of various related topics. The author has also displayed a wide focus of such a science on the analysis of the role of internal factors in defining the foreign policy and of the importance given to the historical experience and subjectivity in action, which are characteristics of more contemporary theories like constructivism and liberalism. In that sense, the author concludes the theoretical production of that era should be evaluated in more detail, in light of the actual state of play in the science of International Relations.