I'm going to be quoting the user antena here because i feel he answers the question quite well.

• Were all companies formed as co-ops with the workers directly owning the business, or was the state involved in ownership? Or maybe both?

All large companies were state owned, and for the larger part of Yugoslavia existance the private owned businesswas forbidden. Smaller businesses, such as small produce shops, farms and similar were almost always functioning as a part of larger construct.

• Corporate and social changes in socialist Yugoslavia between 1949 and 1953 http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=sr&u=http://www.znaci.net/00001/138_81.pdf&prev=/search%3Fq%3Djugoslavija%2Bekonomsko%2Buredjenje%26newwindow%3D1%26biw%3D1440%26bih%3D760 • 1974 Yugoslavia Constitution (specifically Part two Social (and economic) organization) http://sl.wikisource.org/wiki/Ustava_Socialisti%C4%8Dne_federativne_republike_Jugoslavije_(1974)

Before 1974, Tito's rule was much harder and only after country was reorganized internally did the business practices change in any signifcant way allowing people more private owned shops and small busniess. The whole industrial sector was, however, in the hands of state, and there was no way of any international stake in the state-owned companies. The workers were directly involved in the company/enterprise being organized in Radnički savjet (Worker's counsil) whose representatives informed the management of the workers opinions. Management propagated the idea further to the top. Or, at least that was what was supposed to happen. My elders say that the system worked in actuality, and workers got all of their reasonable demands fulfilled. That's anecdotal, so take it with a grain of salt, as I have not lived through any working age in that country).

After Tito's death, private owned business rules laxed, and busniess generally started booming in the '80s, and in some regions mean income was on a similar level to that of Central Europe towards the end of the '80s.

• Was employment 'guaranteed' like it was in the Soviet Union?

Pretty much. As you can see from the linked constitution and social changes document. This resulted in overemployment, where (anecdotally) some say that the ration of workforce to required workforce was 3:1. I'll try and find something appropriate to back this up. But it is a fact that overemployment existed.

• To what degree was the profit motive at play for individual workers and for co-ops/businesses? • Because the companies owned the appartments which they would "give" to their employees, which could directly influence people's standards, it is not only money and profit that drove people. As money alone did not neccesarily increase your living standard, the motivation was also in these "perks" that promoted and valued workers got (better appartments, company car, more paid vacation, etc).

Because the workspace was overemployed there was a lot of free time for workers to maintain their private affairs (having private farms for non-commercial use) or do some work "on the side". (e.g. A workers in company for painting steel also painted peoples appartments and houses on the side, without taxation of that income, or reporting it in any way). This was not something that was frowned upon, unless it directly used company's resources for that.

As I understand it, patriotism was one of larger factors in worker motivation. But overemployment generally helped as people did not have to work as hard as in highly optimized work environment.

• How did foreign businesses interact with this economic model? I've heard that Yugoslavia was one of the few socialist countries where western goods could be attained, but surely these western companies didn't follow the Yugoslav economic structure of self management? • Basically, untill the '80s all the interaction was done through domestic companies, which would be the only ones that were able to import strictly controlled quantities for strictly controlled shops. Although you could not buy things domestically, nothing stopped you from travelling and bringing stuff with you. Which resulted in a pretty big gray market (but not that big) with western products. Jeans, western music wer eobtainable and from '70s onward were not forbidden in that soviet sense.

A good overview of gross domestic product of yugoslavia in 1981. http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=sr&u=http://www.makroekonomija.org/0-miroslav-zdravkovic/struktura-drustvenog-proizvoda-sfrj-u-1981-godini/&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dsfrj%2Bi%2Bmedjunarodna%2Btrgovina%26newwindow%3D1%26biw%3D1440%26bih%3D760

• In general, how much of a hand did the state have in the production of goods? How much interference could the average business expect? As a follow up/clarification, what was the general relationship between the state and a business? State controlled everything. It was not completely uncommon that state takes profits of one company and uses it for payment of workers in other companies. After 1974. constitution where self management was emphasized, this mostly stopped and such problems were dealt with by producing cash money, which oftentimes had quite an impact in destabilization of economy and currency. Even I remember state owned stores which still existed in the late '80s (althoug were on their way out) where you could by flour, sugar, all the basic necessities. But that was it. There was no two types of flour. Only one producer, the local one (still, because everything is state owned, that's of no isse that there is no competition). With the rise of Ante Markovic Yugoslavia has seen a short period of huge economic growths, when business mostly had their hands free to deal and commerce with the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ante_Markovi%C4%87

• How was dissent handled? I've heard that during the Stalinist times in the Soviet Union that dissent was...frowned upon rather dramatically. Was it the same in Yugoslavia at any point?

