Nonalignment as Yugoslavia's Answer to Bloc Politics

This article focuses on Tito's effort to use foreign policy actions on behalf of his domestic goals. After a bitter rift emerged with the Soviet Union in 1948, Tito moved closer to the West for several years but never proved willing to shift to democratic politics. Although he did carry out reforms of Yugoslavia's Stalinist system in the 1960s, he maintained an authoritarian Communist polity until the end of his life. The article examines how Tito sought to use Yugoslavia's nonaligned status to boost his domestic legitimacy in the eyes of key elites and even, to a degree, in the eyes of the wider population. Yugoslavia's central role in the Bandung conference in 1955 and its subsequent hosting of the summit that formally set up the Nonaligned Movement in 1961 were used by Tito to try to legitimize the polity over which he presided. Yugoslavia's strategy of nonalignment is a valuable illustration of the connection between domestic politics and foreign policy in Communist as well as non-Communist states.