This project has received funding via the EUI ESR call 2025, dedicated to Early Stage Researchers, with the contribution of the EUI Widening Europe Programme. The EUI Widening Europe Programme initiative, backed by contributions from the European Union and EUI Contracting States, is designed to strengthen internationalisation, competitiveness, and quality in research in Widening countries, and thus foster a more cohesive European Higher Education and Research area.
While often portrayed as facilitators of socialist legality, ombudspersons of self-management in socialist Yugoslavia - institutions positioned to mediate between workers, management, and the state under a system of worker self-governance - raise deeper questions about institutional independence, state control, and the uneasy tension between individual rights and political conformity.
FOLIO is a ground-breaking research project that explores the complex and largely forgotten role of Yugoslavia’s ombudspersons of self-management. Established to safeguard the rights of working people, these institutions operated within a system that aimed to decentralise power, yet remained under the grip of the socialist state. By excavating archival materials from Croatia and Slovenia, FOLIO interrogates the institutional legacy of these bodies, re-evaluates their capacity to act independently, and situates them within broader debates on the evolution, co-optation, and continuity of human rights mechanisms in post-socialist contexts.
The project will also include comparative case studies and critically analyse how these institutions positioned themselves in relation to politically sensitive issues, such as allegations of political discrimination or restrictions on freedoms of expression and association, as well as socio-economic and cultural rights, including access to housing, social protection, and pensions. FOLIO will trace institutional patterns, responses, and silences to assess the extent to which these bodies articulated, resisted, or accommodated the limits of state-sanctioned justice under socialism.
For more information about the EUI Widening Europe Programme, please visit the official webpage.