As I said before, Titos' rule in earlier days, from WW2 to the '70s was much harder, and opponents were removed swiftly, often even brutally. People had a saying "the dark swallowed you". But because the system started functioning, people gained more freedoms and general opposition was quite lowered from '70s onwards, the dissent was ever smaller. It's quite hard to give a definitive answer to this as it could be argued that the lack of dissent was due to efficacy of handling it, but simply from impressions of people living and working in the system, I highly doubt it was any more significant. But bear no doubt, the system did not tolerate any strong political opposition, and practically all the nationalistic leaders from Yugoslaw wars were at one time political prisoners of Tito's regime. • Was Tito's rule ever challenged? How popular was he with the people? I've heard him referred to as one of the most 'benevolent' dictators.

Yes. They usually ended on Goli otok. No one successfully challenged him, though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goli_otok It is also true that he was a benevolent dictator, as far as dictators go. People really (and I mean really) liked him. People had high hopes and expectations. Standards of food production, material production, work safety and other were quite high, and oftentimes simply copied from Swedish SIS or German DIN standards, which resulted in high quality products and work environment. Worker was celebrated and mostly cared for.

• Was there any semblance of free elections in Yugoslavia during this time period? I am not sure, but I do not think so.

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I will try to find more sources, it's quite hard to find translatable pages for most of this stuff. I have some books, but there were never any english translation, nor can I find any offcial link to most of them. As I have only access to the library I inherited from my grandfather, I am unfamiliar with any more modern books on the subjects at hand.

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Edit: Formatting. “

Too add to the last point though Nikola_S added this

"There were elections, though it is a question how much you can call them free. See History of Parliamentarism in BiH on the official website of the Parliament of BiH, which also gives answers to some of the other questions." https://www.parlament.ba/istorija/default.aspx?id=27881&langTag=en-US&pril=b

Here are also some links to other similar threads that may answer the question as well.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/298c23/how_was_yugoslavia_modeled_economically_and_how/

and

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1bfrz9/how_successful_was_yugoslav_socialism_and_how_was/

Apologies about posting long links in the thread instead of hyper linking but i am new to reddit and still figuring out how things work.

I personally would have a more favorable view of Socialist Yugoslavia and Tito but for a variety of reasons i don't have the resources available to me that these individuals do to make an argument at this given time. Their 'moderate' and reserved views of Tito and Yugoslavia are still an appropriate one though.

• Was it An Authoritarian state? Yes, but the leader, Josip Broz "Tito" was dubbed "benevolent" dictator because of his somewhat less oppressive policies compared to USSR. There were quite large extra-judicial killings of political opponents during and after the war, and a Gulag/Gitmo style camp on an island for political opponents.
• What were western views on Yugoslavia? Mildly positive during the war, as the precursors of Socialist Yugoslavia, the partisans, were fighting the axis powers. The views became very negative after the war, mainly because Tito was Stalin's extended "arm" in the Balkans. The tides turned in 1948, when the so-called Tito-Stalin split occured. Because of this split Yugoslavia recieved massive civil and military aid from the U.S., such as Patton and Sherman tanks, as well as very modern planes at the time, the Republic F-84 Thunderjets throughout the 50's. The relations with the west were relatively stable until the late 70's, when Yugoslavia's economy began to worsen, and NATO wasn't in need of such an ally in Europe anymore.
• How did it compare to the USSR? Economically it was more developed, repression was less existant, culture was less politically influenced, but it was similarily militarized.
• How did it compare to western nations? Although its north was somewhat similarily developed during the early years, it soon began to fall behind economically. Many western cultural influences were adopted (western music, Nordic architectural style and design, many western European/American films were available in theatres), borders with western nations were somewhat opened since the early 60's or so. Media control was high.
• Do the people of former Yugoslavian states look on that past favourably? Many do, many don't, in some countries the issue is split in half among the population, this is evident in the countries' parliaments, with the politically centre-right parties viewing the past negatively, and centre-left viewing it positively. The admirers are called "Jugonostalgiki" in plural, and there are quite a few annual pro-Yugoslav festivals occuring throughout the former Yugoslav state.

Was it a communist/socialist success story?

Basically no, Yugoslavia followed the same economic trajectory as the rest of the Communist bloc, despite nominally trying to take a market oriented approach towards Socialism.

Yugoslavia basically tried to implement a version of "market socialism", theoretically, workers owned firms which would then compete on an open market. In reality though there was still a central planning apparatus, and firms were controlled by managers rather than ran by workers. The result of this was in some ways a system which was the worst of both worlds: an inequal society as the result of managers getting wealthy and inefficiency due to the existence of central planning.

Broadly speaking Yugoslavia went from high post-war growth to stagnation like every other east-bloc country did. It then tried to paper over stagnation by taking out credit from the west. This "worked" until the 1980s when western financial institutions deemed east bloc countries to be uncreditworthy. At this point there was high unemployment, inflation and decline of real wages with no apparent fix. The need for credit to prop everything up meant they had to get it from the IMF and Yugoslavia's economy eventually came under the purvey of the IMF before its final collapse in the 1990s. This isn't -too- different from the path of the USSR and I hardly qualify it as a success story.